Aave community controversy continues, pump.fun lawsuit escalates—what is the overseas crypto community talking about today?

Release date: December 17, 2025
Author: BlockBeats Editorial Team

In the past 24 hours, the crypto market has advanced on multiple fronts simultaneously. Mainstream topics have focused on renewed struggles over regulation, governance, and token rights within core DeFi protocols, as well as intense debates between founders and communities regarding control and incentive alignment. In terms of ecosystem development, Solana is exploring issuance systems and fairness mechanisms, Ethereum and Base are continuously iterating on payment infrastructure, and the PerpDEX sector is accelerating its expansion towards institutional finance and commoditization.

I. Mainstream Topics

1. Aave Founder Looks Ahead to Protocol’s Future

Aave founder Stani Kulechov stated that, after four years of communication and response, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has officially concluded its investigation into the Aave protocol. In a public statement, Stani said that this process consumed a significant amount of the team’s resources, and he was deeply involved in order to protect the Aave ecosystem and the broader DeFi industry from being mischaracterized under regulatory uncertainty.

With the investigation now concluded, Stani described this moment as a “stage where developers can refocus on building the future of finance,” summarizing with “DeFi will win.” The news received highly positive feedback within the community, with industry figures such as Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko and crypto lawyer Gabriel Shapiro offering congratulations, viewing this as an important milestone for DeFi’s journey toward mainstream compliance.

Some discussions have linked this development to Stani’s recent increase in AAVE token holdings, suggesting that the lifting of regulatory pressure combined with the founder’s positive stance could provide a short-term boost to $AAVE’s price. At the same time, there are cautious voices questioning whether the “governance narrative is being overly dramatized.” Overall, the end of the SEC investigation is expected to enhance Aave’s credibility with institutions and in compliance circles, but the market remains attentive to whether new regulatory variables may emerge.

2. Aave V4 Roadmap Sparks New Round of Technical and Governance Discussions

With regulatory clouds temporarily dissipated, discussions around the V4 roadmap have noticeably heated up within the Aave community. The focus is on V4’s proposed Unified Liquidity Layer design and its potential for expansion in cross-chain and risk isolation capabilities.

Stani emphasized in related discussions that V4 aims to further improve capital efficiency and strengthen risk isolation at the architectural level. Some developers and analysts believe this design could reshape the operational paradigm of DeFi lending protocols and create synergies with existing L2 solutions.

Community feedback is divided: supporters see V4 as a key milestone for Aave’s return to technological leadership, highlighting its long-standing engineering-driven culture; critics worry that V4’s lengthy development cycle, combined with dispersed team focus and incentives, could impact short-term execution efficiency. The end of the SEC investigation and the V4 discussions have further heightened community sentiment and may accelerate related proposals into more substantive governance processes, but there is also a need to balance innovation with the potential risks of V3 user migration.

3. “AAVE Token Alignment” Proposal Sparks Fierce Governance Debate

Aave contributor Ernesto has put forward a governance proposal titled “$AAVE Alignment Phase 1: Ownership,” advocating for the DAO to clearly hold core rights such as protocol IP, brand, equity, and revenue. Representatives from Aave service providers, such as Marc Zeller, have publicly endorsed the proposal, calling it “one of the most influential proposals in Aave governance history.”

The proposal directly addresses the current incentive mismatch between Aave Labs and the DAO, calling for token holders to participate more actively in governance to prevent protocol value from being “captured” by the core team. Community discussions have quickly heated up, with supporters arguing that the DAO must “stand up” at key moments or risk remaining passive long-term; there are also calls to introduce legal and governance structures such as BORG to strengthen the practical enforceability of on-chain governance.

There are also opposing views. Some participants worry that an overly aggressive governance stance could lead to the loss of core contributors, citing the history of projects like Compound as cautionary tales. Investors such as Haseeb have pointed out from a market perspective that $AAVE’s price-to-sales ratio (P/S) has rebounded to about 25x, reflecting that the market is pricing in expectations of “governance alignment.”

