Payward, Kraken’s parent company, buys AAVE tokens in the secondary market through an affiliated fund
Payward, the parent company of trading platform Kraken, and its asset management clients have acquired an undisclosed amount of AAVE tokens in the secondary market through the affiliated fund Digital Asset Special Investments I, LP. Payward said it may continue to increase its holdings and is exploring future cooperation opportunities with Aave. The move is positioned as a step in advancing Payward’s asset management business layout.
Aave Labs founder and CEO Stani Kulechov said that cooperating with Payward is a strategic step to bring Aave to more retail and institutional users. People familiar with the matter told CoinDesk that the arrangement evolved from earlier negotiations; at the time, the proposal involved tokens and equity, while today’s announcement disclosed only the token purchase and did not mention equity.
Aave protocol’s current net deposits are about $33 billion, and active loans are about $11 billion. A report in June previously said that Payward had discussed acquiring about 15% of Aave Group equity at a valuation of about $385 million, accompanied by 250,000 AAVE tokens, but Kulechov publicly denied at the time that tokens were being sold at a steep discount.
Original source:
Title: Payward and Its Clients Acquire AAVE Token Stake Publisher: Aave Labs (official blog) Publication date: 2026-11-05 URL: https://aave.com/blog/aave-payward Source type: company announcement Verification status: we read the complete official announcement in this instance; cross-checked with English reports such as CoinDesk and The Block Supporting content: supports all core facts in the body, including the purchasing parties, method, possible further accumulation, and discussions of cooperation
ABAB AI Insight
Payward acquired AAVE through an affiliated fund in the secondary market, rather than buying directly from Aave Labs or the protocol, avoiding the equity-plus-token package that was reported in June. That proposal had involved 250,000 AAVE and about 15% of Aave Group equity, valued at about $385 million, and Kulechov publicly denied that the tokens were being sold at a steep discount. Today’s transaction involves only tokens, with the amount undisclosed, and both sides explicitly leave room for further accumulation and cooperation.
In terms of capital flow, Payward is bringing asset management client funds into AAVE while advancing its own asset management business. The scale of the Aave protocol, with about $33 billion in net deposits and about $11 billion in active loans, gives Payward an existing on-chain credit infrastructure entry point. Because the purchase came from the secondary market, the funds went directly to existing holders rather than to Aave Labs or the DAO treasury.
A comparable case is other exchanges or asset management platforms establishing cooperation with protocol teams through holdings rather than a full acquisition. The similarity is the use of token holdings as an alignment signal; the difference is that this transaction explicitly excludes equity, and the amount is confidential, so the market cannot directly judge governance weight or financial scale.
This transaction changes Payward’s public disclosure of its Aave holdings, not the transfer of protocol ownership or governance rights. Key indicators to watch are whether specific holdings are later disclosed, whether concrete product cooperation is implemented between the two sides, and whether AAVE secondary-market trading volume and price show sustained changes.
ABAB News · Cognitive Law
Buying tokens in the secondary market can create an alignment signal, but it does not mean the protocol party or company equity has been sold.
The earlier equity-plus-token negotiations did not come to fruition, and the final announcement retained only the token purchase, showing that the transaction structure can change substantially.
A holdings statement with undisclosed quantity and price primarily serves asset management business layout rather than immediate market pricing.