Aave internally questions Labs' past performance: $86 million in funding, 23% stake in tokens, and all six of its products either failed or resulted in losses.

According to Mars Finance, on February 25th, Marc Zeller, founder of the Aave ecosystem contribution organization ACI, released a public report disclosing that Aave Labs has received approximately $86 million in capital support since 2017, including ICOs, VC funding, and direct grants from the DAO. The report also states that the founding team retained 23% of the LEND tokens during the 2017 ICO (later migrated to AAVE at a 100:1 ratio). The report points out that Labs already had approximately $48.7 million in capital before receiving DAO funding, and subsequently received approximately $37.4 million in grants from the DAO. Currently, it is applying for an additional $51 million in funding through the "Aave Will Win" proposal. The report specifically questions Labs' past product performance, stating that all six independent products launched besides the core protocol have failed or failed to generate profits. Among them, the RWA project Horizon, while once claiming a scale exceeding $1 billion, actually had an actual RWA staking scale of approximately $135 million, highly concentrated in a single asset. Since its launch in August 2025, Horizon has generated approximately $216,000 in revenue for the DAO, but incurred approximately $5.25 million in incentive and related costs, resulting in a return on investment of approximately 24:1. The report also notes that early core development members of Aave V1, V2, and V3.0 left Labs between 2021 and 2022. V3.0 is considered the last major protocol version led by Labs, with subsequent versions primarily driven by DAO service providers. During related governance votes, a single large-scale delegation address played a crucial role in the passage of the Horizon proposal, sparking community discussions about centralized governance power and efficient use of funds. This controversy coincides with the review of a new round of $17.5 million product growth grant proposals, further intensifying discussions within the Aave community regarding fund allocation, performance disclosure, and governance transparency.