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 reporting published by The Block on November 5, 2026, at 23:35:48 UTC+8.
Payward said the investment came from Digital Asset Special Investments I, LP. Financial terms were not disclosed, and the announcement left open the possibility of further AAVE purchases without committing to them.
What the purchase establishes—and what it does not
The announcement documents Payward-linked exposure to AAVE, but does not quantify the token amount or capital deployed. It therefore does not establish the scale of the purchases.
Gurpreet Oberoi, vice president of Payward Asset Management and Institutional, said in a separate Aave announcement that the investment reflected long-term conviction in onchain credit markets and DeFi, alongside growing client demand for exposure to financial infrastructure. That is Payward’s stated rationale, rather than a quantified measure of broader market demand.
Earlier stake reports remain a separate matter
The purchases followed Aave founder Stani Kulechov’s rejection in June of a CoinDesk report that Payward was discussing a 15% stake in Aave at a $385 million valuation—described in the source as roughly 70% below its value at the time.
Kulechov did acknowledge discussions with investors about potentially buying portions of Aave Labs’ AAVE allocation through partnership deals. The disclosed secondary-market purchases do not establish that the previously reported 15% transaction occurred.
Governance and adoption context
AAVE tokens give holders 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.
Kulechov described working with Payward as a strategic step toward reaching more retail and institutional users. The announcement outlines that ambition, but supplies no user-adoption figures or evidence of a resulting price or liquidity effect.