#以太坊生态发展 Seeing the escalation of Aave's governance disputes, I feel a bit emotional. This is not a new problem; it was just hidden by the illusion of market prosperity before.

Remember the DeFi Summer of 2020, when everyone was discussing the wonderful prospects of decentralized governance. DAO would replace everything, and token holders would be sovereignty — it sounded so enticing. But the reality on the table today is: Aave Labs controls the front end, domain names, trademarks, and social accounts, with $10 million in annual front-end revenue in their hands, while the DAO can only control smart contracts and risk parameters.

This is actually the wound that has been hidden in DeFi since its inception. DAOs promise value accumulation to token holders, but when real profits arrive, the returns are often quietly taken by "quasi-equity structures." Is there any fundamental difference from the dividend system of traditional companies? Can simply renaming it DAO change the underlying logic of incentives?

History will remember this moment. Not because of the price fluctuations of AAVE — that’s just surface — but because this conflict might force out the real long-term issues in DeFi. If the DAO truly attempts to seize IP, or if Labs simply restarts a new protocol based on the v4 codebase, then we will see clearly: Is decentralized governance a technological innovation, or an ethical illusion?

The Ethereum ecosystem has accumulated so much over the years. From redefining the public goods framework to the deep contradictions in governance structures, each layer is answering the same question: what do we really want? Looking at this dispute at the end of 2025, my feeling is — the most genuine test has just begun.