Aave's governance framework is evolving to clarify and strengthen how risk parameters flow through the protocol. The proposal to introduce Manual Risk Agents represents a structured refinement of the existing AGRS system, addressing operational ambiguities that have accumulated as the protocol scaled. Rather than a wholesale overhaul, this upgrade explicitly codifies three distinct roles—growth identification, risk analysis, and technical verification—directly into the smart contract layer, moving beyond the implicit arrangements that characterized the previous iteration.
The current manual AGRS architecture has proven functional, with participants successfully executing adjustments to supply caps, borrow caps, and interest rate configurations across Aave's market. However, the underlying governance structure conflated roles within multisig wallets without on-chain clarity. ACI serves as the proposer, Chaos Labs generates and signs recommendations as a co-signer, and BGD provides verification as the other key holder. This arrangement, while operationally sound, obscured accountability at the contract level. The Manual Risk Agents framework addresses this by making role definitions transparent and enforceable in code, allowing community observers to clearly track who proposed what and why each party signed off on parameter changes. This transparency mechanism aligns with Aave's broader commitment to credible neutrality and auditability.
Beyond organizational clarity, the upgrade introduces an additional protective layer through timelock constraints. While the steward framework already enforces quantitative guardrails—limiting parameter shifts to specified percentages per update window—adding explicit time-based delays before execution completes the defense-in-depth approach. A timelock creates an observable pre-execution window where community members, token holders, or emergency governance can detect and potentially challenge problematic recommendations before they take effect. This mirrors patterns seen in other DeFi protocols and traditional finance infrastructure, where multiple sequential approval stages reduce single-point-of-failure risk.
Notably, the automated Risk Stewards were migrated to the Risk Agents framework during the initial rollout, but manual AGRS remained on the older architecture due to implementation complexity. This upgrade bridges that gap, unifying the governance experience across Aave's risk management systems. The proposal emphasizes that there is no technical barrier to aligning manual operations with the standardized Risk Agents infrastructure—only the prioritization decisions typical of protocol development. As Aave continues to decentralize and scale, explicit on-chain role definitions and layered execution protections will become increasingly important for maintaining community confidence in parameter governance.