Core technical contributor to cease involvement with Aave DAO

BGD Labs, a core technical contributor to decentralized finance protocol Aave, said it will conclude its involvement with the project’s DAO on April 1 after four years.

In a Friday forum post on Aave, BGD cited an “asymmetric organizational scenario,” which it said the DAO has “badly executed” without consideration of contributors’ expertise. The contributor added that Aave had taken an “adversarial position” of the third version (v3) of its protocol to promote features in the fourth (v4).

“While all previous points that BGD should just keep contributing on the v3 side exclusively, the situation created makes it nonsensical to us: every time we think/will think about improving v3, there will be some type of implicit/explicit artificial constraint,” said BGD. “We are not really interested in being in that position, as we think it is a waste of our potential.”

As part of the winding down of its collaboration with Aave, BGD said “nothing changes” until April 1, and the project would continue to contribute to v3, Umbrella, chain expansions, security and assets’ onboarding.

Existing projects likely to continue after its contributions end will have maintenance guidelines, but BGD said there was not a “direct off-boarding path” for the project to contribute to the Aave protocol. It proposed a two-month, $200,000 security retainer for the community to consider beyond April as Aave finds a potential replacement.

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“BGD Labs was created in early 2022 to build in the DeFi/web3 ecosystem,” said the forum post. “Since then, we have been almost exclusively focused on our contribution to Aave: any technical sub-system of Aave that the community knows about, BGD Labs was leading its development, or at least participating/collaborating with other entities in it.”

Aave users react to BGD departure

Reactions from many users to the news were largely positive toward BGD, with many expressing concerns about the loss of a significant contributor to the DeFi protocol.

“If independent contributors feel sidelined by DAO-level centralization, maybe the answer is just structural clarity inside the DAO,” said user JosueMpia. “Because this feels bigger than one team leaving.”

Some users accused Aave founder and CEO Stani Kulechov of being responsible for the project’s departure. The CEO also responded to the post, praising BGD for its role:

“I respect BGD’s decision, though I am sad to see them go. The DeFi ecosystem is better for having a team like BGD in it and I hope they continue to build and make contributions to the industry.”

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