Difference between revisions of "Curve Finance (CRV)"

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* Based in: Switzerland
* Based in: Switzerland
*Started in: Early [https://cryptobriefing.com/defi-project-spotlight-curve-finance/ 2020], had its token launch on 14-8-2020.
*Started in: Early [https://cryptobriefing.com/defi-project-spotlight-curve-finance/ 2020], had its token launch on 14-8-2020.
* ''"Is [https://cryptobriefing.com/curve-finance-fixing-stablecoin-slippage-defi/ improving] (3-2-2020) slippage for [[DeFi]] [[stablecoin]] conversions, like [[DAI]]/[[USDC]]. If successful, the protocol would be more efficient than any other [[DEX]]."'' More explanation in the link.
* ''"Is [https://cryptobriefing.com/curve-finance-fixing-stablecoin-slippage-defi/ improving] (3-2-2020) slippage for [[DeFi]] [[stablecoin]] conversions, like [[DAI]]/[[USDC]]. If successful, the protocol would be more efficient than any other [[DEX]]."'' More explanation in the [[LINK|link]].
* [https://defiweekly.substack.com/p/part-1-defi-madness-ft-curve-iearn From] [[DeFi Weekly]] (3-3-2020):
* [https://defiweekly.substack.com/p/part-1-defi-madness-ft-curve-iearn From] [[DeFi Weekly]] (3-3-2020):
''"Curve Finance is an automated market maker protocol (an exchange that doesn't have an order-book and uses math to automatically determine the price) for just [[stable coins]]. People who provide stable coins to Curve earn trading fees and interest on the liquidity they've provided."''
''"[[Curve]] Finance is an automated market [[maker]] protocol (an exchange that doesn't have an order-book and uses [[MATH|math]] to automatically determine the price) for just [[stable coins]]. People who provide stable coins to Curve [[earn]] trading [[fees]] and interest on the liquidity they've provided."''
== History ==
== History ==


* Curve Finance began as a crypto swapping platform, offering traders low slippage trades across major stablecoins. It had no [[Native Coin|native token]] at first.
* Curve Finance began as a crypto swapping platform, offering traders low slippage trades across major [[stablecoins]]. It had no [[Native Coin|native token]] at first.


*[https://thedefiant.substack.com/p/examining-the-explosive-growth-of-8c8?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMzk3OTAwLCJwb3N0X2lkIjo2MjE2MDcsIl8iOiIwb3pkOCIsImlhdCI6MTU5NDEyNDg4MywiZXhwIjoxNTk0MTI4NDgzLCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMTEyNTkiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.CZACv1sYPq2W6dTEuLz6hBPppwYOrK85Bp3ZEiTeRgA From] [[The Defiant]] (2-7-2020):
*[https://thedefiant.substack.com/p/examining-the-explosive-growth-of-8c8?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMzk3OTAwLCJwb3N0X2lkIjo2MjE2MDcsIl8iOiIwb3pkOCIsImlhdCI6MTU5NDEyNDg4MywiZXhwIjoxNTk0MTI4NDgzLCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMTEyNTkiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.CZACv1sYPq2W6dTEuLz6hBPppwYOrK85Bp3ZEiTeRgA From] [[The Defiant]] (2-7-2020):
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== Audits & Exploits ==
== Audits & Exploits ==


*[[Bug bounty]] program can be found [insert here]. None according to [[Blockchain Security DB]] (29-6-2020), which does show 2 [https://consensys.github.io/blockchainSecurityDB/ audits] (10-2018).
*[[Bug bounty]] program [https://www.defisafety.com/pqrs/189 is] up to $250k. None according to [[Blockchain Security DB]] (29-6-2020), which does show 2 [https://consensys.github.io/blockchainSecurityDB/ audits] (10-2018).
*[https://t.me/c/1453353094/14554 From] DeFi Safety (27-6-2023):
''"In order to keep everything up to date, we have revised their report for 2023. They are an [[immutable]] protocol so the code and score has not changed. However, the website and documentation have improved and the links in the report reflect these improvements. Curve stays at [https://www.defisafety.com/app/pqrs/550 93%], excellent as always."''
*Had a [[MixBytes]] [https://github.com/mixbytes/audits_public/tree/master/Curve%20Finance/Curve%20Stablecoin%20(crvUSD) audit] on their crvUSD (6-6-2023). All issues were fixed.
*Successfully [https://cryptobriefing.com/curve-finance-fixing-stablecoin-slippage-defi/ completed] (3-2-2020) a third-party audit by [[Trail of Bits]] and [[ParaSwap]] integrating Curve’s liquidity to its interface. 
*Scored [https://www.defisafety.com/pqrs/189 80%] on [[DeFi Safety]] (31-1-2022):
''"The software function documentation covers all [[contracts]] deployed. Due to our testing tool not being optimized for [[vyper]] files, we had to rely on other methods to get an accurate measure of the depth of Curve's testing. Thankfully, they have provided proof of extensive and all-encompassing testing through our Twitter [https://twitter.com/CurveFinance/status/1488632884093198341 thread] with them. Although the protocol offers a code coverage report for users running their own tests, there are [https://github.com/curvefi/curve-contract#running-the-tests no results]. Curve has not undergone formal verification. Curve has been audited three times, two of which [https://curve.fi/audits were pre-launch]. "''


* Successfully [https://cryptobriefing.com/curve-finance-fixing-stablecoin-slippage-defi/ completed] (3-2-2020) a third-party audit by [[Trail of Bits]] and [[ParaSwap]] integrating Curve’s liquidity to its interface. 
With the [https://t.me/c/1453353094/6984 comment]: ''Curve is up with 80%, a 3% increase since our last review of the protocol. Although this isn't a substantial increase, the previous review was done with our 0.6 [[framework]] and this new iteration was done with our brand-new process: 0.8. Subsequently, this goes to show that Curve continuously stands our test of time thanks to rigorous ownership controls, as well as in-depth [[Oracle]] documentation.''
*[https://docs.defisafety.com/finished-reviews/curve-finance-process-quality-audit Scored] a 68% on [[DeFi Safety]] (9-2020).
 
''In the future, however, the Curve team should look at implementing a [[timelock]] [[contract]] for an added layer of security."''
*[https://docs.defisafety.com/finished-reviews/curve-finance-process-quality-audit Previously scored] a 68% (9-2020).  
* Had a [https://defiweekly.substack.com/p/part-1-defi-madness-ft-curve-iearn long read] (3-3-2020) by [[DeFi Weekly]] explaining how some users interacted with unannounced code of [[iEarn]] / Curve and lost and made money: 
* Had a [https://defiweekly.substack.com/p/part-1-defi-madness-ft-curve-iearn long read] (3-3-2020) by [[DeFi Weekly]] explaining how some users interacted with unannounced code of [[iEarn]] / Curve and lost and made money: 


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#''Someone was snooping [[Github]] and realised new contracts with fresh liquidity has been seeded''
#''Someone was snooping [[Github]] and realised new contracts with fresh liquidity has been seeded''
#''Through this, Charlie (a [[whale]]) thinks he can manually manipulate the pools to steal the [[BUSD]] and [[USDT]] that was seeded''
#''Through this, Charlie (a [[whale]]) thinks he can manually manipulate the pools to steal the [[BUSD]] and [[USDT]] that was seeded''
#''As he's manually executing each transaction, Andre and Michael realise something's not right here''
#''As he's manually executing each [[transaction]], Andre and Michael realise something's not right here''
#''At the same time, Billy also realises something isn't right. He tries to turn it to his advantage but does it with a tiny bit of success. It's still unclear what his intentions were.''
#''At the same time, Billy also realises something isn't right. He tries to turn it to his advantage but does it with a tiny bit of success. It's still unclear what his intentions were.''
#''Being one step ahead, 'Friendly Whale' execute the trade the 'Malicious Whale' was trying to do (taking out BUSD/USDT at a highly favourable/manipulated price). A few minutes late and they would have lost funds to the tune of $200k+''
#''Being one step ahead, 'Friendly Whale' execute the trade the 'Malicious Whale' was trying to do (taking out BUSD/USDT at a highly favourable/manipulated price). A few minutes late and they would have lost funds to the tune of $200k+''
#''Charlie, realises the mistake he's made, cancels his supposed master move transaction and is down $500k."''
#''Charlie, realises the mistake he's made, cancels his supposed master [[move]] transaction and is down $500k."''


=== Bugs/Exploits ===
=== Bugs/Exploits ===


*[[Sam Sun]] [https://blog.curve.fi/vulnerability-disclosure/ found a bug] in their project.
* Curve offering $1.85 million [https://www.theblock.co/post/243464/curve-exploit-identity-bounty bounty] (7-8-2023) for exploiter's identity (and conviction). Curve Finance will [https://cointelegraph.com/news/curve-finance-disburse-49-million-compensation-hack-victims disburse] $49M in compensation to hack victims (12-2023).
* A number of stablepools (alETH/msETH/pETH) using [[Vyper]] [https://twitter.com/vyperlang/status/1685692973051498497 0.2.15] had been [https://twitter.com/CurveFinance/status/1685693202722848768 exploited] for a [https://decrypt.co/150606/attackers-steal-24-million-from-several-defi-projects-in-curve-pool-exploits total of $24M] as a result of a malfunctioning reentrancy lock (30-7-2023). All affected pools have been [https://twitter.com/spreekaway/status/1685749072496406529 drained or white hacked]. All remaining pools on Curve are safe and unaffected.
*crvUSD had an attack vector which got [https://twitter.com/CurveCap/status/1628151730956570625 patched] before release (22-2-2023). When crvUSD got deployed, it got redeployed twice after [https://twitter.com/CurveFinance/status/1654060060090179585 missing fees] (4th of May) & [https://twitter.com/CurveFinance/status/1654214766104027138 high gas usage] (5th of May)
*[https://newsletter.blockthreat.io/p/blockthreat-week-40-2022 From] Blockthreat (27-10-2022):


