Eve founder Stani Kulichev has announced that the DeFi protocol will begin phasing out its Family Wallet on iOS over the next year and drop the Avara umbrella brand as the company fully consolidates its operations under the Eve Labs umbrella.
The strategic withdrawal of mainstream wallet products is the result of a bet that mainstream users will adopt cryptocurrencies through targeted financial applications (follow Ethereum news), such as savings and loans, rather than general multi-purpose wallets.
Family will stop signing up new users starting April 1, while existing customers will be able to access the app until April 2027 before moving to the AVI infrastructure.
The move comes weeks after Eve transferred responsibility for running the Lens Protocol social media network to Musk’s network, completing a significant shrinkage after years of ecosystem expansion and internal governance battles.
We are terminating the Family iOS wallet. Family accounts will continue to power the Aave app as part of Aave’s infrastructure, helping millions of users access DeFi.
In 2023, we partnered with the Family team because they were the strongest design team in the industry. This… https://t.co/jYgb5OPXVU– Stani.eth (@StaniKulechov) February 3, 2026
Specially designed products replace the open portfolio strategy
The move reflects lessons learned from trying to attract millions of users through different product approaches, Kulichev said.
“Along this journey, we’ve learned that attracting millions of users requires purpose-built experiences, like Savings, rather than generic, open-ended experiences.“As mentioned in the ad.
The Family team, which was acquired by Avara in 2023 for its design capabilities, contributed work on several Eve products, including Eve Pro, the protocol’s mobile app and brand identity.
According to the company’s announcement, their core technology, Family Accounts, will continue to support authentication and built-in wallet functionality across the Eve product suite rather than serving as a standalone app for consumers.
Existing Family users will retain full control of their funds through accounts.aave.com using their credentials, although the app’s functionality will be gradually limited to account access and withdrawals only.
Kulichev emphasized that the infrastructural approach supports “A smoother user journey, stronger security protections and more intuitive interfaces, while maintaining user sovereignty and full control of funds.“
In 2023, Avara acquired @Familyutilizing an exceptionally talented design engineering team.
We believe that future DeFi users will prefer purpose-built financial experiences over open wallet explorers.
So, we will be phasing out the Family iOS app over the next year.-Avara (@avara) February 3, 2026
Merger comes after governance upheaval and regulatory victories
The brand merger comes after a tumultuous six months during which Eve was accused of governance fraud and internal disputes over asset ownership.
In December, Kulichev purchased approximately $10 million worth of AAVE tokens ahead of a controversial vote, leading critics including DeFi strategist Robert Mullins to claim the move was intended to bolster voting power rather than demonstrate long-term commitment.
Community tensions escalated when Eve Labs put a proposal to a vote on ownership of brand assets without informing its author, Ernesto Boado of PGD Labs.
Aave Labs unilaterally pushed a brand ownership proposal to a vote without notification from the author, intensifying governance tensions over control of protocol assets and value extraction.#Dao #Aavehttps://t.co/2uRM8QM6Jy
– Cryptonews.com (@cryptonews) December 22, 2025
“This is not, in spirit, my proposal,Boadu said, adding that Eve Labs “I broke all the rules of trust with society“By rushing to present the proposal in a productive discussion at the forum.
Contributors expressed concerns that certain product decisions, including replacing ParaSoap with the KasoSoap integration, diverted approximately $10 million per year in fees from the DAO’s coffers to private entities.
Mark Zeller of the Eve Chan Initiative argued that the DAO paid for the brand’s assets.Four times“Through the sale of the native LEND token, dilution, liquidity mining software and service provider fees.
Snapshot data showed that the top three wallets control more than 58% of the voting rights, with the largest cryptocurrency wallet holding more than 27%, raising concerns about whale dominance and conflicts of interest within the ecosystem.
Despite internal friction, Eve gained regulatory clarity when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission concluded its multi-year investigation without recommending enforcement action in December, ending nearly four years of uncertainty, and also received a license under MiCA in Europe.
The transfer of the Lens protocol to Musk’s network in January represented another part of Eve’s integration strategy.
Kulichev emphasized that “All functions are transferred to Mask,“Including intellectual property, channel infrastructure and social media accounts, while Lens remains open and permissionless infrastructure.
Over the years, we have built some of the most important onchain financial primitives. We then extended this ambition to social primitives that users actually own.
We built the Lens protocol and its underlying onchain rails, including state-of-the-art decentralized data storage… https://t.co/g0zLIUlaBh– Stani.eth (@StaniKulechov) January 20, 2026
Eve remains one of the largest DeFi platforms in terms of total value blocked, surpassing $45 billion in October.
The Estonian-born, Finnish-raised founder, who recently purchased a £22 million mansion in London’s Notting Hill, is preparing to launch Eve V4.
All current and future products will now operate exclusively under the Eve Labs brand as the company focuses its resources on “Building awareness of the Eve brand and introducing DeFi to millions of new users around the world.“
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