In a major shakeup for decentralized finance governance, the Aave Chan Initiative (ACI), a leading service provider and governance facilitator for the AaveDAO, has announced it will wind down its operations and exit the DAO by July 2025. The group's founder, Marc Zeller, confirmed the decision in a post shared with The Block on May 15, 2025, stating ACI will not seek renewal of its engagement.
The departure is the second high-profile exit in recent months, following the February 2025 announcement by BGD Labs, a core technical contributor, that it would cease its work in April. Zeller cited BGD's departure as "the main spark" for ACI's decision, highlighting growing tensions within Aave's governance framework.
The governance dispute that precipitated these exits began in December 2024 when a community member questioned why fees from a new CoW Swap integration were being routed to Aave Labs instead of the DAO treasury without a governance vote. This sparked a broader debate over control, transparency, and revenue diversion. The conflict escalated in January 2025 when Aave founder Stani Kulechov published a strategic framework, later formalized into a temperature check proposal from Aave Labs in February. The proposal offered to redirect 100% of revenue from Aave-branded products to the DAO in exchange for approximately $51 million in funding for Aave v4 development.
Zeller argued that the proposal's passage—with 52.58% in favor—was only possible due to concentrated voting power linked to Aave Labs. He claimed that excluding roughly 233,000 AAVE tokens from three Labs-linked address clusters would have reversed the result. "The temp check demonstrated that a single entity holds enough voting power to pass its own budget proposals over community opposition," Zeller stated, adding that the current governance process is not "decentralized enough to guarantee that existing commitments will be honored."
ACI has outlined a four-month transition plan through July, during which it will continue governance activity, implement outstanding commitments, and focus on handing off critical infrastructure and knowledge to the broader community. Concurrently, ACI has submitted a proposal to cancel its GHO stablecoin funding stream (ID 100070) ahead of schedule, requesting a lump-sum transfer of 120 days' worth of funds to ensure a seamless transition. Zeller warned that if the DAO rejects this proposal, ACI would "cease all activity immediately."
Founded in early 2023, ACI operated with eight members and received a total of $4.625 million in compensation over three years for its work in research, proposal drafting, and community coordination. The group's exit marks a pivotal test for AaveDAO's resilience and its ability to transition to a more community-led governance model without key facilitators.