* Curve [https://twitter.com/CurveFinance/status/1251987199320395781 found a vulnerability] (19-4-2020) in the Curve sUSD code. Funds were safe.
''"Curve [https://forum.makerdao.com/t/curve-lp-token-oracle-manipulation-vulnerability-technical-postmortem/18009 patched] a read-only [[Reentrancy Attack|reentrancy vulnerability]] in its price [[oracle]] function thanks to a [https://chainsecurity.com/curve-lp-oracle-manipulation-post-mortem/ responsible disclosure] by [[ChainSecurity]]" [$100 million was at risk]''
*[[Martinet Lee]] and [[Jun-You Liu]] [https://hackmd.io/@martinetlee/rkQImCQbP found] some exploits in the yCurve yVault (10-8-2020).
*[https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1557956979275988992?s=20&t=ni2lxx9BsvJE4ScGf5cX3Q&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email From] [[Changpeng Zhao|CZ]] (10-8-2022):
* From [[Peter Zeitz]] an economics researcher at [[0x]]. ''"This is a [https://medium.com/@peter_4205/curve-vulnerability-report-a1d7630140ec report] (8-10-2020) on a smart contract vulnerability I discovered in the Curve protocol. The vulnerability is interesting because it exposed Curve and [[Swerve (SWRV)|Swerve]] users to risk of massive financial loss, but went undiscovered despite multiple contract audits." ''He got paid a '<em>very generous bug bounty' </em>by Curve.
''"[[Binance]] froze/recovered $450k of the Curve stolen funds, representing 83%+ of the hack. We are working with LE to return the funds to the users. The hacker kept on sending the funds to Binance in different ways, thinking we can't catch it."''
*[https://thedefiant.io/curve-website-hack From] [[The Defiant]] (9-10-2022):
''"Curve Finance has been hit by a frontend exploit. As of 5:30pm ET on Tuesday, the issue has been [https://twitter.com/CurveFinance/status/1557116419497672711 resolved], according to the Curve team. The exploit was flagged by [[samczsun]]. [[ZachXBT|zachxbt]] noted that around $570,000 worth of assets had been stolen as of 4:30pm ET, and that the pilfered funds are being sent to [[Fixed Float]], a crypto exchange that uses [[Bitcoin (BTC)|Bitcoin’s]] [[Lightning Network|Lightning network]]. The Fixed Float exchange [https://twitter.com/FixedFloat/status/1557116267378708481 says] it has frozen 112 [[Ethereum (ETH)|ETH]] ($190,000) of the stolen funds."''
*[https://decrypt.co/56948/curve-finance-shuts-down-yv2-pool-after-finding-vulnerability From] [[Decrypt]] (8-2-2021):
*[https://decrypt.co/56948/curve-finance-shuts-down-yv2-pool-after-finding-vulnerability From] [[Decrypt]] (8-2-2021):


''"Curve Finance shuts down yv2 Pool after finding a vulnerability. No users or funds were affected as the affected trading pool was immediately shut down."''
''"Curve Finance shuts down yv2 Pool after finding a vulnerability. No users or funds were affected as the affected trading pool was immediately shut down."''
*From [[Peter Zeitz]] an economics researcher at [[0x]]. ''"This is a [https://medium.com/@peter_4205/curve-vulnerability-report-a1d7630140ec report] (8-10-2020) on a [[smart contract]] vulnerability I discovered in the Curve protocol. The vulnerability is interesting because it exposed Curve and [[Swerve (SWRV)|Swerve]] users to risk of massive financial loss, but went undiscovered despite multiple contract audits." ''He got paid a '<em>very generous bug bounty' </em>by Curve.
*[[Martinet Lee]] and [[Jun-You Liu]] [https://hackmd.io/@martinetlee/rkQImCQbP found] some exploits in the yCurve yVault (10-8-2020).
*Curve [https://twitter.com/CurveFinance/status/1251987199320395781 found a vulnerability] (19-4-2020) in the Curve [[sUSD]] code. Funds were safe.
*Samczsun [https://blog.curve.fi/vulnerability-disclosure/ found a bug] in their project.
== Governance ==
== Governance ==


*[https://defirate.com/defi-governance-ptokens-curve/ From] [[DeFi Rate]] (30-5-2020):
*[https://defirate.com/defi-governance-ptokens-curve/ From] [[DeFi Rate]] (30-5-2020):


''"While news of Curve’s new [[governance]] token remains vague, we can assume it will follow a [[SAFG]] model like [[Compound]] or [[FutureSwap]] in which those using the protocol are the first to earn the [[native token]]. As stated in the original tweet:''
''"While news of Curve’s new [[governance]] token remains vague, we can assume it will follow a [[SAFG]] model like [[Compound]] or [[FutureSwap]] in which those using the protocol are the first to earn the [[native token]]. As stated in the original [[tweet]]:''


<em>“All liquidity providers since the inception in January 2020 will be considered for the initial distribution proportionally.”</em>
<em>“All liquidity providers since the inception in January 2020 will be considered for the initial distribution proportionally.”</em>


''To this end, we also know that Curve is exploring the use of an [[Aragon]] [[DAO]] to introduce unique voting frameworks for the growing liquidity aggregator. More so, they’ve stated they will look to make enhancements on the “one token one vote model” likely introducing some sort of weighted voting schema where those who actually earned and used the protocol might have more voting power than someone who comes across tokens otherwise."''
''To this end, we also know that Curve is exploring the use of an [[Aragon]] [[DAO]] to introduce unique voting frameworks for the growing liquidity aggregator. More so, they’ve stated they will look to make enhancements on the “one token one vote model” likely introducing some sort of weighted voting schema where those who actually earned and used the protocol might have more voting power than someone who comes across [[tokens]] otherwise."''


=== Admin Keys ===
=== Admin Keys ===


* [https://yieldfarmer.substack.com/p/-farm-triple-digit-aprs-with-eur?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMzk3OTAwLCJwb3N0X2lkIjo0Mzk5NzMzMiwiXyI6IjNtM29qIiwiaWF0IjoxNjM2OTU4NTI0LCJleHAiOjE2MzY5NjIxMjQsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0zODQ1MSIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.1-TK1vN4jsydaw From] [[DeFi Pulse|Yield Farmer]] (14-11-2021):
* From [[DeFi Safety]] (31-1-2022):
''"[[Admin controls]] are [https://resources.curve.fi/faq/security#are-there-admin-keys-for-curve-contracts easy to find]. However, they need updating so that users can find them all in one location with sufficient detail yet still in straightforward language. Relevant contracts are clearly labelled as upgradeable or [[immutable]] in the various sections of their [https://curve.readthedocs.io/index.html technical documentation]. Ownership is in the hands of the [[Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO)|DAO]], as stated. An in-depth mention of a their pause control is documented [https://curve.readthedocs.io/exchange-pools.html?highlight=pause#StableSwap.kill_me here].''
 
''No [[timelock]] documentation is detailed. However, their DAO structure fundamentally operates like a timelock due to admin's giving up ownership to [[the DAO]], and every vote on contract changes has to go through a lengthy voting process. In addition, Curve has clearly stated that the only contract that the DAO does not have full ownership of is the CRV DAO token. Regardless, the token contract restricts all admin access and external call possibilities. This renders the need for a timelock effectively useless for any Curve contract. The voting of the DAO acting as a timelock, its length is parallel to the overall voting process which takes 10 days."''
*[https://yieldfarmer.substack.com/p/-farm-triple-digit-aprs-with-eur?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMzk3OTAwLCJwb3N0X2lkIjo0Mzk5NzMzMiwiXyI6IjNtM29qIiwiaWF0IjoxNjM2OTU4NTI0LCJleHAiOjE2MzY5NjIxMjQsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0zODQ1MSIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.1-TK1vN4jsydaw From] [[DeFi Pulse|Yield Farmer]] (14-11-2021):


''"[Has] a group known as the Curve Emergency DAO, 9 people with basic [[Multi-Signature|multisig]] control over CRV emissions."''
''"[Has] a group known as the Curve Emergency DAO, 9 people with basic [[Multi-Signature|multisig]] control over CRV emissions."''
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*[https://cryptobriefing.com/top-defi-projects-the-6-most-decentralized-protocols/ From] [[Crypto Briefing]] (15-8-2020):
*[https://cryptobriefing.com/top-defi-projects-the-6-most-decentralized-protocols/ From] [[Crypto Briefing]] (15-8-2020):


''"A recent DAO and [https://cryptobriefing.com/curve-finances-crv-token-launched-without-anyone-knowing/ governance token launch] brings Curve one step closer to [[decentralization]]. CRV holders can vote to introduce an admin fee to the protocol and back the tokens with steady cash flow.''
''"A recent DAO and [https://cryptobriefing.com/curve-finances-crv-token-launched-without-anyone-knowing/ governance token launch] brings Curve one step closer to [[decentralization]]. CRV holders can vote to introduce an admin fee to the protocol and back the tokens with steady cash [[flow]].''


''From a governance perspective, the DAO will facilitate [[on-chain]] voting for proposals. Employees and shareholders hold the majority CRV voting power at commencement. While LPs [https://guides.curve.fi/everything-you-need-to-know-about-crv/ account] for 62% of total supply, it will take years to accrue more votes than seed investors and employees because of Curve’s slow token release mechanism.''
''From a governance perspective, the DAO will facilitate [[on-chain]] voting for proposals. Employees and shareholders hold the majority CRV voting power at commencement. While LPs [https://guides.curve.fi/everything-you-need-to-know-about-crv/ account] for 62% of total supply, it will take years to accrue more votes than [[seed]] investors and employees because of Curve’s slow token release mechanism.''


''As a result, the team and shareholders will control the network with the majority vote in the early days. This dynamic is very likely to reverse over time, giving LPs more power in the future. Unfortunately, the botched token launch and concentration of critical votes place Curve low on the list of top DeFi projects."''
''As a result, the team and shareholders will control the network with the majority vote in the early days. This dynamic is very likely to reverse over time, giving LPs more power in the future. Unfortunately, the botched token launch and concentration of critical votes place Curve low on the list of top [[Defi|DeFi]] projects."''


*[https://thedefiant.substack.com/p/eth2-successfully-launches-with-many?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMzk3OTAwLCJwb3N0X2lkIjoyMTI1NTExNywiXyI6ImM5eFJuIiwiaWF0IjoxNjA2OTAxOTU5LCJleHAiOjE2MDY5MDU1NTksImlzcyI6InB1Yi0xMTI1OSIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.DdvoMplGZq9DQNn2ZvBWBVqyUZVQfGBdU6yK3MHOnxs From] [[The Defiant]] (1-12-2020):
*[https://thedefiant.substack.com/p/eth2-successfully-launches-with-many?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMzk3OTAwLCJwb3N0X2lkIjoyMTI1NTExNywiXyI6ImM5eFJuIiwiaWF0IjoxNjA2OTAxOTU5LCJleHAiOjE2MDY5MDU1NTksImlzcyI6InB1Yi0xMTI1OSIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.DdvoMplGZq9DQNn2ZvBWBVqyUZVQfGBdU6yK3MHOnxs From] [[The Defiant]] (1-12-2020):
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"''Curve passed an unanimous [[governance]] vote to distribute $3M worth of protocol fees to CRV holders [[staked]] into the CurveDAO over the weekend."''
"''Curve passed an unanimous [[governance]] vote to distribute $3M worth of protocol fees to CRV holders [[staked]] into the CurveDAO over the weekend."''


''With just under 50% of all staked token holders voting on the proposal, the 100% majority vote signals strong alignment for the stablecoin AMM to distribute the 2.9M yCRV accrued to the Set converter over the past 62 days to veCRV holders.''
''With just under 50% of all staked token holders voting on the proposal, the 100% majority vote signals strong alignment for the [[StableCoin|stablecoin]] AMM to distribute the 2.9M yCRV accrued to the Set converter over the past 62 days to veCRV holders.''


