DAO Week Highlights: Lido Buyback, Aave V4 Deployment, and Governance Concentration Warning

The past week was marked by significant developments in the world of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). One notable event was Lido's proposal to buy back $20 million worth of its native token, LDO, using funds from its treasury. This move is seen as a meaningful signal about how DAOs are thinking about token value and treasury deployment.

Aave also made significant strides, with the approval of its V4 deployment on Ethereum. The new architecture introduces a hub-and-spoke model, which allows Aave to serve different risk profiles without fragmenting its core liquidity.

Balancer's situation was more complex, as the protocol underwent a major restructuring following an exploit in November 2025. The team reduced by 50%, annual budget cut by 34% to $1.9 million, and emissions were reduced. Protocol fees are now redirected to the DAO Treasury rather than being distributed through the previous model.

Other notable events include tokenomics overhauls at Fluid, Lista, and Resolv. Fluid repaid approximately $70 million of USR-related debt on BNB and Plasma following the Resolv incident, while Lista introduced Tokenomics 2.0, removing the veLISTA mechanism and introducing LISTA buybacks alongside revenue-sharing for LISTA holders.

The ECB paper also raised concerns about governance concentration in DeFi, finding that the top 100 addresses hold over 80% of governance power in protocols including Aave, MakerDAO, and Uniswap. This warning highlights the need for greater transparency and accountability in DeFi governance.