This proposal once again highlights the long-standing binary tension between tokens and equity in DeFi projects, and is seen by some community members as a key case that could influence the entire DeFi governance paradigm, though its advancement path still requires careful handling of potential division risks.

4. $KLED Project Founders’ Infighting Exposed, Labeled a Typical “Rug Case”

The project $KLED, previously launched on the Solana ecosystem “ICM” concept platform Believe, has recently become the focus of public opinion due to open infighting among its founding team.

Project founder Avi Patel accused former partner Ben Pasternak of violating established commitments by continuously selling millions of $KLED tokens during key project updates and periods of low liquidity, reducing his holding ratio from about 6% to nearly 2%.

In a public statement, Avi detailed multiple unsuccessful attempts to coordinate OTC sales and accused the other party of long-term lack of communication and “unacceptable” behavior, even calling on other industry projects to avoid working with him. Community feedback was almost unanimously negative, with several opinion leaders bluntly stating that $KLED embodies “almost all the typical features of grift in this cycle,” describing it as “the simplest IQ test,” and advising holders to exit quickly.

Some comments were sarcastic, noting that the project had “survived FUD” multiple times in its price history, but the incident itself further amplified the trust crisis around meme and small projects regarding team transparency, lock-up commitments, and governance structures. This turmoil may prompt the community to demand higher standards for team behavior and information disclosure, while also exposing the structural vulnerabilities of small projects in a weak market cycle.

II. Mainstream Ecosystem Developments

1. Solana Ecosystem: Institutional Exploration and Fairness Controversy in Parallel

①Colosseum Launches STAMP Investment Contract, Explores New Path for Tokenized Ownership

The Solana ecosystem is accelerating toward more institutionalized financing and issuance frameworks. Accelerator Colosseum has launched a new investment contract, STAMP (Solana Tokenized Asset Management Protocol), aiming to provide crypto founders with a clear path from private fundraising to public token issuance via MetaDAO, while offering investors and token holders more binding ownership and market protection.

STAMP aims to simplify the legal and operational processes between private and public offerings, allowing public investors to participate at a more mature and better-informed stage of the project. Community feedback has been highly positive overall, with many developers and investors calling it “infrastructure innovation for the future” and believing it will help strengthen Solana’s leading position in tokenized equity and fair issuance mechanisms. At the same time, some discussions have pointed out that its actual effectiveness will still depend on MetaDAO’s governance and execution performance.

②pump.fun and Solana Foundation Lawsuit Sees New Developments

On the other hand, legal disputes surrounding the meme coin launch platform pump.fun continue to ferment. The related lawsuit has recently seen new developments, with the plaintiff being allowed to amend the complaint, accusing pump.fun of structurally favoring privileged users who control Solana infrastructure and Jito transaction ordering tools under the guise of an automated mechanism, thereby systematically extracting value from ordinary users.

The updated complaint emphasizes that, beneath the appearance of “permissionless” and “fair launch,” the platform has hidden mechanisms disadvantageous to ordinary participants. Community discussions have quickly heated up: some see this as a sign of systemic risks in meme launch platforms being exposed, possibly prompting stricter transparency and disclosure requirements; others believe this case will directly test Solana’s decentralization narrative and ecosystem governance capabilities.

In the short term, the lawsuit may increase legal uncertainty and affect retail user confidence; but it may also force the emergence of fairer and more verifiable launch and trading tools within the ecosystem.

2. Base Ecosystem: Payment Standards Continue to Iterate

The Base ecosystem has seen updates at the payment infrastructure layer. The internet-native payment standard x402 on the Base chain has released its V2 version, adding multi-chain and fiat payment support, extensions, automatic API discovery, dynamic routing, more modern HTTP header design, and a modular SDK after absorbing extensive community feedback.

While maintaining backward compatibility with V1, the V2 version decouples the specification, SDK, and facilitators to adapt to more networks and transmission scenarios. Community response has been largely positive, with many developers believing the upgrade significantly simplifies real-world use cases such as proxy payments and multi-tenant APIs, helping to drive mainstream adoption of Base at the payment layer.