''Curve is the first AMM after [[SushiSwap]] to distribute protocol fees directly to token holders. It’s not a coincidence that the two projects to do this are led by anonymous teams; fee distribution is similar to a dividend payout, which may raise regulatory concerns for US-based projects such as [[Uniswap]]."''
''Curve is the first AMM after [[SushiSwap]] to distribute protocol fees directly to token holders. It’s not a coincidence that the two projects to do this are led by anonymous teams; fee distribution is similar to a dividend payout, which may raise regulatory concerns for US-based projects such as [[Uniswap]]."''
Line 82: Line 103:
"''The community-lead proposal to align incentives between veCRV holders (governance participants) and [[liquidity providers]] got off to a very strong start with total fees accrued reaching $1m in its first month. Governance subsequently chose to distribute those fees as 3Pool LP tokens which will start in the coming weeks. After the admin fee proposal was approved by governance, lock rates started to rise. They were around 10% of the total supply and currently stand at 17% and growing rapidly.''
"''The community-lead proposal to align incentives between veCRV holders (governance participants) and [[liquidity providers]] got off to a very strong start with total fees accrued reaching $1m in its first month. Governance subsequently chose to distribute those fees as 3Pool LP tokens which will start in the coming weeks. After the admin fee proposal was approved by governance, lock rates started to rise. They were around 10% of the total supply and currently stand at 17% and growing rapidly.''


''With the number of vote locked users fast approaching 3,000, the DAO has become increasingly decentralized with voters holding under 0.5% of voting power accounting for 46% of the total voting power, in stark contrast of early days of decentralized governance."''
''With the number of vote locked users fast approaching 3,000, the DAO has become increasingly [[decentralized]] with voters holding under 0.5% of voting power accounting for 46% of the total voting power, in [[STARK|stark]] contrast of early days of decentralized governance."''


*[https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/is-convex-the-yfi-killer?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMzk3OTAwLCJwb3N0X2lkIjozNzY3NjI2MSwiXyI6IitrN3VtIiwiaWF0IjoxNjI0MTk5MDY0LCJleHAiOjE2MjQyMDI2NjQsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0xNjAxNSIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.dDchp84ZUeGS7R1QOxqfq From] [[Bankless DAO (BANK)|Bankless]] (17-6-2021):
*[https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/is-convex-the-yfi-killer?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMzk3OTAwLCJwb3N0X2lkIjozNzY3NjI2MSwiXyI6IitrN3VtIiwiaWF0IjoxNjI0MTk5MDY0LCJleHAiOjE2MjQyMDI2NjQsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0xNjAxNSIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.dDchp84ZUeGS7R1QOxqfq From] [[Bankless DAO (BANK)|Bankless]] (17-6-2021):


''"veCRV holders can determine the allocation of CRV inflation across the different pools. As [[Convex (CVX)|Convex]] now holds the greatest number of votes, they’ll be able to have considerable say in where newly issued CRV is directed. We could see a scenario in which Convex votes to allocate CRV to pools which would maximize their boosts rather than [[YEarn (YFI)|Yearn’s]]."''
''"veCRV holders can determine the allocation of CRV inflation across the different pools. As [[Convex (CVX)|Convex]] now holds the greatest number of votes, they’ll be able to have considerable say in where newly issued CRV is directed. We could see a scenario in which [[Convex]] votes to allocate CRV to pools which would maximize their boosts rather than [[YEarn (YFI)|Yearn’s]]."''


=== Founder took 71% of voting power ===
=== Founder took 71% of voting power ===
Line 92: Line 113:
*[https://yieldfarmer.substack.com/p/defi-pulse-farmer-iv?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMzk3OTAwLCJwb3N0X2lkIjo5MTQ4ODgsIl8iOiIwb3pkOCIsImlhdCI6MTU5ODgxMTU2NywiZXhwIjoxNTk4ODE1MTY3LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMzg0NTEiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.8w_au7kYw-ClZw3oKS_1P0dsu2n4rBF6TCfjtCCsbGk From] [[Yield Farmer]] (29-8-2020):
*[https://yieldfarmer.substack.com/p/defi-pulse-farmer-iv?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMzk3OTAwLCJwb3N0X2lkIjo5MTQ4ODgsIl8iOiIwb3pkOCIsImlhdCI6MTU5ODgxMTU2NywiZXhwIjoxNTk4ODE1MTY3LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMzg0NTEiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.8w_au7kYw-ClZw3oKS_1P0dsu2n4rBF6TCfjtCCsbGk From] [[Yield Farmer]] (29-8-2020):


''"Governance wars have started. Holders of [[yEarn]] Finance decided to allocate their CRV treasury ($2.5M) to Curve Finance, taking advantage of their 2.5x rewards multiplier while gaining political power. Curve's team quickly responded by locking the team's CRV tokens, kickstarting a flurry of attention around the hottest governance token on the block. ''
''"Governance wars have started. Holders of [[yEarn]] Finance decided to allocate their CRV treasury ($2.5M) to Curve Finance, taking advantage of their 2.5x rewards multiplier while gaining political power. Curve's team quickly responded by locking the team's CRV tokens, kickstarting a flurry of attention around the hottest governance token on the [[block]]. ''


''Later Curve modified their allocation and now [https://dao.curve.fi/locks/1598656157 no participant owns more] than 27% of the voting power."''
''Later Curve modified their allocation and now [https://dao.curve.fi/locks/1598656157 no participant owns more] than 27% of the voting power."''
Line 100: Line 121:
''"Curve lets holders of its CRV governance token lock up their tokens to obtain [https://decrypt.co/38923/curves-vote-locking-feature-boosts-crv-rewards-by-up-to-2-5x/ a separate voting token, veCRV]. Holders can then use veCRV to vote on network proposals submitted through the Curve DAO, and those with a high enough veCRV can even submit their own proposals for consideration.''
''"Curve lets holders of its CRV governance token lock up their tokens to obtain [https://decrypt.co/38923/curves-vote-locking-feature-boosts-crv-rewards-by-up-to-2-5x/ a separate voting token, veCRV]. Holders can then use veCRV to vote on network proposals submitted through the Curve DAO, and those with a high enough veCRV can even submit their own proposals for consideration.''


''However, since the token’s launch on August 14, only a small fraction of CRV holders have vote-locked their tokens, leaving a handful of addresses with a large amount of voting power. ''
''However, since the token’s launch on August 14, only a small fraction of CRV holders have vote-locked their tokens, leaving a handful of [[addresses]] with a large amount of voting power. ''


''In fact, Egorov told Decrypt that only 6.7% of the nearly 10 million CRV tokens [https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/curve-dao-token/ currently in circulation] are vote locked right now—an indication of how few token holders are actually participating in the DAO.''
''In fact, Egorov told Decrypt that only 6.7% of the nearly 10 million CRV tokens [https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/curve-dao-token/ currently in circulation] are vote locked right now—an indication of how few token holders are actually participating in the DAO.''


''This made it fairly easy for an [https://etherscan.io/address/0x431e81e5dfb5a24541b5ff8762bdef3f32f96354 address] controlled by yield aggregating platform [[YEarn (YFI)|Yearn]].finance, which runs a Curve liquidity pool, to obtain a significant proportion of the voting power (close to 58%).''
''This made it fairly easy for an [https://etherscan.io/address/0x431e81e5dfb5a24541b5ff8762bdef3f32f96354 address] controlled by yield aggregating platform [[YEarn (YFI)|Yearn]].finance, which runs a Curve [[liquidity pool]], to obtain a significant proportion of the voting power (close to 58%).''


''In an apparent move to counter this, Egorov (who controls address 0x9b...36b029) extended a vote lock for a total of 621,860 CRV tokens (worth ~$1.7 million) under a single address, netting him 618,568 veCRV, or 71% of the voting power. The longer a user locks up their tokens, the more voting power they have. He maxed out his vote time to four years. “Maybe too much,” he said.''
''In an apparent move to counter this, Egorov (who controls address 0x9b...36b029) extended a vote lock for a total of 621,860 CRV tokens (worth ~$1.7 million) under a single address, netting him 618,568 veCRV, or 71% of the voting power. The longer a user locks up their tokens, the more voting power they have. He maxed out his vote time to four years. “Maybe too much,” he said.''


''Meanwhile, if Egorov plans to hold back on voting—a promise, at best—that also means nobody else's vote matters either until the community resolves the issue or comes up with a more permanent fix, since they need a quorum of at least 33% to propose a change and above 50% to pass an update."''
''Meanwhile, if Egorov plans to hold back on voting—a promise, at best—that also means nobody else's vote matters either until the community resolves the issue or comes up with a more permanent fix, since they need a [[quorum]] of at least 33% to propose a change and above 50% to pass an update."''


*[https://www.rekt.news/curve-wars/ From] [[Rekt]] (8-7-2021):
*[https://www.rekt.news/curve-wars/ From] [[Rekt]] (8-7-2021):


''"The [https://twitter.com/CurveFinance/status/1297537492678332417?s=20 response] from Curve takes on much more meaning when you consider who controls the 0x431 wallet. Nansen lists [https://etherscan.io/address/0x431e81e5dfb5a24541b5ff8762bdef3f32f96354 0x431] as being the first [[wallet]] to farm [[YEarn (YFI)|YFI]]. As well as holding a large amount of [[Keep3r Network (KPR)|K3PR]], this wallet is also now voting to increase the gauge weight of the [[Fantom (FTM)|Fantom]] pool, so perhaps you can draw your own conclusions."''
''"The [https://twitter.com/CurveFinance/status/1297537492678332417?s=20 response] from Curve takes on much more meaning when you consider who controls the 0x431 wallet. [[Nansen]] lists [https://etherscan.io/address/0x431e81e5dfb5a24541b5ff8762bdef3f32f96354 0x431] as being the first [[wallet]] to [[farm]] [[YEarn (YFI)|YFI]]. As well as holding a large amount of [[Keep3r Network (KPR)|K3PR]], this wallet is also now voting to increase the gauge weight of the [[Fantom (FTM)|Fantom]] pool, so perhaps you can draw your own conclusions."''


=== veCRV Whitelist ===
=== veCRV Whitelist ===
Line 118: Line 139:
*[https://www.rekt.news/curve-wars/ From] [[Rekt]] (8-7-2021):
*[https://www.rekt.news/curve-wars/ From] [[Rekt]] (8-7-2021):


''For a protocol to use veCRV, they must be listed on Curve’s “SmartWalletWhitelist” contract. As veCRV from smart contract addresses can be transferred between owners, smart wallets go through a whitelisting process in order to prevent abuse. Currently, only Yearn, Stake DAO, and Convex are on this [https://gov.curve.fi/t/cip-57-whitelist-the-convex-protocol/1654 list]. At a CRV token price of $2, a protocol must attract around $130 M worth of veCRV (30% of the supply) to become whitelisted on Curve. However, the whitelist is not easy to access, even if the funds are available. There have been [https://gov.curve.fi/t/whitelist-the-frax-curve-amo-contract/1820 multiple] [https://gov.curve.fi/t/scip-5-pickle-whitelist/1011 failed] [https://gov.curve.fi/c/proposals/8 proposals], which were turned down for not having enough direct benefit to the Curve protocol or its token holders.''
''For a protocol to use veCRV, they must be listed on Curve’s “SmartWalletWhitelist” contract. As veCRV from [[Smart Contract|smart contract]] addresses can be transferred between owners, smart [[wallets]] go through a whitelisting process in order to prevent abuse. Currently, only Yearn, [[Stake]] DAO, and Convex are on this [https://gov.curve.fi/t/cip-57-whitelist-the-convex-protocol/1654 list]. At a CRV token price of $2, a protocol must attract around $130 M worth of veCRV (30% of the supply) to become whitelisted on Curve. However, the [[whitelist]] is not easy to access, even if the funds are available. There have been [https://gov.curve.fi/t/whitelist-the-frax-curve-amo-contract/1820 multiple] [https://gov.curve.fi/t/scip-5-pickle-whitelist/1011 failed] [https://gov.curve.fi/c/proposals/8 proposals], which were turned down for not having enough direct benefit to the Curve protocol or its token holders.''


