The Aave Chan Initiative (ACI), a key business development and governance group, announced it will wind down its operations for the $27 billion Aave lending protocol over four months. Founder Marc Zeller cited a recent governance vote that approved a large budget for core developer Aave Labs, alleging the vote was backed by addresses linked to the same entity. This departure follows the recent exit of developer team BGD Labs, marking a period of internal conflict within the Aave ecosystem.
The Aave Chan Initiative is ending its work on the $27 billion lending protocol after weeks of dispute. Marc Zeller, ACI’s founder, announced the wind-down in a governance post on Wednesday.
Zeller pointed to a crucial governance vote passed on Saturday that granted Aave Labs a significant budget. He alleged the vote was backed almost entirely by crypto addresses linked to the Labs entity.
“There is no role for an independent service provider in an environment where the largest budget recipient holds undisclosed voting power and uses it on its own proposals,” the post stated. Zeller told reporters that ACI’s exit was the final straw after the recent departure of developer group BGD Labs.
The project’s native AAVE token fell 6% on February 20 after BGD Labs, the team behind the prominent Aave V3 codebase, quit. The primary contention involves a protracted conflict between Aave Labs and the decentralized autonomous organization’s agency.
A December proposal to transfer all project intellectual property to the DAO failed on Christmas Day. Aave Labs later proposed directing revenue from Aave-branded products to the DAO, but included language ratifying Aave V4.
This implied pausing work on the lucrative V3 to migrate users to an unproven version, a move BGD Labs viewed as reckless. When asked what is next, Zeller said he is keeping an eye on BGD Labs.
“If they build a protocol, I’ll join,” he said. “But now, I need time to wind down gracefully.”
