Kulechov Drops 70% Discount Denial, Says Aave Revenue Already Routes to $AAVE 🧾

Aave founder Stani Kulechov denied a report that the lending protocol would sell AAVE tokens at a 70% discount to crypto exchange Kraken, calling the framing "inaccurate" in posts on X. The original report described talks in which Kraken would acquire roughly a 15% stake at a $385 million valuation, though neither Aave nor Kraken has confirmed those terms. AAVE traded near $82, up almost 5% over 24 hours as the debate played out across crypto social media.

Kulechov said only that outside parties had discussed buying an AAVE allocation currently held by Aave Labs. The conversations build on an existing tie: in 2025, the Aave DAO voted 99.8% in favor of licensing its code to Kraken's Ink network, which now operates a white-label lending market that shares revenue back to Aave. Any deeper equity arrangement would mark a significant escalation of that partnership.

The Kraken talks come as Aave works to recover from April's KelpDAO exploit, in which attackers borrowed against unbacked tokens and left up to $230 million in bad debt on the protocol. Although Aave's smart contracts themselves were never breached, the fallout erased more than a third of its deposits, which now sit near $12 billion.

Pushing back on the discount narrative, Kulechov wrote, "there is NO WAY we'd sell AAVE at a 70% discount lol." He emphasized that Aave Labs acts only as a service provider for the DAO and does not receive any of the protocol's revenue. Under the Aave Will Win framework, that revenue is routed to token holders, with Kulechov stating, "100% of Aave Protocol and GHO revenue goes to the $AAVE token."

Kulechov also previewed Aavenomics 3.0, which would make AAVE buybacks automatic and extend a discretionary program already authorized to purchase up to $50 million of AAVE per year. Aave is set to hold a quarterly community call within weeks, where details on the Kraken discussions and the proposed buyback mechanism are expected to be addressed.