Aave AAVE

Commentary versus actual token vesting

Direction: the DAO buys AAVE on the open market and sends acquired tokens to the Ecosystem Reserve — confirmed first-party. Purchased AAVE leaves circulating supply; it is not burned. Authorised: Aavenomics Part One, $1m/week for the first six months from 9 April 2025; first-party docs describe weekly purchases of $250,000–$1,750,000 against a $50m/yr budget. Executed to 28 February 2026: >205,000 AAVE — 1.28% of total supply — for $42,000,000, an average of ≈$204.88/AAVE. Budget cut: March 2026 governance reduced the annual budget from ~$50m to ~$30m, citing borrow-fee revenue down ~25% from peak; implied pace ≈292 AAVE/day. Paused: no buyback transaction has been executed since 19 April 2026, following the 18 April 2026 rsETH bridge exploit; the pause was formalised by ARFC on 22 April 2026 and passed. No resumption date was set. Conflict: a 27 June 2026 report states Aavenomics 3.0 went live that day with automated buybacks "currently running". The DAO's own finance service provider states buybacks have been paused since 19 April 2026. Unreconciled. Conflict: Tokenomist reports a 1.73% buyback rate — implying 276,800 AAVE — versus governance's 205,000 AAVE. Variance +35.0%. No bridge published. Net effect: the DAO states it acquires AAVE 1.78x faster than it emits it. Source(s): AAVE Token documentation · Aave DAO Funding Insights · ARFC — Aavenomics implementation Part One · ARFC — Pause AAVE Buybacks · The Defiant — Aavenomics 3.0 live · Tokenomist — AAVE buyback Permanent locks / burns: None. No burn mechanism exists; no never-to-be-sold commitment is published. Repurchased AAVE is held in the Ecosystem Reserve and is redeployable by governance. Staked but not locked: 2,451,963.09 AAVE (15.32% of supply) sits in the legacy Safety Module (stkAAVE). This is user-owned and counted as circulating; a cooldown applies to withdrawal. Slashing on stkAAVE has been entirely deprecated under Aavenomics Part One, with the backstop function moved to Umbrella (wETH, USDC, USDT, GHO).