The Aave DAO has overwhelmingly approved a $4 million AAVE token buyback, launching the first phase of a broader initiative to overhaul the protocol’s tokenomics.

The Aave (AAVE) DAO has officially approved a $4 million buyback plan of AAVE tokens. The proposal passed with 99.63% consensus.

The proposal authorizes the Aave Finance Committee, a governance-backed committee created to manage Aave’s treasury and financial operations, to begin purchasing AAVE tokens on the open market, which will then be distributed to the protocol’s Ecosystem Reserve.

This first phase of the buyback program is expected to last one month. If successful, it could scale into a six-month initiative with up to $1 million in weekly purchases. The phased approach ensures that treasury funds are deployed cautiously, while still allowing Aave to begin capturing its own tokens from the secondary market to bolster ecosystem value.

“While staying extremely conservative with Aave treasury funds, the ACI considers this proposal can mandate the AFC to start an AAVE buyback and distribute program immediately at the pace of $1M/week for the first 6 months of the mandate,” Marc Zeller, founder of the Aave Chan Initiative, stated.

Zeller also said that the six-month timeline could be extended if the program performs well. He pointed to previous initiatives like Merit, which was originally slated for six months but has continued for over a year, adding that a similar extension is likely should the buybacks initiative delivers.

“Buybacks are forever, the rate is just the one the DAO has voted for the next 6 months to start slow & at a conservative rate. Just like Merit, we started for 6 months and now we are celebrating 16th Month of the program, it will get renewed.”

The buyback initiative is just one piece of a sweeping proposal introduced by Zeller and ACI on March 4 this year. Dubbed the Aavenomics upgrade, the plan also includes:

• Umbrella – a new risk mitigation and liquidity management system designed to prevent harmful bank runs and optimize capital efficiency.
• Anti-GHO – a non-transferable rewards token aimed at enhancing incentives for GHO stablecoin users and stakers.
• LEND Deprecation – a final step in the migration from Aave’s original governance token, LEND, to AAVE, which would reclaim roughly $65 million in unclaimed tokens for future use.

The community will continue to vote on future pieces of the plan as technical development and audits progress. In his post on X, Zeller called the move “a major milestone” and described the overall plan as “the most important proposal in Aave’s history.”