Aave’s Stani Kulechov Refutes Reported Kraken Stake Deal, Teases New Buyback Program

A CoinDesk report Thursday said Kraken parent Payward is in talks to acquire a 15% stake in decentralized lending protocol Aave for roughly 35,000 ETH, valuing the company at $385 million — a price that would imply a 70% discount to AAVE‘s current fully diluted token valuation. The report cited three anonymous sources and described a deal structure in which Kraken would receive 250,000 AAVE tokens plus a 15% common equity stake in Aave Group, with Kraken also looking to syndicate the deal.

Aave founder Stani Kulechov has, however, refuted the report.

“There is NO WAY we’d sell AAVE at a 70% discount lol,” he wrote on X Thursday.

Aave Labs holds its own AAVE token allocation, and multiple market participants have approached the company about purchasing it through deeper long-term partnerships, Kulechov said, rejecting CoinDesk’s framing as inaccurate.

Kulechov also reiterated Aave’s governance and revenue structure. Under the “Aave Will Win” (AWW) proposal, which passed in April, all Aave Protocol revenue, GHO revenue, and product revenue from Aave App, Aave Pro, and Swaps flows entirely to the AAVE token and the Aave DAO. Aave Labs receives none of it, operating solely as a service provider to the DAO, he said. Kulechov also said that all intellectual property, including the Aave brand and software built for Aave, belongs to AAVE token holders.

Looking ahead, Kulechov teased Aavenomics 3.0, a forthcoming change that will introduce a new automated and non-discretionary AAVE buyback mechanism. Aave already has a discretionary program the DAO cleared to spend up to $50 million per year.

CoinDesk’s report of Payward seeking a stake in Aave comes on the heels of the KelpDAO bridge exploit in April, which caused Aave’s TVL to significantly collapse. Attackers used $292 million of unbacked rsETH as collateral to borrow real assets on Aave. Aave itself was not hacked, and a coordinated “DeFi United” recovery effort mobilized more than $300 million in commitments.

Payward has been expanding its portfolio ahead of reported IPO plans. The company completed the acquisition of derivatives exchange Bitnomial in May for an estimated $550 million. The company has previously partnered with Aave through its Ink L2’s white-label lending product Tydro.

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