Halal Bourse

Home › Crypto › Aave

Is Aave (AAVE) halal?

Prohibited

2 conditions out of six fail.

Verdict calculated by Halal Bourse's published rules from an investigation of primary sources (project documentation, registers, decisions), conducted on 10/07/2026 and not reviewed by a human.

Open the evidence file

The asset

Governance token of the Aave protocol, a decentralized protocol for lending and borrowing crypto (ERC-20, Ethereum) Issuer: No single issuer: the protocol is governed by AAVE holders (Aave DAO); Aave Labs, a private company founded by Stani Kulechov, develops the interface and the brand and states that it does not control the protocol.

AAVE gives a right to vote on the protocol, directly or by delegation (parameters, deployments, treasury); approved proposals are executed after a delay of 1 or 7 days. The maximum supply is 16,000,000 AAVE (Etherscan, October 7, 2026). Since April 2025, the DAO has bought back AAVE with protocol revenue (originally a budget of $50 million per year; a proposal of February 28, 2026 reduces it to about $30 million). The token can also be placed in the safety module (staking) in exchange for rewards.

Why this verdict

  1. Permissible purpose : not met. The purpose of the protocol for which AAVE is the governance token is lending and borrowing crypto against interest: liquidity providers receive interest paid by borrowers, and governance (effective: forum, vote, execution) sets the parameters of these markets. Two independent sources (Aave's documentation and DefiLlama) describe the protocol this way.
    • « Aave is a decentralised non-custodial liquidity protocol where users can participate as suppliers or borrowers. » Aave (documentation) (2026-10-07)
    • « Supplier yields are funded by borrower interest net of the reserve factor. » Aave (documentation, V3) (2026-10-07)
  2. No riba : to be verified or tolerated case. Holding AAVE pays no amount. However, the DAO devotes a share of protocol revenue, mostly from borrowing interest and liquidation fees (see the tolerance), to buying back AAVE on the market without burning it; staking AAVE in the safety module pays rewards (a product built on the token, outside the spot purchase). Interest is therefore received by the protocol and flows back indirectly to the token.
  3. No gambling : met. A spot purchase is of an ERC-20 token recorded on Ethereum, transferable, with a known maximum supply (16,000,000); it is not a contract on a price difference.
    • « AAVE is an ERC-20 token deployed on the Ethereum blockchain and is widely accessible across various centralised and decentralised exchanges. » Aave (documentation, jeton AAVE) (2026-10-07)
    • « Max Total Supply 16,000,000 AAVE » Etherscan (2026-10-07)
  4. No excessive gharar : met. The rights (vote, delegation), the governance process (forum, prior check, proposal, vote, execution with a delay), the maximum supply and the buyback program are published; the company that develops the interface, Aave Labs, and its founder are identified. The token contract is a proxy (modifiable code): its administrator was not read (see gaps).
  5. Real ownership : met. AAVE is an ERC-20 token held in a personal wallet; voting is done from this wallet or by delegation. The purchase platforms were not studied.
    • « Add Token to MetaMask (Web3) » Etherscan (2026-10-07)
    • « Both AAVE and safety module staked AAVE (stkAAVE) holders can vote on proposals or delegate their voting power to others. » Aave (documentation, jeton AAVE) (2026-10-07)
  6. No fraud or manipulation : met. No sanction or deception toward buyers found. The SEC told Aave it does not intend to recommend an enforcement action (letter of August 12, published December 16, 2025); the AMF and I-SCAN return no result. Concentration (78.63% of the supply in the top 100 addresses on Ethereum) is information. The rsETH incident of April 2026 does not concern the AAVE token (see autres_constats).
    • « not intend to recommend an enforcement action » Cointelegraph (2025-12-16)
    • « has concluded its investigation into the decentralized finance (or DeFi) protocol, with no intention to recommend an enforcement action » Decrypt (2025-12-16)
  7. Revenus illicites de l'émetteur : not met. 60 %, au-dessus du seuil de 5 %

Tolerance case

T2 · share of impermissible income: 60%. AAVE is not the native currency of a network (T1) or a stablecoin (T3). Protocol (DAO) revenue comes from lending: for January-February 2026, the TokenLogic proposal gives $7.95 million and $5.75 million in borrowing interest fees, i.e., $13.7 million out of about $23 million in cumulative revenue (calculation: about 60%); the balance comes from liquidation fees of two types ($4.84 million and $4.12 million cumulative over 2026), tied to the same loans. The composition varies by period (the proposal states that liquidation fees dominate in early 2026) and no annual breakdown was read: the 60% figure applies to this period only.

Contract security scan

GoPlus security scan of the AAVE contract on Ethereum: 189,487 holders; top ten wallets excluding exchanges and contracts 12.8%; code published. Signals found: Contract upgradeable through a proxy: the code can change after the fact (is_proxy). Reading: none of the signals of rule A.8 (minting right, withdrawable liquidity, sale restriction or tax, freezing, top ten wallets above 50%) is found; the proxy is not a signal on the A.8 list and the proxy's administrator was not read. No rug pull risk is retained under A.8.

Opinions found during the research

Opinions reported as read, named for what they are; they do not enter into the calculation of the verdict.

What could not be verified

Sources read

Other cryptos analyzed

General information: neither investment advice nor a fatwa. Verdict calculated by published rules, from financial statements read automatically and not reviewed by a human. Read the methodology