Structurally, the ongoing iteration of x402 is strengthening Base’s position as an Ethereum L2 payment hub, but its long-term impact will still depend on the actual deployment progress of facilitators and ecosystem adoption.

3. Prediction Markets: Tooling Trend Accelerates

Users of the prediction market platform Polymarket have launched an auxiliary tool, PolymarketScan, providing traders with more intuitive market analysis and monitoring capabilities to help users quickly filter and track event contracts.

Community feedback has been generally positive, with many traders believing the tool significantly reduces information gathering costs and improves “market surfing” efficiency during hot events. At the same time, some discussions have pointed out that the tool’s popularity indirectly reflects the shortcomings of Polymarket’s native search and analysis functions, which may prompt the platform to accelerate the development of similar features.

4. Perp DEX Sector: From Exchanges to Infrastructure

①Lighter: Product Advancement and Execution Pressure Coexist

In the perpetual contract sector, Lighter revealed in a Japan AMA that its TGE may be delayed until 2026 (“Christmas” referring to the broader holiday season), with tokenomics expected to be announced within weeks. The platform is advancing a universal cross-margin mechanism and new spot markets, and whether meme coin launches will go live will depend on community sentiment. Founder Vlad did not provide a clear timetable but hinted that potential M&A logic still exists.

Community reactions are mixed: some users are disappointed by the token launch delay but also recognize the “product-first” strategy; the market is watching its upcoming public discussion with a Dragonfly partner, hoping for a clearer roadmap.

Meanwhile, some Lighter whales have reported execution delays during periods of high volatility: although median latency is about 325ms, tail latency can reach several seconds or even 10 seconds, and WebSocket also experiences lag. The team responded that multiple optimizations have been made but there is still room for improvement. The community generally sees this as a constructive discussion, believing that a quick resolution would help attract high-frequency and professional traders.

②Hyperliquid Ecosystem: Intensive Product Advancement

The Hyperliquid ecosystem has been active recently. The Felix protocol has launched silver and natural gas perpetual contracts on HIP-3 (gold was previously launched), further expanding commodity trading categories, and the community has begun discussing whether to introduce uranium as the next asset.

Meanwhile, well-known HYPE holder NMTD publicly criticized Binance’s ongoing selling pressure, calling it an “industry parasite.” These comments have resonated widely within the community, further reinforcing discussions about the transparency advantages of decentralized trading venues, but also exposing the real influence of CEXs on price discovery.

On the governance front, the Hyper Foundation has proposed that validators vote to confirm the permanent burning of HYPE in the aid fund (these tokens are no longer retrievable). Voting is scheduled for December 21–24, and the community generally sees this as a deflationary positive, expected to enhance HYPE’s scarcity expectations.

In addition, Trove has launched its Season 1 points program, based on a December 5 snapshot, open for claims by Trove, Hyperliquid, Unit, Kinetiq, Hyperlend, Felix users, and Hypurr holders. Points may be linked to $TROVE in the future, boosting activity in the RWA and collectibles trading ecosystem.

Variational has confirmed it will launch a points mechanism in Q4, with competition still relatively low (silver tier requires only $5 million in monthly trading volume), and community farming enthusiasm is clearly rising, with some users viewing it as a potential new opportunity after Lighter.

At the same time, HypurrFi announced a partnership with Euler Finance to deploy the full Euler lending stack (including Euler Lending, Swap, and Earn) on HyperEVM. The community jokingly calls this combination “Mewler,” believing it significantly improves capital efficiency for traders and could reshape the lending landscape on HyperEVM.

5. Others: MegaETH Ecosystem Projects

Within the MegaETH ecosystem, project BRIX has launched a sovereign yield product targeting emerging markets, starting with the iTRY stablecoin pegged to the Turkish lira, claiming to achieve around 40% real yield through tokenized money market funds, with plans to expand to the forex market in the future.

The project emphasizes its composability and global accessibility, and the community is optimistic about its potential to bring real TradFi yields into the DeFi system, forming a potential compound yield cycle. However, the model still faces regulatory uncertainty and exchange rate risk. BRIX plans to open for use by qualified investors after MegaETH officially launches.