* From [[Footprint Analytics]](8-2021): a visual in-depth [https://www.footprint.network/dashboard/294-curve-dashboard?days=past3months~&name=curve&chain=Ethereum&chain=Fantom&chain=xDai&chain=Polygon&chain=Arbitrum&chain=Avalanche&chain=Harmony&pool=3pool dashboard for Curve]
* From [[Footprint Analytics]](8-2021): a visual in-depth [https://www.footprint.network/dashboard/294-curve-dashboard?days=past3months~&name=curve&chain=Ethereum&chain=Fantom&chain=xDai&chain=Polygon&chain=Arbitrum&chain=Avalanche&chain=Harmony&pool=3pool dashboard for Curve]
Line 137: Line 158:
=== Launch ===
=== Launch ===
* [https://twitter.com/CurveFinance/status/1294088489118715905?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1294088489118715905%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdecrypt.co%2F38708%2Fanonymous-defi-user-deploys-curve-crv-token-early From] Curve's [[twitter]] (14-8-2020):
* [https://twitter.com/CurveFinance/status/1294088489118715905?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1294088489118715905%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdecrypt.co%2F38708%2Fanonymous-defi-user-deploys-curve-crv-token-early From] Curve's [[twitter]] (14-8-2020):
"''Someone deployed $CRV based on [[smart contracts]] we had published on [[github]], front-running our efforts. While we initially were skeptical, it appeared to be an acceptable deployment with correct code, data and admin keys. Due to the token/[[DAO]] getting traction, we had to adopt it."''
"''Someone deployed $CRV based on [[smart contracts]] we had published on [[github]], [[front-running]] our efforts. While we initially were skeptical, it appeared to be an acceptable deployment with correct code, data and [[admin keys]]. Due to the token/[[DAO]] getting traction, we had to adopt it."''
* More info on the premature launch can be [https://decrypt.co/38708/anonymous-defi-user-deploys-curve-crv-token-early read here] (14-8-2020).
* More info on the premature launch can be [https://decrypt.co/38708/anonymous-defi-user-deploys-curve-crv-token-early read here] (14-8-2020).


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"''The current proposal suggests CRV will be issued with a supply of 1B CRV which will be gradually inflated to a max supply of 3.03B Curve. Inflation is set to be the highest in the first year and scale up over time, suggesting early adopters will see the most upside from protocol usage. Just as with [[Compound]] and [[Balancer]], CRV will be earned by those who [[Liquidity mining|provide liquidity]] to the protocol."''
"''The current proposal suggests CRV will be issued with a supply of 1B CRV which will be gradually inflated to a max supply of 3.03B Curve. Inflation is set to be the highest in the first year and scale up over time, suggesting early adopters will see the most upside from protocol usage. Just as with [[Compound]] and [[Balancer]], CRV will be earned by those who [[Liquidity mining|provide liquidity]] to the protocol."''
* From their [https://guides.curve.fi/crv-launches-curve-dao-and-crv/ website] (16-8-2020):
* From their [https://guides.curve.fi/crv-launches-curve-dao-and-crv/ website] (16-8-2020):
"''The total supply of 3.03b is distributed as such:''
"''The total supply of 3.03b is [[distributed]] as such:''
# ''62% to liquidity providers''
# ''62% to liquidity providers''
# ''30% to shareholders (team and investors) with 2-4 years vesting''
# ''30% to shareholders (team and investors) with 2-4 years vesting''
Line 165: Line 186:
"''Curve passed an unanimous [[governance]] vote to distribute $3M worth of protocol fees to CRV holders staked into the CurveDAO over the weekend."''
"''Curve passed an unanimous [[governance]] vote to distribute $3M worth of protocol fees to CRV holders staked into the CurveDAO over the weekend."''
* [https://www.coindesk.com/curve-finance-fees-governance-token From] [[CoinDesk]] (30-11-2020):
* [https://www.coindesk.com/curve-finance-fees-governance-token From] [[CoinDesk]] (30-11-2020):
"''The protocol will continue to disburse fees on a weekly basis following this initial payout, Curve CEO Michael Egorov told CoinDesk.''
"''The protocol will continue to disburse fees on a weekly basis following this initial payout, Curve CEO Michael Egorov told [[Coindesk|CoinDesk]].''


''In order to vote, users must stake CRV tokens to the protocol’s voting contract which then supplies users with veCRV, creating a kind of voting escrow. Since September, veCRV holders have earned half of the 0.04% trading fee the protocol levies, with the other half going to [[liquidity providers]]."''
''In order to vote, users must stake CRV tokens to the protocol’s voting contract which then supplies users with veCRV, creating a kind of voting escrow. Since September, veCRV holders have earned half of the 0.04% trading fee the protocol levies, with the other half going to [[liquidity providers]]."''
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* Has CRV and veCRV, from [[Bankless DAO (BANK)|Bankless]] (17-6-2021):
* Has CRV and veCRV, from [[Bankless DAO (BANK)|Bankless]] (17-6-2021):


''"Although it can be held like any other asset, tokenholders can lock their CRV to access the full benefits of the asset. Locking is the process of staking CRV tokens within Curve for a period of time, between one week to four years, in order to receive vote-escrowed CRV (veCRV).  It should be noted that this process '''cannot be reversed''', meaning that once you convert CRV to veCRV, you '''will not''' have access to your underlying tokens until the lockup period ends. In addition, veCRV is '''non-transferrable'''.''
''"Although it can be held like any other asset, tokenholders can lock their CRV to access the full benefits of the asset. Locking is the process of [[staking]] CRV tokens within Curve for a period of time, between one week to four years, in order to receive vote-escrowed CRV (veCRV).  It should be noted that this process '''cannot be reversed''', meaning that once you convert CRV to veCRV, you '''will not''' have access to your underlying tokens until the lockup period ends. In addition, veCRV is '''non-transferrable'''.''


''To incentivize longer lockups, the amount of veCRV you’ll receive is proportional to how long you decide to lock your CRV. For instance, you’ll receive 1 veCRV for every CRV you decide to lock for four years, 0.50 veCRV for every CRV locked for two years, 0.25 veCRV per CRV for one year, and 0.02 veCRV per CRV locked for one month.''  
''To incentivize longer lockups, the amount of veCRV you’ll receive is proportional to how long you decide to lock your CRV. For instance, you’ll receive 1 veCRV for every CRV you decide to lock for four years, 0.50 veCRV for every CRV locked for two years, 0.25 veCRV per CRV for one year, and 0.02 veCRV per CRV locked for one month.''  
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*[https://decrypt.co/40893/swerve-forks-from-unfair-defi-exchange-curve From] [[Decrypt]] (4-9-2020):
*[https://decrypt.co/40893/swerve-forks-from-unfair-defi-exchange-curve From] [[Decrypt]] (4-9-2020):


''"At least one person was able to farm CRV for hours while others waited for confirmation from the Curve team that the contracts were safe. Some skeptical users assumed an illicit [[pre-mine]]. It [also] emerged that the development team owns a [https://twitter.com/SwerveFinance/status/1301619585976807428 majority of governance] tokens."''
''"At least one person was able to farm CRV for hours while others waited for [[confirmation]] from the Curve team that the contracts were safe. Some skeptical users assumed an illicit [[pre-mine]]. It [also] emerged that the development team owns a [https://twitter.com/SwerveFinance/status/1301619585976807428 majority of governance] tokens."''


* [https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/is-convex-the-yfi-killer?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMzk3OTAwLCJwb3N0X2lkIjozNzY3NjI2MSwiXyI6IitrN3VtIiwiaWF0IjoxNjI0MTk5MDY0LCJleHAiOjE2MjQyMDI2NjQsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0xNjAxNSIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.dDchp84ZUeGS7R1QOxqfq From] [[Bankless DAO (BANK)|Bankless]] (17-6-2021):
* [https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/is-convex-the-yfi-killer?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMzk3OTAwLCJwb3N0X2lkIjozNzY3NjI2MSwiXyI6IitrN3VtIiwiaWF0IjoxNjI0MTk5MDY0LCJleHAiOjE2MjQyMDI2NjQsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0xNjAxNSIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.dDchp84ZUeGS7R1QOxqfq From] [[Bankless DAO (BANK)|Bankless]] (17-6-2021):
Line 201: Line 222:
== Tech ==
== Tech ==
* [[Whitepaper]] can be found [https://www.curve.fi/stableswap-paper.pdf here] (10-11-2019). The whitepaper of their AMM with Dynamic Peg (aka V2) can be read [https://curve.fi/files/crypto-pools-paper.pdf here] (9-6-2021).
* [[Whitepaper]] can be found [https://www.curve.fi/stableswap-paper.pdf here] (10-11-2019). The whitepaper of their AMM with Dynamic Peg (aka V2) can be read [https://curve.fi/files/crypto-pools-paper.pdf here] (9-6-2021).
* Code can be viewed [insert here].
* Code can be viewed [https://github.com/curvefi here]. From [[DeFi Safety]] (31-1-2022):
''"At 898 commits, this repo is almost as endless as Curve's logo."''


