Aave Fires Back at Kraken Report, Denies Selling Tokens at a 70% Discount

In Brief

• Aave's CEO denied reports that the protocol would sell AAVE at a 70% discount.
• The CEO said all $134 million in annualized protocol revenue goes to the Aave DAO and token holders.
• Kraken is reportedly in talks to acquire a 15% stake in Aave, though the deal's framing has been disputed.

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Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Aave CEO strongly denies selling coins at a massive discount, pushing back against the recent Kraken investment report.

Stani Kulechov wrote on Thursday that “there is NO WAY we’d sell AAVE at a 70% discount lol.” He went on to say that Aave is generating $134 million in annualized revenue at the moment, and all of it goes to the Aave DAO.

‘No revenue for Aave Labs’

According to the CEO, no part of protocol or product revenue goes to Aave Labs, a service provider to the DAO responsible for building and growing Aave, as Kulechov said. Everything, including intellectual property, belongs to Aave, and everyone at Labs and DAO works for Aave, he said.

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Per Kulechov, “100% of Aave Protocol and GHO revenue goes to the $AAVE token. This was established in the Aave Will Win proposal. [The proposal] applies to all product revenue, including the Aave App, Aave Pro, and Swaps.”

As for Aave Labs, it owns AAVE allocated to it and discussed market participants for direct or indirect purchase “through deeper long-term partnerships.” To this, the CEO adds that the original report’s “framing is inaccurate.”

250,000 AAVE and 15% stake

On Friday, CoinDesk reported that crypto exchange Kraken is currently in talks to buy a 15% stake in Aave at a $385 million valuation, citing three sources “with knowledge of the transaction” and the company’s plans, as well as “a document seen” by the news outlet.

Per the report, Kraken would invest 35,000 ether (ETH) for 250,000 AAVE tokens and a 15% common equity stake in Aave Group. Overall, the deal would be worth around $71 million.

“The investment would be the first in a series of deals aimed at building out Payward Asset Management [Kraken’s parent company], with the firm taking a more active role in DeFi and other investment opportunities,” as it potentially prepares to go public, the article said.

Meanwhile, as for future plans, the CEO said that the Aave team is designing Aavenomics 3.0, including a new automated and non-discretionary buyback mechanism.

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