Aave Labs has submitted an ARFC proposal to establish the Aave Foundation, a memberless Cayman Islands entity intended to hold and protect Aave Protocol intellectual property under Aave DAO oversight. Aave founder and CEO Stani Kulechov backed the October 2, 2026 proposal, which supports the previously proposed Aave Will Win framework and seeks to align the protocol's structure around the AAVE token. Phase 1 would cover incorporation, legal and registration expenses, qualified secretary services, and the appointment of an independent director, supervisor and secretary, without transferring assets or creating a recurring operating budget. Separate governance votes would be required to transfer the Aave trademark, primary domains, protocol codebase IP and other intellectual property. Aave Labs and DAO service providers could not appoint or serve as directors or supervisors, while tokenholders would retain authority over listings, parameters, budgets and service-provider selection. The foundation would publish quarterly disclosures covering its assets, operating expenses and related legal actions. The proposal follows Aave Labs' September 30 MiCA submission, which called for the European Union to distinguish decentralized protocols from financial intermediaries.