=== Implementations ===
=== Implementations ===


* Built on: [[Ethereum]], [[Synthetix]] (19-1-2021) "''Curve [https://twitter.com/CurveFinance/status/1350815884521185280 now] allows you to use [[Synthetix]] to do cross-asset swaps with minimal slippage and fees."'' [[Equilibrium]] is also [https://www.coindesk.com/curve-finance-defi-polkadot-equilibrium building] a cross-chain implementation of Curve to run on its [[Polkadot]] parachain (10-2-2021).
* Built on: [[Ethereum]], [[Synthetix]] (19-1-2021) "''Curve [https://twitter.com/CurveFinance/status/1350815884521185280 now] allows you to use [[Synthetix]] to do cross-asset [[swaps]] with minimal slippage and fees."'' [[Equilibrium]] is also [https://www.coindesk.com/curve-finance-defi-polkadot-equilibrium building] a [[cross-chain]] implementation of Curve to run on its [[Polkadot]] parachain (10-2-2021).
*[https://twitter.com/CurveFinance/status/1384480999044788224 Deployed] on [[Polygon (MATIC)|Polygon]] (20-4-2021). [https://defillama.substack.com/p/defi-deep-dive-8-curve-finance?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMzk3OTAwLCJwb3N0X2lkIjozMzcxOTQyNSwiXyI6IitrN3VtIiwiaWF0IjoxNjI0MTk4ODU2LCJleHAiOjE2MjQyMDI0NTYsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0zMTMzOTQiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.wXnIBW2KFhEG8p2Qu And] [[Fantom (FTM)|Fantom]] (11-6-2021).
*[https://twitter.com/CurveFinance/status/1384480999044788224 Deployed] on [[Polygon (MATIC)|Polygon]] (20-4-2021). [https://defillama.substack.com/p/defi-deep-dive-8-curve-finance?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMzk3OTAwLCJwb3N0X2lkIjozMzcxOTQyNSwiXyI6IitrN3VtIiwiaWF0IjoxNjI0MTk4ODU2LCJleHAiOjE2MjQyMDI0NTYsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0zMTMzOTQiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.wXnIBW2KFhEG8p2Qu And] [[Fantom (FTM)|Fantom]] (11-6-2021). [https://twitter.com/CurveFinance/status/1483160458618093572?s=20 Deployed] on [[Optimism]] (18-1-2022).
*Announced a deployed on [[Avalanche (AVAX)|Avalanche]] and taking part in the [https://twitter.com/avalancheavax/status/1427994599847563265 160M liquidity mining] program (18-8-2021).
*Announced a deployed on [[Avalanche (AVAX)|Avalanche]] and taking part in the [https://twitter.com/avalancheavax/status/1427994599847563265 160M liquidity mining] program (18-8-2021).
*[https://ournetwork.substack.com/p/our-network-issue-85?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMzk3OTAwLCJwb3N0X2lkIjo0MDI3NjEyOCwiXyI6IitrN3VtIiwiaWF0IjoxNjI5NzAxNzUzLCJleHAiOjE2Mjk3MDUzNTMsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0yMTM2MiIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.DXVcSB0Bg2jjXAdqf2nUah-FYwH From] [[Our Network]] (21-8-2021):
*[https://ournetwork.substack.com/p/our-network-issue-85?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMzk3OTAwLCJwb3N0X2lkIjo0MDI3NjEyOCwiXyI6IitrN3VtIiwiaWF0IjoxNjI5NzAxNzUzLCJleHAiOjE2Mjk3MDUzNTMsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0yMTM2MiIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.DXVcSB0Bg2jjXAdqf2nUah-FYwH From] [[Our Network]] (21-8-2021):


''"The majority of the liquidity, or 93%, is represented by Ethereum. Polygon ranks in the second place with an amount of $542M, a 5% of the volume on Ethereum."''
''"The majority of the liquidity, or 93%, is represented by Ethereum. [[Polygon]] ranks in the second place with an amount of $542M, a 5% of the volume on Ethereum."''


=== How it works ===
=== How it works ===
Line 216: Line 238:
* From [https://cryptobriefing.com/defi-project-spotlight-curve-finance/ Crypto Briefing] (14-8-2020):
* From [https://cryptobriefing.com/defi-project-spotlight-curve-finance/ Crypto Briefing] (14-8-2020):


''"Curve Finance is an automated market maker ([[AMM]]) designed to facilitate low slippage swaps between tokens with similar prices. Dollar pegged stablecoins like [[DAI]], [[USDT]], and [[USDC]] or [[BTC]]-pegged tokens like [[Synthetix Network Tokens (SNX)|sBTC]], [[REN (REN)|RenBTC]], and [[WBTC]] can be traded for one another at the best prices. Curve was developed as an alternative to trading stablecoins on general-purpose [[DEX|DEXes]] like [[Uniswap]], whose algorithm isn’t optimized for such trades."''
''"Curve Finance is an [[automated market maker]] ([[AMM]]) designed to facilitate low slippage swaps between tokens with similar prices. Dollar pegged stablecoins like [[DAI]], [[USDT]], and [[USDC]] or [[BTC]]-pegged tokens like [[Synthetix Network Tokens (SNX)|sBTC]], [[REN (REN)|RenBTC]], and [[WBTC]] can be traded for one another at the best prices. Curve was developed as an alternative to trading stablecoins on general-purpose [[DEX|DEXes]] like [[Uniswap]], whose algorithm isn’t optimized for such trades."''


=== Fees ===
=== Fees ===
Line 226: Line 248:
''"Curve has continued to ship new features and product upgrades such as adding virtually one new Curvepool per month, enhanced swap interfaces and automatic staking onramps for liquidity incentives like Synthetix.''
''"Curve has continued to ship new features and product upgrades such as adding virtually one new Curvepool per month, enhanced swap interfaces and automatic staking onramps for liquidity incentives like Synthetix.''


''This cadence is best highlighted by Curve’s [https://www.curve.fi/integrations integrations] with top [[DEX]] aggregators like [[1inch]], [[Paraswap]] and [[DEX.ag]] in tandem with asset management partners like [[Zapper]], [[Zerion]] and [[InstaDapp]]."''
''This [[cadence]] is best highlighted by Curve’s [https://www.curve.fi/integrations integrations] with top [[DEX]] aggregators like [[1inch]], [[Paraswap]] and [[DEX.ag]] in tandem with asset management partners like [[Zapper]], [[Zerion]] and [[InstaDapp]]."''


*From [[CoinDesk (DESK)|CoinDesk]] (10-6-2021):
*From [[CoinDesk (DESK)|CoinDesk]] (10-6-2021):
Line 240: Line 262:
* From [https://cryptobriefing.com/defi-project-spotlight-curve-finance/ Crypto Briefing] (14-8-2020):
* From [https://cryptobriefing.com/defi-project-spotlight-curve-finance/ Crypto Briefing] (14-8-2020):


''"Just like [[Uniswap]] and [[Balancer]], anyone can deposit tokens in Curve and become a [[liquidity provider]]. Users who do this are rewarded with fees accrued from token swaps. When [[yEarn]] Finance announced liquidity mining, there was a burst of activity on Curve. This is because yEarn users had to liquidity mine with the yCRV token. yCRV is the pool token for the Curve market consisting of yEarn’s wrapped DAI, USDC, TUSD, and USDT tokens."''
''"Just like [[Uniswap]] and [[Balancer]], anyone can deposit tokens in Curve and become a [[liquidity provider]]. Users who do this are rewarded with fees accrued from token swaps. When [[yEarn]] Finance announced liquidity [[mining]], there was a burst of activity on Curve. This is because yEarn users had to liquidity [[mine]] with the yCRV token. yCRV is the pool token for the Curve market consisting of yEarn’s [[wrapped]] DAI, USDC, [[TUSD]], and USDT tokens."''


=== Scaling ===
=== Scaling ===
Line 253: Line 275:
* From [https://cryptobriefing.com/defi-project-spotlight-curve-finance/ Crypto Briefing] (14-8-2020):
* From [https://cryptobriefing.com/defi-project-spotlight-curve-finance/ Crypto Briefing] (14-8-2020):


''"1inch exchange aggregates [[liquidity]] from Curve pools to ensure that users on their platform are getting the best prices possible. Another integration with various DeFi lending and borrowing platforms like [[Aave]], [[dYdX]], and [[Compound]], also see Curve users earn interest on top of their trading fees. So, on top of the 0.04% on fees that [[LPs]] collect, they are also earning healthy interest rates. In many ways, Curve Finance fulfills the “Money Lego” meme by interacting with other legos in the ecosystem. Even without this composability, Curve still serves arbitrage traders better than many of its competitors."''
''"1inch exchange aggregates [[liquidity]] from Curve pools to ensure that users on their platform are getting the best prices possible. Another integration with various DeFi lending and borrowing platforms like [[Aave]], [[dYdX]], and [[Compound]], also see Curve users earn interest on top of their trading fees. So, on top of the 0.04% on fees that [[LPs]] collect, they are also earning healthy interest rates. In [[MANY|many]] ways, Curve Finance fulfills the “Money Lego” meme by interacting with other legos in the ecosystem. Even without this composability, Curve still serves [[arbitrage]] traders better than many of its competitors."''


=== Other Details ===
=== Other Details ===
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== Oracle Method ==
== Oracle Method ==
* ''"The oracles don't act like you think they do. They are far more manipulatable than expected."'' ([https://twitter.com/danielvf/status/1729966217710956991 30-11-2023]). Their response [https://twitter.com/CurveFinance/status/1730111238653288450 was]:
''"Maybe brief summary: - Obsolete stableswap oracles are not safe to use (CURRENT ones are SAFE); - If you expect your stable to depeg <0.5 - keep it SECOND in the list of coins (say, WETH,frxETH instead of frxETH,WETH); - Learn how oracle works before using!"''
*From [[DeFi Safety]] (31-1-2022):
''"Curve [https://curve.readthedocs.io/factory-oracles.html?highlight=oracle uses] [[TWAP]] [[oracles]]. Curve details front-running mitigation in their [https://curve.readthedocs.io/exchange-cross-asset-swaps.html?highlight=front%20running#front-running-considerations docs]. Flashloan countermeasures are [https://curve.readthedocs.io/dao-ownership.html?highlight=flashloan#withdraing-and-burning-fees implemented]."''


== Privacy Method ==
== Privacy Method ==
Line 267: Line 295:


