A fund and clients affiliated with Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, acquired an undisclosed amount of AAVE tokens through secondary-market purchases, according to Payward’s announcement reported by The Block on November 5, 2026.
The investment came from Digital Asset Special Investments I, LP. Financial terms were not disclosed, and the announcement left open the possibility of additional AAVE purchases.
What the investment shows—and what it does not
Gurpreet Oberoi, vice president of Payward Asset Management and Institutional, described the investment in a separate Aave announcement as reflecting long-term conviction in onchain credit markets and DeFi, alongside growing client demand for exposure to financial infrastructure.
That is a statement of investor interest, rather than a measurement of adoption. The report provides no purchase amount, client count or comparison period with which to assess the scale or growth of that demand. It also supplies no user-activity or retention figures.
Aave founder Stani Kulechov framed the relationship as a distribution opportunity: “Working with Payward is a strategic step toward bringing Aave to the next wave of retail and institutional users.” That describes an ambition, not a reported increase in users.
Separate from the disputed June stake report
The secondary-market purchases followed Kulechov’s rejection in June of a CoinDesk report that Payward was in talks to purchase a 15% stake in Aave at a $385 million valuation. According to The Block’s account, that valuation represented roughly a 70% discount to its value at the time.
Kulechov did acknowledge that investors had discussed potentially buying portions of Aave Labs’ AAVE allocation through partnership deals. The subsequently announced purchases disclosed neither a percentage stake nor financial terms and should not be treated as confirmation of the earlier reported deal.
AAVE tokens confer governance rights over the protocol and its treasury. Under the “Aave Will Win” framework approved in April, revenue from Aave-branded products is routed into the DAO treasury. These rights provide context for the token investment, but the purchases alone do not establish greater use of Aave’s lending services.
Original reporting published November 5, 2026, at 23:35:48 UTC+08:00. Source: The Block.
