Chaos Labs Exits Aave Role as Governance Dispute Deepens Ahead of V4

• Chaos Labs is leaving its role as Aave’s official risk manager after more than three years, citing governance and strategic disagreements.
• Founder Omer Goldberg said the split reflects a deeper disagreement with Aave Labs over how risk should be handled as Aave V4 expands the protocol’s scope.

Chaos Labs is stepping away from Aave, and that is not a small contributor quietly rotating out. It is the protocol’s top risk manager leaving in the middle of a broader governance rupture that has already pushed other core contributors toward the exit.

In a post published Monday, Chaos Labs founder Omer Goldberg said the decision was not made lightly, but that the engagement with Aave no longer reflected how his team believes risk should be managed. He added that Aave Labs had acted professionally and even supported a larger budget, yet the two sides remained too far apart on the path forward.

V4 expansion sharpens the divide over risk

Goldberg pointed to three reasons for leaving. First, he said the engagement was not profitable. Second, he referenced the recent departures of BGD Labs and the Aave Chan Initiative, two other major contributors that have already announced exits amid the same wider dispute. Third, and most importantly, he described a fundamental misalignment with Aave Labs over risk management as Aave V4 broadens the protocol’s design and flexibility.

That last point matters more than the budgeting issue. Aave V4 is not just another routine upgrade. It changes the operating surface of the protocol, and that tends to make disagreements over guardrails much harder to paper over.

Aave loses another core operator

The departure adds to the sense that Aave’s internal balance has shifted. BGD Labs, which helped build key parts of the protocol’s infrastructure, said earlier it would leave effective April 1. Marc Zeller’s Aave Chan Initiative also announced plans to step back amid mounting governance tensions.

For Aave, the immediate issue is continuity. Risk management does not draw much attention until it breaks, and large lending markets do not have much room for ambiguity there. As V4 moves closer, the protocol now has one less experienced hand in the room.