Aave Companies, the development lab in charge of the crypto lending protocol Aave, is asking more than $16 million from the Aave community to fund platform development.

Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) like Aave are guided by community votes and ideas. Token holders make decisions by voting on issues, new developments, growth plans, and other issues suggested by their communities.

“We propose that the Aave DAO retribute a total of $16.28M in retroactive funding to Aave Companies for the development of Aave Protocol [version 3],” Aave Companies wrote in a proposal to the Aave’s governance forum.

While the proposal isn’t slated to expire until early Thursday morning in the United States, it has already hit quorum, with nearly 100% of votes in favor of funding. The suggestion was broadly approved in community discussions on the governance forum.

The figure comprises $15 million for work done directly by the team over a year, with the remainder necessary for fees paid to third-party audit services. Engineers would receive 60% of the salary, while non-engineers, such as design and product management, would receive 40%.

The investment will be distributed as follows: $5.4 million in DAI, USDT, and USDC stablecoins, $1.1 million in other unidentified stablecoins, $3.3 million in “more volatile crypto assets,” and $6.2 million in Aave’s native AAVE tokens.

According to the proposal, development firms BGD Labs, Certora, SigmaPrime, Llama, Gauntlet, and Aave Companies contributed to the Aave protocol.

In March, the v3 upgrade became online. According to reports, it introduced cross-chain “portals,” isolated markets, a “high efficiency” mode, and other features to compete with rival decentralized finance (DeFi) products in the crypto market.

One of the most significant enhancements is the ability for users to swap assets from any blockchain on which Aave is implemented. Users can generate “aTokens,” which represent Aave deposits, on one chain and burn them on another. This feature enabled on-chain trading methods such as yield arbitrage, or taking advantage of the protocol’s variable yields on multiple blockchains.