== Their Other Projects ==
== Their Other Projects ==
=== crvUSD ===
* When crvUSD got deployed, it got redeployed twice after [https://twitter.com/CurveFinance/status/1654060060090179585 missing fees] (4th of May)) & [https://twitter.com/CurveFinance/status/1654214766104027138 high gas usage] (5th of May)
* Curve announced their own [[Stablecoins|stablecoin]] in Q3 of 2022. Their [https://github.com/curvefi/curve-stablecoin/blob/master/doc/curve-stablecoin.pdf whitepaper] gave more insights to how it would work, [https://thedefiant.io/curve-crvusd-whitepaper from] [[The Defiant]] (23-11-2022):
''"Like other overcollateralized stablecoins, the dollar-pegged crvUSD will be available to users who deposit other crypto assets as collateral. According to the white paper, crvUSD will use a novel lending-liquidating [[Automated Market Makers (AMM)|AMM]] algorithm, or LLAMMA, to protect borrowers whose collateral drops below the liquidation price.''
''As the [[Ethereum (ETH)|ETH]] used as collateral drops in value, approaching its liquidation price, the protocol will convert it to US Dollars; as the price of ETH rises, the dollars are converted to ETH.''
''“This transforms liquidations from a jagged, all-at-once, all-or-nothing affair with huge slippage losses,” according to crypto developer foobar, “into a smooth transitioning that could even earn the collateral holder swap fees if they weather the volatility.”"''
== Roadmap ==
== Roadmap ==
* Can be found [Insert link here].
* Can be found [Insert link here].
Line 273: Line 313:
* "''At the [https://cryptobriefing.com/curve-finance-fixing-stablecoin-slippage-defi/ time of writing] (3-2-2020), Curve has just under $650,000 of liquidity, with that number split almost equally between [[DAI]] and [[USDC]]."''
* "''At the [https://cryptobriefing.com/curve-finance-fixing-stablecoin-slippage-defi/ time of writing] (3-2-2020), Curve has just under $650,000 of liquidity, with that number split almost equally between [[DAI]] and [[USDC]]."''
* Daily volume [https://twitter.com/CurveFinance/status/1253249530209824768 reached] $4.5M (23-4-2020).
* Daily volume [https://twitter.com/CurveFinance/status/1253249530209824768 reached] $4.5M (23-4-2020).
* Curve.fi [http://url1368.setprotocol.com/ls/click?upn=G-2B4ul8Zt06Ag5NKT1Rbz5fxLlfbKEhcjfk3DUBSrzWLQ9ttAzrJ3yi6lcOOAXp-2FEXzZcO-2BJNWW1PFXYN673ysy1T4Yu68jutGEENzX7bB6M-3DqpWP_8XqzrkwEwWxPZw-2FPSUUQwVQsqTi6Upy9z-2FPzoJ0pTQaROCfryaHtpkT8vC0vHsCaeGTHa0d4S82jDTriZSsmfq0Bt-2BFJZKhsyKpi09p-2BCIkZm9w1BUXWaCL7EcITf2SbONZ51VPui7MjblMY-2BX6sbiuooa6Wmq5eTV9GkXDz2-2B9oka8k8PMnMsxFoZFwD2mJj4bMSYbO5mE2REBrw-2Fuze6SHyg-2FrhIZPyJ2YwrsOG2VFcfjSdbNecoHkbX-2Fm-2BnMWAMYjbMtSjw7d-2FSwge28NY8gt9UaTYT0xOkrQ2BZposarD8mUtkFlbnpT5OV0nH-2B7VEIYVENtoJ1JTLZ5-2Fh9tGxa-2BsR4OZXMVVLJ2Zj-2B4Tnj8cYLvR4yWUAa30BfkJLZVRc3xQTsa6uYtbpHEezKpXTYODIpzWOsU3EBLlSQe-2BvwKiJCeY59khzCvXSmzF5aq-2FB8-2FA5KVEgVR4yzm6QY2S-2Fmb2j46CJT4oyEgno5vyRlVB-2BLlBUSrhkwNmXqAPFWZ2RQyBc37mav62Dqhg11k8bAf8CYQLj74wIrlVPJyKwmXZEY4GNDHmOrpfG7ggeS4lOKq7Js-2BT4LGsswskSiijLY-2Fegy-2FDoSCyzD96HdHa-2FQD5LIn1-2Bvxa36wXfydv8XoHVGIU1pG7RY2u-2BgzdxPIKbtqEQO20BH6mMwiJJBDn-2FBx-2BLvuvF14roR4J9QfU2d0vzfKO9rSD9AiwkqCycFXh4bfbn7TCbiZt5VL-2FXmlZzQrPeVEQnpjN1wKFr-2Fhg16O7rHPS-2BZLd6jV4tTWNq6EVSKaYlVM3vCsjV6t9wdbA1MgDPJJfy3jF4seFs7DG9bmulnlOjgiJL9CuOU5xZsFscoAGy5TUuHpr6VKz9OfUtXtaZBLAYUICsIGF7SdFBejNZy1qdg-2BcRM2Sz12kSKmKW-2BNhqYM1K9qZ5pbBQQ48b-2FSUTAwfPqWyc-2BjwOUD6UM-2B-2FW36R8ORjk980u11M-2FJnIIeBec8471KxTLi7WXfiqxlZF87lj63C5geRQpkzKywY did $62 million] in daily volume in the week of 20-6-2020.
* [[Curve.fi]] [http://url1368.setprotocol.com/ls/click?upn=G-2B4ul8Zt06Ag5NKT1Rbz5fxLlfbKEhcjfk3DUBSrzWLQ9ttAzrJ3yi6lcOOAXp-2FEXzZcO-2BJNWW1PFXYN673ysy1T4Yu68jutGEENzX7bB6M-3DqpWP_8XqzrkwEwWxPZw-2FPSUUQwVQsqTi6Upy9z-2FPzoJ0pTQaROCfryaHtpkT8vC0vHsCaeGTHa0d4S82jDTriZSsmfq0Bt-2BFJZKhsyKpi09p-2BCIkZm9w1BUXWaCL7EcITf2SbONZ51VPui7MjblMY-2BX6sbiuooa6Wmq5eTV9GkXDz2-2B9oka8k8PMnMsxFoZFwD2mJj4bMSYbO5mE2REBrw-2Fuze6SHyg-2FrhIZPyJ2YwrsOG2VFcfjSdbNecoHkbX-2Fm-2BnMWAMYjbMtSjw7d-2FSwge28NY8gt9UaTYT0xOkrQ2BZposarD8mUtkFlbnpT5OV0nH-2B7VEIYVENtoJ1JTLZ5-2Fh9tGxa-2BsR4OZXMVVLJ2Zj-2B4Tnj8cYLvR4yWUAa30BfkJLZVRc3xQTsa6uYtbpHEezKpXTYODIpzWOsU3EBLlSQe-2BvwKiJCeY59khzCvXSmzF5aq-2FB8-2FA5KVEgVR4yzm6QY2S-2Fmb2j46CJT4oyEgno5vyRlVB-2BLlBUSrhkwNmXqAPFWZ2RQyBc37mav62Dqhg11k8bAf8CYQLj74wIrlVPJyKwmXZEY4GNDHmOrpfG7ggeS4lOKq7Js-2BT4LGsswskSiijLY-2Fegy-2FDoSCyzD96HdHa-2FQD5LIn1-2Bvxa36wXfydv8XoHVGIU1pG7RY2u-2BgzdxPIKbtqEQO20BH6mMwiJJBDn-2FBx-2BLvuvF14roR4J9QfU2d0vzfKO9rSD9AiwkqCycFXh4bfbn7TCbiZt5VL-2FXmlZzQrPeVEQnpjN1wKFr-2Fhg16O7rHPS-2BZLd6jV4tTWNq6EVSKaYlVM3vCsjV6t9wdbA1MgDPJJfy3jF4seFs7DG9bmulnlOjgiJL9CuOU5xZsFscoAGy5TUuHpr6VKz9OfUtXtaZBLAYUICsIGF7SdFBejNZy1qdg-2BcRM2Sz12kSKmKW-2BNhqYM1K9qZ5pbBQQ48b-2FSUTAwfPqWyc-2BjwOUD6UM-2B-2FW36R8ORjk980u11M-2FJnIIeBec8471KxTLi7WXfiqxlZF87lj63C5geRQpkzKywY did $62 million] in daily volume in the week of 20-6-2020.


* [https://thedefiant.substack.com/p/examining-the-explosive-growth-of-8c8?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMzk3OTAwLCJwb3N0X2lkIjo2MjE2MDcsIl8iOiIwb3pkOCIsImlhdCI6MTU5NDEyNDg4MywiZXhwIjoxNTk0MTI4NDgzLCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMTEyNTkiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.CZACv1sYPq2W6dTEuLz6hBPppwYOrK85Bp3ZEiTeRgA From] [[The Defiant]] (2-7-2020):
* [https://thedefiant.substack.com/p/examining-the-explosive-growth-of-8c8?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMzk3OTAwLCJwb3N0X2lkIjo2MjE2MDcsIl8iOiIwb3pkOCIsImlhdCI6MTU5NDEyNDg4MywiZXhwIjoxNTk0MTI4NDgzLCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMTEyNTkiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.CZACv1sYPq2W6dTEuLz6hBPppwYOrK85Bp3ZEiTeRgA From] [[The Defiant]] (2-7-2020):
''"Volume on Curve Finance jumped by $213M on the week [[COMP]] distribution launched, a ~16x increase from the previous week, as farmers scrambled to get their hands on USDT to maximize their earnings. In the past two weeks, Curve’s cumulative volume has grown over 120% to just over $550M at the time of writing from $250M on June 15th. The hunt for CRV combined with a top trading venue for tokens which yield the highest APYs has propelled Curve to the 2nd slot amongst all DEXs, from 7th before the yield farming boom started, sitting behind [[Uniswap|Uniswap’s]] $142M, at $82M worth of volume in the past week [https://explore.duneanalytics.com/dashboard/dex-metrics according] to [[Dune Analytics]].''
''"Volume on Curve Finance jumped by $213M on the week [[COMP]] distribution launched, a ~16x increase from the previous week, as farmers scrambled to get their hands on USDT to maximize their earnings. In the past two weeks, Curve’s cumulative volume has grown over 120% to just over $550M at the time of writing from $250M on June 15th. The hunt for CRV combined with a top trading venue for tokens which yield the highest APYs has propelled Curve to the 2nd slot amongst all [[DEXs]], from 7th before the [[yield farming]] boom started, sitting behind [[Uniswap|Uniswap’s]] $142M, at $82M worth of volume in the past week [https://explore.duneanalytics.com/dashboard/dex-metrics according] to [[Dune Analytics]].''
* [https://ournetwork.substack.com/p/our-network-issue-35?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMzk3OTAwLCJwb3N0X2lkIjo4NzcwNzgsIl8iOiJ3dW84NCIsImlhdCI6MTU5ODI2MDEyOCwiZXhwIjoxNTk4MjYzNzI4LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMjEzNjIiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.Hf6vUe1mRrdVnWDBZZPeQrHskmURJSjZ0oP7bL3bZkU From] [[Our Network]] #35 (21-8-2020):
* [https://ournetwork.substack.com/p/our-network-issue-35?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMzk3OTAwLCJwb3N0X2lkIjo4NzcwNzgsIl8iOiJ3dW84NCIsImlhdCI6MTU5ODI2MDEyOCwiZXhwIjoxNTk4MjYzNzI4LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMjEzNjIiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.Hf6vUe1mRrdVnWDBZZPeQrHskmURJSjZ0oP7bL3bZkU From] [[Our Network]] #35 (21-8-2020):
"''On the 13th of August, total value locked ([[TVL]]) on Curve Finance peaked $263m. As the news of the CRV launch spread, TVL grew rapidly to reach a new all time high of $825m by the next day and eventually to $1b three days later to make Curve Finance the 3rd DeFi protocol to reach the milestone. Curve Finance also crossed $2.5b in cumulative volume. ([https://explore.duneanalytics.com/public/dashboards/AekBPw7tPLCfEmDdPgc2MPV5N19BXlzrS7I9OnUa Source])"''
"''On the 13th of August, [[total value locked]] ([[TVL]]) on Curve Finance peaked $263m. As the news of the CRV launch spread, TVL grew rapidly to reach a new all time high of $825m by the next day and eventually to $1b three days later to make Curve Finance the 3rd DeFi protocol to reach the milestone. Curve Finance also crossed $2.5b in cumulative volume. ([https://explore.duneanalytics.com/public/dashboards/AekBPw7tPLCfEmDdPgc2MPV5N19BXlzrS7I9OnUa Source])"''
* It had a 11% DEX [https://doseofdefi.substack.com/p/dex-rising?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMzk3OTAwLCJwb3N0X2lkIjoxMDA3NzA2NiwiXyI6ImM5eFJuIiwiaWF0IjoxNjAyNzUxNDc0LCJleHAiOjE2MDI3NTUwNzQsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0yNTk5NyIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.xc97jt4AIV69NGFv3ttc7vddOikwfiApJYecWnB9j8A market share] as of 12-10-2020.
* It had a 11% DEX [https://doseofdefi.substack.com/p/dex-rising?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMzk3OTAwLCJwb3N0X2lkIjoxMDA3NzA2NiwiXyI6ImM5eFJuIiwiaWF0IjoxNjAyNzUxNDc0LCJleHAiOjE2MDI3NTUwNzQsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0yNTk5NyIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.xc97jt4AIV69NGFv3ttc7vddOikwfiApJYecWnB9j8A market share] as of 12-10-2020.
* From [[Delphi Digital]]'s [https://www.delphidigital.io/reports/best-of-delphi-research-oct-2020-2/ Monthly Research Recap] (10-2020):
* From [[Delphi Digital]]'s [https://www.delphidigital.io/reports/best-of-delphi-research-oct-2020-2/ Monthly Research Recap] (10-2020):
Line 292: Line 332:
*[https://defillama.substack.com/p/defi-deep-dive-8-curve-finance?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMzk3OTAwLCJwb3N0X2lkIjozMzcxOTQyNSwiXyI6IitrN3VtIiwiaWF0IjoxNjI0MTk4ODU2LCJleHAiOjE2MjQyMDI0NTYsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0zMTMzOTQiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.wXnIBW2KFhEG8p2Qu From] [[DeFi Llama]] (11-6-2021):
*[https://defillama.substack.com/p/defi-deep-dive-8-curve-finance?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMzk3OTAwLCJwb3N0X2lkIjozMzcxOTQyNSwiXyI6IitrN3VtIiwiaWF0IjoxNjI0MTk4ODU2LCJleHAiOjE2MjQyMDI0NTYsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0zMTMzOTQiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.wXnIBW2KFhEG8p2Qu From] [[DeFi Llama]] (11-6-2021):


