The governance turmoil of Aave is worth following.

This leading DeFi project is facing a severe power struggle - possibly the most intense internal DAO confrontation in the history of decentralized finance.

The fundamental contradiction lies in the checks and balances between two forces: on one side is the centralized entity Aave Labs (led by founder Stani), and on the other side is the DAO autonomous organization composed of token holders.

The seemingly simple structure exposes the pain points of DeFi governance. Labs hold the power of product iteration and technical decision-making, while the DAO holds the superficial voting rights—however, the actual distribution of influence has long been unbalanced. When the goals of the two parties conflict, the contradiction intensifies into what we see now.

This not only pertains to the future direction of Aave but also reflects the challenges faced by the entire DeFi ecosystem regarding power decentralization and true decentralization. DAO governance still has a lot of work to do.