Aave Founder Stani Kulechov Denies Kraken Stake Sale Report, Confirms AAVE Buyba

Aave founder Stani Kulechov denied claims that the protocol would sell AAVE tokens at a 70% discount, responding to a report that crypto exchange Kraken is in talks to buy a stake in the lender.

The report described a roughly 15% stake at a $385 million valuation, though neither company has confirmed those terms. AAVE traded near $82, up almost 5% over 24 hours, as the debate spread.

The figures behind the report trace to anonymous sources, and Kulechov called the framing inaccurate. He confirmed only that outside parties had discussed buying an AAVE allocation held by Aave Labs.

Any deal would build on an existing tie. In 2025, the Aave DAO voted 99.8% to license its code to Kraken's Ink network, which now runs a white-label lending market that shares revenue back to Aave.

The talks also surface as Aave rebuilds from April's KelpDAO exploit, which left up to $230 million in bad debt after attackers borrowed against unbacked tokens.

Although Aave's smart contracts were never breached, the fallout erased more than a third of its deposits, which sit near $12 billion today.

Kulechov rejected the idea that Aave would offload tokens cheaply.

"there is NO WAY we'd sell AAVE at a 7

Fuente original: Yahoo Finance (https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/crypto/articles/aave-founder-stani-kulechov-denies-220357178.html)