''"Curve is not just a money factory. The existence of Curve’s stable and secure liquidity pools has allowed an entire ecosystem of DeFi projects and services to be built off of Curve’s backend. Curve operates a pool factory, allowing users to generate their own pools built on Curve’s infrastructure. Many sites within DeFi integrate directly with Curve pools to allow users to make transactions or earn yield on coins."''
''"Curve is not just a money factory. The existence of Curve’s stable and secure [[liquidity pools]] has allowed an entire ecosystem of DeFi projects and services to be built off of Curve’s backend. Curve operates a pool factory, allowing users to generate their own pools built on Curve’s infrastructure. Many sites within DeFi integrate directly with Curve pools to allow users to make [[transactions]] or earn yield on coins."''


*[[88mph]]; [https://defiprime.com/88mph says] they ''"are dependent on the success of other protocols"'' one of which is this one (25-2-2021).
*[[88mph]]; [https://defiprime.com/88mph says] they ''"are dependent on the success of other protocols"'' one of which is this one (25-2-2021).
Line 303: Line 343:
== Yearn and Curve's Relationship ==
== Yearn and Curve's Relationship ==
* From [[Delphi Digital]]'s [https://www.delphidigital.io/reports/best-of-delphi-research-oct-2020-2/ Monthly Research Recap] (10-2020):
* From [[Delphi Digital]]'s [https://www.delphidigital.io/reports/best-of-delphi-research-oct-2020-2/ Monthly Research Recap] (10-2020):
"''Both of these projects hit their stride over the past few months, having benefited from each other in a type of symbiotic relationship, although an argument could be made that Yearn was more parasitic in nature. Through its automated Vault strategies, Yearn drove large amounts of [[liquidity]] to Curve's stable liquidity pools. In return for these asset inflows, and as part of Curve's broader [[liquidity mining]] program, Yearn's strategies earned CRV, the [[governance]] token of Curve's [[DAO]]. The strategies were designed to market sell the CRV they earned and reinvest the proceeds generated back into their Vaults. The profitability of selling CRV, at previously much higher prices, enabled Yearn's Vault strategies to offer high yields, thus attracting even more liquidity, and to Curve as well. In a way, Curve was "paying" Yearn through the inflation of its token to help bootstrap its protocol by directing liquidity towards it. As the price of CRV has continued to fall, and Yearn strategy yields along with them, these dynamics are in a state of flux. Strategies that once sold all of the CRV they earned, are now setting aside and locking up 10% of it for 4 years, in order to boost their rewards and influence over Curve DAO."''
"''Both of these projects hit their stride over the past few months, having benefited from each other in a type of symbiotic relationship, although an argument could be made that Yearn was more parasitic in nature. Through its automated [[Vault]] strategies, Yearn drove large amounts of [[liquidity]] to Curve's stable liquidity pools. In return for these asset inflows, and as part of Curve's broader [[liquidity mining]] program, Yearn's strategies earned CRV, the [[governance]] token of Curve's [[DAO]]. The strategies were designed to market sell the CRV they earned and reinvest the proceeds generated back into their Vaults. The profitability of selling CRV, at previously much higher prices, enabled Yearn's Vault strategies to offer high yields, thus attracting even more liquidity, and to Curve as well. In a way, Curve was "paying" Yearn through the inflation of its token to help bootstrap its protocol by directing liquidity towards it. As the price of CRV has continued to fall, and Yearn strategy yields along with them, these dynamics are in a [[state]] of flux. Strategies that once sold all of the CRV they earned, are now setting aside and locking up 10% of it for 4 years, in order to boost their rewards and influence over Curve DAO."''


== Competition ==
== Competition ==
*[[Shell Protocol (SHELL)|Shell Protocol]], [[MStable (MTA)|mStable]], [[Uniswap]], [[Swerve (SWRV)|Swerve]] which is a [[fork]] of Curve, but 100% community owned. [[Frozen Yoghurt (FROYO)|Frozen Yogurt]] and [[Ellipsis.finance (EPS)|Ellipsis]] are two other Curve forks.
*[[Shell Protocol (SHELL)|Shell Protocol]], [[MStable (MTA)|mStable]], [[Uniswap]], [[Swerve (SWRV)|Swerve]] which is a [[fork]] of Curve, but 100% community owned. [[Frozen Yoghurt (FROYO)|Frozen Yogurt]] and [[Ellipsis.finance (EPS)|Ellipsis]] are two other Curve [[forks]].
* On why it is [https://medium.com/coinmonks/what-is-curve-finance-18c0b1448f43 better than] (27-4-2020) Uniswap:
* On why it is [https://medium.com/coinmonks/what-is-curve-finance-18c0b1448f43 better than] (27-4-2020) Uniswap:
''"On Uniswap, [[token]]-to-token trades are expensive. Tokens only trade directly against [[ETH]] so if you want to trade token A for token B, Uniswap will do two trades; Token A for ETH, and then ETH for Token B. This results in double the trading fees.''
''"On Uniswap, [[token]]-to-token trades are expensive. Tokens only trade directly against [[ETH]] so if you want to trade token A for token B, Uniswap will do two trades; Token A for ETH, and then ETH for Token B. This results in double the trading fees.''
Line 316: Line 356:
"''By changing its invariant from Uniswap in order to prioritise lower slippage for [[stablecoin]] traders, Curve is proving out to be a key venue for simple stablecoin swaps."''
"''By changing its invariant from Uniswap in order to prioritise lower slippage for [[stablecoin]] traders, Curve is proving out to be a key venue for simple stablecoin swaps."''


* From [https://cryptobriefing.com/defi-project-spotlight-curve-finance/ Crypto Briefing] (14-8-2020) on its difference with mStable:
* From [https://cryptobriefing.com/defi-project-spotlight-curve-finance/ Crypto Briefing] (14-8-2020) on its difference with [[mStable]]:


''"mStable is a pegged asset swapping protocol that shares many similarities to Curve. It has a basket for each asset (USD, BTC, etc.) and has tokens pegged to that asset inside the basket. Both mStable and Curve serve the unique market of swapping pegged tokens for one another.  mStable claims to offer “zero slippage swaps.” This is because of the protocol’s model prices each asset in a basket against every other on a one-for-one basis. Effectively, this means 1 USDT can be swapped for 1 DAI, even if the price of a single DAI is 1.02 USDT in the open market. Hence, prices on mStable are independent of the market, creating a ton of unique arbitrage opportunities. Curve, on the other hand, incorporates the active market price for an asset.''
''"mStable is a pegged asset swapping protocol that shares many similarities to Curve. It has a basket for each asset (USD, BTC, etc.) and has tokens pegged to that asset inside the basket. Both mStable and Curve serve the unique market of swapping pegged tokens for one another.  mStable claims to offer “zero slippage swaps.” This is because of the protocol’s model prices each asset in a basket against every other on a one-for-one basis. Effectively, this means 1 USDT can be swapped for 1 DAI, even if the price of a single DAI is 1.02 USDT in the open market. Hence, prices on mStable are independent of the market, creating a ton of unique arbitrage opportunities. Curve, on the other hand, incorporates the active market price for an asset.''
Line 324: Line 364:
* [[Saddle|Saddle Finance]] is a [[fork]] of Curve, which Curve holders didn't let go unnoticed (20-1-2021):
* [[Saddle|Saddle Finance]] is a [[fork]] of Curve, which Curve holders didn't let go unnoticed (20-1-2021):


''"The founders of Saddle Finance are closely linked to the [[Thesis]] project - creators of tBTC. veCRV holders expressed their views on the arrival of Saddle Finance by voting to reduce CRV rewards to the tBTC pool."''
''"The founders of Saddle Finance are closely linked to the [[Thesis]] project - creators of [[tBTC]]. veCRV holders expressed their views on the arrival of Saddle Finance by voting to reduce CRV rewards to the tBTC pool."''


*From [[CoinDesk (DESK)|CoinDesk]] (10-6-2021):
*From [[CoinDesk (DESK)|CoinDesk]] (10-6-2021):
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=== Pros ===
=== Pros ===
=== Cons ===
=== Cons ===
* Got accused of [https://theether.io/claim/the-curve-team-censors-their-community censoring] their community (7-11-2020):
* ''"The oracles don't act like you think they do. They are far more manipulatable than expected."'' ([https://twitter.com/danielvf/status/1729966217710956991 30-11-2023]).
"''The evidence is clear: the Curve team censors their community. From deleting posts on their governance form to removing signaling votes from [[Snapshot]], the Curve team has proven they are willing to censor ideas they do not like. A user named SF decided to post a proposal on snapshot and the Curve governance forum called "Stop Censorship & Embrace Transparency." In this [https://medium.com/coinmonks/why-do-we-tolerate-censorship-in-defi-5582aaa33cd proposal], SF called out Curve for censoring members of their Discord server.''''The Curve team responded by [https://medium.com/coinmonks/why-do-we-tolerate-censorship-in-defi-5582aaa33cd deleting] SF's account on their governance forum and [https://medium.com/coinmonks/why-do-we-tolerate-censorship-in-defi-5582aaa33cd removing] the proposal from the Snapshot UI so users could not participate in the vote."''
*Got accused of [https://theether.io/claim/the-curve-team-censors-their-community censoring] their community (7-11-2020):
"''The evidence is clear: the Curve team censors their community. From deleting posts on their governance form to removing signaling votes from [[Snapshot]], the Curve team has proven they are willing to censor ideas they do not like. A user named SF decided to post a proposal on snapshot and the Curve governance forum called "Stop Censorship & Embrace Transparency." In this [https://medium.com/coinmonks/why-do-we-tolerate-censorship-in-defi-5582aaa33cd proposal], SF called out Curve for censoring members of their [[Discord]] server.''''The Curve team responded by [https://medium.com/coinmonks/why-do-we-tolerate-censorship-in-defi-5582aaa33cd deleting] SF's account on their governance forum and [https://medium.com/coinmonks/why-do-we-tolerate-censorship-in-defi-5582aaa33cd removing] the proposal from the Snapshot UI so users could not participate in the vote."''


