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- Aave wants MiCA obligations to follow control over assets and users, rather than autonomous software.
- Its biggest dispute with EU authorities concerns whether stablecoin lending yield should be treated like issuer-paid interest.
- Aave proposes onchain supervision as an alternative to forcing DeFi into traditional reporting structures.
Aave Labs is pushing Brussels to draw a sharper line between financial intermediaries and decentralized software as the European Union considers how its crypto rulebook should apply to DeFi.
In its response to the European Commission’s review of the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, Aave argues that MiCA obligations should fall on entities that exercise control over users or assets without automatically pulling open-source protocols into the same licensing framework.
The position puts one of DeFi’s largest lending protocols directly into a developing European debate over stablecoin yield, self-custody and whether decentralized lending can be supervised without treating software itself as a financial intermediary. Aave says more than $3.5 trillion has moved through its protocol since launch, with deployments spanning more than 15 networks.
The European Commission’s MiCA review closed on Sept. 30 after an extension from the original deadline.
Responses will feed into reports required under Articles 140 and 142 of MiCA as the Commission assesses whether the framework remains fit for purpose after its initial implementation.
For Aave, the Regulatory Test Is Who Controls the Money
Aave’s proposal starts with the question of control.
Its submission argues that an identifiable company or person exercising ongoing discretion over customers, terms or assets should face financial regulation. Software executing rules disclosed in advance, without an intermediary controlling user assets, belongs in a different category.
Aave is not arguing that all crypto lending should escape supervision. It supports regulation for custodial and intermediated lenders. Its concern is whether the same framework should be extended to protocols that do not take possession of customer assets.
The company points to the failures of centralized crypto lenders in 2022, where customer assets could be re-lent under arrangements users could not independently observe. Aave contrasts that model with overcollateralized lending protocols where collateral positions and liquidations can be inspected onchain and executed according to predefined rules.
There is also a regulated business inside Aave’s own corporate structure. Push Virtual Assets Ireland, an Aave Labs subsidiary, is authorized by the Central Bank of Ireland as a crypto-asset service provider under MiCA.
That gives Aave’s argument a more precise boundary: regulate the entity when it performs an intermediary function, but do not automatically extend that license to the underlying protocol.
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where should EU obligations attach when a regulated interface gives users access to software that can continue operating without that interface?
Stablecoin Yield Is Becoming the Harder Fight
The sharper disagreement concerns what happens when stablecoins are lent.
MiCA prohibits issuers of asset-referenced tokens and e-money tokens, as well as crypto-asset service providers, from granting interest linked to how long a holder owns the token. Aave argues that regulators should not extend that concept to returns generated through lending.
Its reasoning rests on how the return is produced.
A user supplying stablecoins to a non-custodial lending market makes those assets available to borrowers.
Borrowers pay a market rate for access to that liquidity, while collateral requirements and liquidation rules determine how the loan is maintained.
Aave therefore argues that the resulting return is the price paid for borrowing capital, rather than compensation for simply holding a stablecoin.
Its submission pushes back against positions from the European Central Bank and European Banking Authority.
Aave says the ECB has proposed extending the interest prohibition to lending and staking, while the EBA has characterized stablecoin lending returns as a potential form of regulatory arbitrage.
The consequences could extend beyond the legal definition of interest.
If MiCA-authorized euro stablecoins cannot participate in lending markets on the same terms as competing assets, their usefulness as collateral and treasury instruments could be reduced. Users could still have access to dollar-denominated stablecoins through markets operating elsewhere while regulated European tokens face tighter restrictions.
A technical interpretation of MiCA could therefore influence whether euro stablecoins can compete inside global onchain credit markets.
Self-Custody Tests the Rule From the User Side
Aave applies a similar principle to wallets.
The company argues that Europeans should retain the ability to hold, transfer and lend digital assets without placing them with an intermediary. It links that position to the right to property under Article 17 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.
The official EU Charter text on Article 17 states that individuals have the right to own, use and dispose of lawfully acquired possessions, while also allowing the use of property to be regulated where necessary for the general interest.
Aave rejects the assumption that self-custody necessarily creates an unsupervised financial zone.
Aave Labs says addresses interacting with interfaces it operates are screened against sanctions lists and blockchain-analytics risk indicators. Regulated companies can also remain subject to anti-money-laundering obligations when interacting with self-hosted wallets even though they do not control those wallets themselves.
Aave specifically opposes approaches that could remove MiCA stablecoin redemption protections merely because an asset is held outside a licensed custodian.
The outcome matters beyond wallets. Rules that attach protections or restrictions to where a token is held could influence whether European crypto markets develop primarily around custodial platforms or continue allowing direct interaction between users and public blockchains.
Aave Wants Regulators to Read the Blockchain
Aave’s submission also proposes a different approach to supervision.
Instead of recreating traditional reporting architecture around decentralized markets, regulators could use blockchain analytics, observer nodes, machine-readable disclosures and embedded-supervision pilots to monitor collateral, positions and liquidations closer to real time.
Public blockchains already expose some information that would ordinarily sit inside private institutional databases. That transparency does not remove financial or operational risks, but it gives supervisors another source of data that traditional lending markets do not provide in the same form.
Aave’s proposal therefore asks regulators to change more than the treatment of DeFi protocols. It also asks supervisors to adapt their own monitoring infrastructure to markets where transactions and collateral positions can be observed directly onchain.
No such framework has been adopted.
The Commission’s consultation document explicitly says the review does not prejudge its final decision and does not constitute a formal policy proposal. Responses will instead inform the Commission as it determines whether legislative changes are warranted.
The next public checkpoint comes on Oct. 27, when Financial Services Commissioner Maria Luís Albuquerque will host an implementation dialogue on digital finance in Brussels. One of its two sessions will examine MiCA and identify areas where simplification or burden reduction could be considered.
For Aave and other DeFi developers, the decisions that follow will establish something more fundamental than another compliance requirement: where European regulation attaches when the user-facing company, the software protocol and custody of the assets are no longer controlled by the same entity.
