Conor Moore, co-founder and COO of USD.AI, joins Messari's Fully Diluted podcast to discuss the emerging on-chain credit market for GPU-backed loans. USD.AI provides financing for neoclouds and AI infrastructure companies, competing directly with traditional banks and private credit funds.

The protocol has successfully originated loans backed by NVIDIA GPUs including H100s and H200s. The episode explores how USD.AI differentiated itself by focusing specifically on GPU assets rather than generalized RWA lending.

View the full podcast on Youtube, Spotify or Apple.

Aave’s Aave Will Win is one of the most consequential governance proposals in DeFi to date. The proposal would route 100% of Aave-branded product revenue to the DAO treasury, ratify Aave V4 as the protocol’s technical foundation, establish a brand-focused Foundation, and fund Aave Labs through a $25 million package plus 75,000 AAVE tokens. The scope is broad and intentionally bundled into a single vote.

For AAVE tokenholders, the direction is clear: a shift toward a fully token-centric value accrual model. However, while the headline is straightforward, several implementation details remain unresolved and will determine whether the structural shift delivers on its promise.

At its core, the proposal restructures the economic relationship between Aave Labs and the Aave DAO. Until now, Aave Labs has self-funded most of its operations, product development, legal work, and business development, while protocol fees have flowed to the DAO. The product layer (aave.com, the mobile app, Aave Pro, Aave Kit, Aave Horizon) generated revenue that stayed with Labs.

Under the new framework, all branded product revenue would flow directly to the DAO. In exchange, the DAO would fund Labs through:

The swap integration on aave.com alone is generating roughly $10 million in annualized revenue today, and the proposal envisions significant expansion as V4’s modular “Spokes” architecture opens up new markets, perpetuals, structured products, OTC lending, and RWA financing.

The trade-off is that Labs gives up its independent revenue stream and is funded by the DAO, while the DAO gains a diversified, growing revenue base. AAVE tokenholders get something they’ve rarely had in DeFi, a direct, legible claim on the full economic output of the ecosystem’s dominant lending protocol.

DeFi is entering a phase characterized by institutional participation, maturing regulation, and greater scrutiny of token economics. Regulatory clarity is closer than ever with the CLARITY Act in the Senate, and the protocols that win the next decade will be those that can articulate a coherent value proposition to both users and capital allocators. A DAO that collects 100% of branded product revenue, on top of 100% of protocol fees, is a fundamentally more investable structure than one where the value chain leaks in opaque directions.

Stani Kulechov’s accompanying essay on “Funding Abundance” paints an even more expansive picture, Aave as core infrastructure for financing the transition to abundant energy, with tokenized solar farms as collateral and stablecoin yield distributed through Aave’s product channels. It’s a vision that stretches decades into the future, but the near-term structural shift transforms AAVE from primarily a governance instrument into a token with a clearer claim on ecosystem-level cash flows.

“Revenue” is defined as gross product revenue minus partner revenue shares, rebates, subsidies, and direct user incentives. That’s a wide carve-out. Additionally, Labs retains the ability to redirect certain inflows toward growth incentives, disclosed in quarterly reporting.

For the model to work, the DAO will need standardized reporting across products and chains, with transparent definitions of incentives and clear limits on discretionary adjustments. Revenue clarity must move from narrative to enforceable accounting standards.

Second, the budget. The total ask, $42.5 million in stablecoins plus 75,000 AAVE, is a significant step up from historical funding levels. The rationale is logical: if Labs relinquishes product revenue, the DAO must fund full operations. 

Third, the proposed Foundation would hold and steward Aave trademarks, addressing the governance risk of brand concentration within a single entity. But the details, board composition, DAO control mechanics, appointment and removal rights, and reversion remedies are entirely deferred to a follow-up proposal. 

Aave’s proposal lands at an inflected moment for the broader question of what tokens should be. Variant’s recent framework on tokens versus equity draws a clean line: tokens should capture onchain value, equity should capture offchain value. The logic is that tokenholders can directly own and control onchain revenue in a way that’s transparent and auditable, while offchain value necessarily depends on intermediaries and fiduciary structures that belong in equity. By that standard, protocol fees generated onchain, observable in real time, and controlled by governance are a clean fit for token value accrual.

But Aave’s proposal goes beyond the Variant framework. It doesn’t just route onchain protocol revenue to the token; it also routes all product revenue, including offchain streams: Aave Card fees, Aave Kit enterprise licensing, Aave Horizon’s RWA services, and business development relationships. Under Variant’s logic, this kind of value should accrue to equity, not tokens, precisely because tokenholders can’t directly observe or verify how it’s generated. They’re relying on Aave Labs to honestly report net revenue after deducting incentives, rebates, and partner shares, which is exactly the sort of intermediary-dependent relationship Variant flags as problematic.

This is what makes the proposal both interesting and aggressive. It’s not neatly aligned with the emerging consensus on token design, betting that the trust gap between offchain revenue generation and onchain treasury delivery can be managed through reporting, annual funding votes, and the proposed Foundation structure. Variant warns against company-backed tokens where holders are “hopelessly at the mercy” of a company. Aave’s proposal aims to mitigate that by giving the DAO the ability to cut Labs’ funding annually and, eventually, transfer brand stewardship to a Foundation. Whether those mechanisms are strong enough to bridge the gap and keep the token clearly in the “digital property” category rather than the “investment contract” category will depend entirely on the follow-up proposals still to come.