Aave Community Calls Out Aave Labs

Alpha Team
December 23, 2025

Aave Brand Proposal Draws Process Criticism

Proposal Origin: Former Aave Labs CTO Ernesto Boado posted a governance proposal on December 16 to transfer control of Aave brand assets, including the aave.com domain, social handles, trademarks, GitHub organizations, and naming rights, from Aave Labs (legally Avara and led by founder Stani Kulechov) to DAO-controlled legal structures with anti-capture protections. Many in the community see this as a step toward stronger token holder alignment.

Vote Escalation: Aave Labs advanced the proposal to Snapshot vote on December 23 after limited forum discussion. Critics highlighted the holiday timing and perceived rush, arguing it could reduce participation, lead to defeat, and create precedent against future alignment efforts while presenting the process as community-driven. Ernesto Boado stated the advancement occurred "without notifying me at all" and described it as "disgraceful," noting it "breaks all codes of trust with the community."

Responses and Market: Delegate Marc Zeller referred to it as a "hostile takeover attempt by Labs," adding that what started as a push for clarity is now turning into such an attempt. Stani Kulechov defended the process as following governance rules after extensive discussion and stated the community was ready to decide. Amid the dispute, the AAVE token declined. On-chain data shows Stani Kulechov has been accumulating AAVE in recent days. Read More.

️ On today's Top Picks:

🪂 Lighter launches airdrop form; closes soon.
👍 Michael Selig swears in as CFTC Chairman.
🥀 Victim loses $50M due to address poisoning.
💰 Erebor Bank reportedly raises $350M.

Read time: ⏰ 5 minutes

Crypto News

• ⭐️ Aave $AAVE community calls out Aave Labs rushed brand proposal vote; author calls it "disgraceful" while a delegate calls it a "hostile takeover attempt."

• Coinbase $COIN acquires The Clearing Company, a prediction markets company, for an undisclosed amount; recently launched prediction markets powered by Kalshi.

• US Senator Cynthia Lummis will not seek re-election in 2026; Lummis plans to spend the remainder of her term focused on crypto market structure legislation.

• OpenEden $EDEN launches yield-bearing stablecoin $cUSDO on Solana $SOL; to be integrated into stable-swap pools, lending markets, & yield markets.

• Digital Asset Investment Products saw $952M in outflows last week; Bitcoin $BTC ~$460M outflows, Ethereum $ETH ~$555M outflows, Solana $SOL ~$49M inflows, Ripple $XRP ~$63M inflows.

Alpha

• Hyperliquid $HYPE lists Lighter $LIT hyperps; long or short with up to 3x leverage; currently trading at ~$3.90 (~$3.9B FDV).

• Cascade launches Pre-allocations into Cascade’s Liquidity Strategy (CLS); eligible users can deposit to earn Cascade Points.

• Soneium launches Soneium Score Season 4 NFT badge; users with at least 80 points are eligible to mint; Season 5 is live.

• Farcaster launches $USDC lending powered by Morpho & Steakhouse; lend USDC to earn ~5% APY.

• ICYMI Variational launches Omni points program; retroactively awards 3M points to existing traders; to distribute points every Friday until the end of Q3 2026.

Airdrops

• ⭐️ Lighter $LIT launches airdrop form; Lighter Points holders can submit up to four wallet addresses to claim the upcoming airdrop; form closes on December 26th.

• Lighter $LIT moves 25% of LIT tokens; potentially the allocation for the upcoming airdrop; Polymarket forecasts a ~87% chance Lighter launches the airdrop by the end of December.

• Espresso $ESP launches airdrop registration, eligibility checker; to add additional airdrop eligibility criteria; to launch airdrop claim in early 2026.

• Espresso $ESP announces more paths to airdrop eligibility; Arbitrum top users & The Composables NFT holders are eligible; airdrop registration is live.

• ICYMI VOOI $VOOI launches airdrop claim; VOOI Trading Points holders, VOOI V1 Traders, & more are eligible.

Finance News

• ⭐️ Michael Selig swears in as CFTC Chairman; CFTC Acting Chair Caroline Pham to join MoonPay.

• Gold $XAU new all-time high of ~$4,490; now up ~70% year-to-date.

• Strategy $MSTR increases USD reserve by $748M; now holds ~$2.2B USD & 671,268 Bitcoin $BTC (~$59B).

• Trump Media & Technology Group $DJT acquires an additional 451 Bitcoin $BTC (~$40M); now holds 11,542 BTC (~$1B).

• Bitmine $BMNR buys an additional 98,852 Ethereum $ETH (~$297M); now holds 4,066,062 ETH (~$12.2B) & $1B USD.

• ETHZilla $ETHZ sells 24,291 Ethereum $ETH for ~$75M to redeem senior secured convertible notes; now holds 69,802 ETH (~$211M).

Security and Exploits

• ⭐️ Victim loses $50M $USDT due to address poisoning attack; sends an onchain message offering a $1M whitehat bounty for the return of 98% of the funds.

• North Korean hackers stole $2.02B worth of crypto in 2025; $681M more than 2024.

• Zerion's ZERO Network halted block production on December 19th; says user funds are safe and is working to mitigate the issue.

Token Unlocks

• Humanity $H / ~$21M / DEC 25th
• Plasma $XPL / ~$11M / DEC 25th
• Jupiter $JUP / ~$10M / DEC 28th
• Hyperliquid $HYPE / ~$247M / DEC 29th
Sourced from Tokenomist

Funding

• ⭐️ Erebor Bank reportedly raises $350M at a $4.35B valuation led by Lux Capital.

The Degen Farmer

Top stablecoin yield farms of the day, more than $3,000,000 in TVL. DYOR and step up your farming game!

PROTOCOL	ASSETS	APY
GrowiHF (Hyperliquid)	USDC	261.30%
Indigo (Cardano)	IUSD	42.97%
Peapods Finance (Ethereum)	USDC	39.91%
Merkl (Ethereum)	LVUSDCUSDC	20.52%
ThalaSwap (Aptos)	USDTUSDC	20.20%
Wildcat Protocol (Ethereum)	HYPERWILDCATPRIVATE1USDT	20.00%
Hyperion (Aptos)	USD1USDC	17.93%
Kinetic (Flare)	USD₮0	17.69%

. . .

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⚡ Why OpenEden Stands Out: OpenEden delivers institutional-grade infrastructure with trusted partners like BNY as primary custodian for TBILL (~$115M TVL). USDO (~$93M TVL) is a regulated yield-bearing stablecoin issued by a Bermuda-licensed entity. Founded by Jeremy Ng (formerly at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Gemini), the team brings strong TradFi experience to on-chain finance.

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. . .

That’s it for today’s edition! See you soon.

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