Aave (AAVE) Governance

Key Facts:

• On chain voting using AAVE token
• Vote delegation is not supported
• Uses unique Aave governance architecture

Protocol Overview:

Aave is a protocol for creating and managing money markets for lending crypto assets. Originally launched as ETHLend during the 2017 ICO era, the project relaunched as Aave at the beginning of 2020 and recently commenced a token migration to enable governance capabilities. Going forward, AAVE token holders will have a larger role in proposing and approving changes to the protocol.

Venues for Discussion:

Most day-to-day discussion takes place in Aave's Discord chat. Formal proposals and more long form discussions take place in the governance Discourse forum.

Voting Interface and Process:

Thus far, the only vote that has taken place was the genesis vote (using the old LEND token) to approve token migration and a new staking module. The governance process will likely become more clear over time as more votes take place.

Aave governance works by allowing token holders to vote on "policies" (similar to Compound proposals) that address individual aspects of the system. This could include updating specific groups of risk parameters (eg. the collateral factor and interest rate of an asset), or adding/removing system modules.

Per the Aave Governance docs, it seems that proposal submission will initially be reserved for the Aave core team (see figure 3). The governance process will be formalized via Aave Improvement Proposals (AIPs), which could be expected to cover meta-governance procedures as well as larger system upgrades.

Resources:

• Discussion forum: https://governance.aave.com/
• Discord chat: https://discord.com/channels/602826299974877205/602826300813606923
• Github: https://github.com/aave/aip
• Governance documentation: https://docs.aave.com/aavenomics/governance
• Voting app: https://app.aave.com/governance
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/AaveAave
• AAVE token info (Coingecko): https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/aave