| What to Know: - BGD Labs exits Aave DAO over governance tensions and v4 direction shift. - Concerns: sidelining v3, limited contributor input, misaligned incentives for unpaid advisory. - Vote controversy: proposal submitted under Ernesto Boado’s name without notice, eroding trust. |

BGD Labs, a core technical contributor to Aave for four years, will cease involvement with the Aave DAO, citing governance tensions and a product direction pivot toward v4. As reported by The Block, the team frames its decision around decentralization concerns and collaboration frictions that intensified alongside the v4 roadmap.
The departure centers on how contributor input factored into v4 planning and whether v3, Aave’s current production backbone, was being prematurely sidelined. The team also highlighted incentives misalignment around providing unpaid advisory for a separately funded initiative.
Process integrity is a flashpoint. As reported by XT.com, Aave Labs was accused of pushing a vote under BGD co‑founder Ernesto Boado’s name without prior notice, which escalated trust concerns around authorship and review windows.
Aave Labs acknowledged the decision and conveyed respect for the team’s work. As reported by Cointelegraph, founder Stani Kulechov expressed appreciation for BGD’s contributions while signaling an intent to keep the ecosystem progressing.
In the near term, v3 continues to operate, but the DAO faces clarity gaps on maintenance scope, support timelines, and deprecation criteria. According to discussions on the Aave governance forum, delegates sought explicit commitments that v3 will not be deprecated without published readiness criteria and formal continuity obligations.
BGD’s responsibilities have spanned core infrastructure, risk tooling, and security processes, so coverage realignment is likely required. The DAO may need to reassign ownership, solicit new maintainers, or stage RFPs to ensure uninterrupted production support and incident response.
Summarizing its stance on the changing contributor environment, BGD Labs said, “We stop contributing because the environment no longer aligns with how we operate and where we see our value.” The statement underscores that the decision is organizational rather than purely technical.
For v4, handover planning, authorship clarity, and transparent review windows could reduce coordination risk as development proceeds. Practical next steps may include identifying accountable engineering owners, codifying change‑management, and documenting any v3‑to‑v4 migration paths once timelines are formalized.
At the time of writing, AAVE traded near $116.87 with a neutral 14‑day RSI around 46.75 and very high implied volatility near 13.46%. These figures provide market context only and do not alter the governance and operational considerations outlined above.
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