{"id":92628,"date":"2025-12-25T10:50:36","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T07:50:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=92628"},"modified":"2025-12-25T10:55:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T07:55:10","slug":"aave-founder-accused-of-vote-buying-with-10-million-token-purchase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/aave-founder-accused-of-vote-buying-with-10-million-token-purchase\/","title":{"rendered":"Aave Founder Accused of Vote Buying with $10 Million Token Purchase"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Co-founder of the DeFi protocol <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/what-is-aave\">Aave<\/a>, Stani Kulechov, has faced criticism following his purchase of <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/governance-tokens-vs-utility-tokens-whats-the-difference\">project tokens<\/a> worth $10 million. Community members speculated that the transaction was aimed at increasing his voting power in a contentious governance proposal.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">I\u2019m surprised that no one is talking about the fact that Stani bought $10M of AAVE, claimed it was bc he is aligned with the token yet in actual fact it was to increase his voting power in anticipation to vote for a proposal directly against the token holders best interests<\/p>\n<p>This\u2026<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Robert (@0xluude) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/0xluude\/status\/2003611993794904385?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 23, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>DeFi strategist Robert Mullins claimed that Kulechov plans to support an initiative that contradicts the interests of coin holders. A user under the pseudonym Sisyphus also questioned the economic rationale of the purchase.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">On AAVE: <\/p>\n<p>I fail to understand why Stani, who must have dumped hundreds of millions of dollars of valueless governance tokens from 2021 to 2025, would rebuy $10 million dollars of tokens in order to try and take a <$10 million dollar revenue stream<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Sisyphus (@0xSisyphus) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/0xSisyphus\/status\/2003775056493879317?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 24, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>He noted that from 2021 to 2025, the project&#8217;s founder had instead sold millions of dollars&#8217; worth of tokens.<\/p>\n<p>The conflict arose amid a <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/eboadom\/status\/2000970502098026663\">vote<\/a> on returning control over Aave&#8217;s brand, domains, and intellectual property to the governance of <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/what-is-a-dao-decentralised-autonomous-organisation\">DAO<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Former Aave Labs CTO Ernesto Boado, listed as the proposal&#8217;s author, stated that trust had been undermined. According to him, the vote on the Snapshot platform was launched prematurely and without his consent.<\/p>\n<p>Analyst Samuel McCulloch pointed out the issue of high centralization of governance in the protocol.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The Aave vote is silly. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Marczeller?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@Marczeller<\/a> v <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/StaniKulechov?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@StaniKulechov<\/a> making up 50% of the vote, followed by some anons (probably from labs) and then rounding out with more ACI supporters.<\/p>\n<p>Top 3 Nay voters have a majority. GG <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/rSdpUsZHhg\">pic.twitter.com\/rSdpUsZHhg<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Samuel McCulloch | USD.AI (@ssmccul) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ssmccul\/status\/2003495800731783313?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 23, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>The three largest addresses control over 58% of the votes. The leading wallet holds 27% (333,000 Aave), while the address associated with Aave Chan Initiative (aci.eth) holds 18.5%.<\/p>\n<p>In December, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/sec-ends-probe-into-defi-protocol-aave\">concluded<\/a> a four-year investigation into Aave.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Co-founder of Aave criticized for $10 million token purchase: community believes the goal is to gain votes for a contentious proposal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":92629,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"1","news_style_id":"1","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"Aave co-founder criticized for $10M token purchase to gain voting power.","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1212,755,785],"class_list":["post-92628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-aave","tag-community","tag-voting"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"148","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"1","short_excerpt":"Aave co-founder criticized for $10M token purchase to gain voting power.","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92628"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92630,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92628\/revisions\/92630"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}