== Team, investors, Partnerships, etc. ==
== Team, investors, Partnerships, etc. ==
Line 341: Line 382:
* Full team can be found [here].
* Full team can be found [here].
*Swiss Stake GmbH (Switzerland)
*Swiss Stake GmbH (Switzerland)
* [[Michael Egorov]], the creator of Curve Finance and CTO at [[NuCypher]]
*Two team members are public and they self-report working for Curve (31-1-2022).
* [[Michael Egorov]], the creator of Curve Finance and CTO at [[NuCypher]]. Made around $100M on his allocation, bought mansions with his leveraged positions, which, when he got liquidated, he [https://x.com/newmichwill/status/1801255607137165390 found] [[OTC]] people for to buy it off of him.
* [https://defiweekly.substack.com/p/part-1-defi-madness-ft-curve-iearn Has] (3-3-2020) connections with [[iEarn]]. [[Andre Cronje]] from iEarn also says on his LinkdIn that he worked for/with Curve.
* [https://defiweekly.substack.com/p/part-1-defi-madness-ft-curve-iearn Has] (3-3-2020) connections with [[iEarn]]. [[Andre Cronje]] from iEarn also says on his LinkdIn that he worked for/with Curve.


Line 348: Line 390:
''"In 2020, Egorov started Curve Finance. Though it is still unclear the size of the team, Egorov confirmed in a [[Telegram]] conversation with Crypto Briefing that five other members join him. These include two developers, [[Angel Angelov]] and [[Ben Hauser]], and three community managers, “Charlie,” “Kendrick Lama,” and “Chris.”''
''"In 2020, Egorov started Curve Finance. Though it is still unclear the size of the team, Egorov confirmed in a [[Telegram]] conversation with Crypto Briefing that five other members join him. These include two developers, [[Angel Angelov]] and [[Ben Hauser]], and three community managers, “Charlie,” “Kendrick Lama,” and “Chris.”''


=== Investors ===
=== Funding ===
 
* [[Mechanism Capital]] [https://www.mechanism.capital/investments/ lists] them in their portfolio as of 15-5-2023.


=== Partners ===
=== Partners ===
* [https://medium.com/renproject/introducing-the-ren-alliance-fde594450113 Is part of] (2-3-2020) the first members of the [[Ren]] Alliance, as an Utility and Security member integrating RenVM or adding renBTC, renZEC, etc. plus running a Darknode. [https://medium.com/renproject/renvm-greycore-on-testnet-31747cc183c5 Will be] a greycore member (13-9-2021).
* [https://medium.com/renproject/introducing-the-ren-alliance-fde594450113 Is part of] (2-3-2020) the first members of the [[Ren]] Alliance, as an Utility and Security member integrating RenVM or adding renBTC, renZEC, etc. plus running a Darknode. [https://medium.com/renproject/renvm-greycore-on-testnet-31747cc183c5 Will be] a greycore member (13-9-2021).
* Is [https://cointelegraph.com/news/curve-aave-synthetix-and-7-others-join-global-defi-alliance part of] the Global DeFi Alliance, created by [[Huobi]] (15-9-2020).
* Is [https://cointelegraph.com/news/curve-aave-synthetix-and-7-others-join-global-defi-alliance part of] the Global [[DeFi Alliance]], created by [[Huobi]] (15-9-2020).
*[https://ethhub.substack.com/p/ethhub-weekly-148?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMzk3OTAwLCJwb3N0X2lkIjozMTI0MjIzOCwiXyI6ImM5eFJuIiwiaWF0IjoxNjEwNDM5NjE1LCJleHAiOjE2MTA0NDMyMTUsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0zOTEwIiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.4XzCDMWd6UdSVsNXUChllMlyTlnofNnSxHa5 Partners] with [[Alpha Homora]] (11-1-2021).
*[https://ethhub.substack.com/p/ethhub-weekly-148?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMzk3OTAwLCJwb3N0X2lkIjozMTI0MjIzOCwiXyI6ImM5eFJuIiwiaWF0IjoxNjEwNDM5NjE1LCJleHAiOjE2MTA0NDMyMTUsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0zOTEwIiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.4XzCDMWd6UdSVsNXUChllMlyTlnofNnSxHa5 Partners] with [[Alpha Homora]] (11-1-2021).
*Someone on the Curve team is [https://twitter.com/0xPolygon/status/1393256861315436546 one of] the [[Multi-Signature|multi-sig]] holders for the [[Polygon (MATIC)|Polygon]] [[Smart Contract (SC)|contracts]] (15-5-2021).
*Someone on the Curve team is [https://twitter.com/0xPolygon/status/1393256861315436546 one of] the [[Multi-Signature|multi-sig]] holders for the [[Polygon (MATIC)|Polygon]] [[Smart Contract (SC)|contracts]] (15-5-2021).
*Is [https://decrypt.co/79796/celo-aave-curve-sushi-launch-100-million-defi-initiative?utm_source=telegram&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=smt part of] the [[DeFi for the People]] innitiative by [[Celo (CELO)|Celo]] (31-8-2021).
*Is [https://decrypt.co/79796/celo-aave-curve-sushi-launch-100-million-defi-initiative?utm_source=telegram&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=smt part of] the [[DeFi for the People]] innitiative by [[Celo (CELO)|Celo]] (31-8-2021).
*Part of the [[Cross Chain Coalition]] ([https://crosschaindev.substack.com/p/cross-chain-weekly-21 10-2022]).


== (: ==
== (: ==
Line 362: Line 407:
Making these free wiki pages is fun but takes a lot of effort and time.
Making these free wiki pages is fun but takes a lot of effort and time.


If you have enjoyed reading, tips are appreciated :) This will help us to keep expanding this archive of information.
If you have enjoyed reading, tips are appreciated :) This will help us to [[keep]] expanding this archive of information.


[[ETH]] tip [[address]]: 0x83460bE5F218b1520B69D702cE60A1DE37dD8E31
[[ETH]] tip [[address]]: 0x83460bE5F218b1520B69D702cE60A1DE37dD8E31
[[Category:Companies/Organisations]]
[[Category:Coins/Tokens]]

Latest revision as of 09:53, 24 June 2024

Basics

  • Based in: Switzerland
  • Started in: Early 2020, had its token launch on 14-8-2020.
  • "Is improving (3-2-2020) slippage for DeFi stablecoin conversions, like DAI/USDC. If successful, the protocol would be more efficient than any other DEX." More explanation in the link.
  • From DeFi Weekly (3-3-2020):

"Curve Finance is an automated market maker protocol (an exchange that doesn't have an order-book and uses math to automatically determine the price) for just stable coins. People who provide stable coins to Curve earn trading fees and interest on the liquidity they've provided."

History

  • Curve Finance began as a crypto swapping platform, offering traders low slippage trades across major stablecoins. It had no native token at first.

"Besides its surging activity, another interesting aspect about Curve is its mysterious roots. The website lists no official team members and the project has no Medium or publication to reference an official launch date.

Despite this, we can deduce that the project was conceived in 2019, with NuChyper’s CTO Michael Egorov releasing the official whitepaper on November 10th of the past year. Julien Bonteloup, an early investor in the project, told The Defiant Curve has since raised a private round from known people in the industry."

Audits & Exploits

"In order to keep everything up to date, we have revised their report for 2023. They are an immutable protocol so the code and score has not changed. However, the website and documentation have improved and the links in the report reflect these improvements. Curve stays at 93%, excellent as always."

"The software function documentation covers all contracts deployed. Due to our testing tool not being optimized for vyper files, we had to rely on other methods to get an accurate measure of the depth of Curve's testing. Thankfully, they have provided proof of extensive and all-encompassing testing through our Twitter thread with them. Although the protocol offers a code coverage report for users running their own tests, there are no results. Curve has not undergone formal verification. Curve has been audited three times, two of which were pre-launch. "

With the comment: Curve is up with 80%, a 3% increase since our last review of the protocol. Although this isn't a substantial increase, the previous review was done with our 0.6 framework and this new iteration was done with our brand-new process: 0.8. Subsequently, this goes to show that Curve continuously stands our test of time thanks to rigorous ownership controls, as well as in-depth Oracle documentation.

In the future, however, the Curve team should look at implementing a timelock contract for an added layer of security."

  1. "We could probably summarise the situation as follows:
  2. Someone was snooping Github and realised new contracts with fresh liquidity has been seeded
  3. Through this, Charlie (a whale) thinks he can manually manipulate the pools to steal the BUSD and USDT that was seeded
  4. As he's manually executing each transaction, Andre and Michael realise something's not right here
  5. At the same time, Billy also realises something isn't right. He tries to turn it to his advantage but does it with a tiny bit of success. It's still unclear what his intentions were.
  6. Being one step ahead, 'Friendly Whale' execute the trade the 'Malicious Whale' was trying to do (taking out BUSD/USDT at a highly favourable/manipulated price). A few minutes late and they would have lost funds to the tune of $200k+
  7. Charlie, realises the mistake he's made, cancels his supposed master move transaction and is down $500k."

Bugs/Exploits

  • Curve offering $1.85 million bounty (7-8-2023) for exploiter's identity (and conviction). Curve Finance will disburse $49M in compensation to hack victims (12-2023).
  • A number of stablepools (alETH/msETH/pETH) using Vyper 0.2.15 had been exploited for a total of $24M as a result of a malfunctioning reentrancy lock (30-7-2023). All affected pools have been drained or white hacked. All remaining pools on Curve are safe and unaffected.
  • crvUSD had an attack vector which got patched before release (22-2-2023). When crvUSD got deployed, it got redeployed twice after missing fees (4th of May) & high gas usage (5th of May)
  • From Blockthreat (27-10-2022):

"Curve patched a read-only reentrancy vulnerability in its price oracle function thanks to a responsible disclosure by ChainSecurity" [$100 million was at risk]

"Binance froze/recovered $450k of the Curve stolen funds, representing 83%+ of the hack. We are working with LE to return the funds to the users. The hacker kept on sending the funds to Binance in different ways, thinking we can't catch it."

"Curve Finance has been hit by a frontend exploit. As of 5:30pm ET on Tuesday, the issue has been resolved, according to the Curve team. The exploit was flagged by samczsun. zachxbt noted that around $570,000 worth of assets had been stolen as of 4:30pm ET, and that the pilfered funds are being sent to Fixed Float, a crypto exchange that uses Bitcoin’s Lightning network. The Fixed Float exchange says it has frozen 112 ETH ($190,000) of the stolen funds."

"Curve Finance shuts down yv2 Pool after finding a vulnerability. No users or funds were affected as the affected trading pool was immediately shut down."

  • From Peter Zeitz an economics researcher at 0x. "This is a report (8-10-2020) on a smart contract vulnerability I discovered in the Curve protocol. The vulnerability is interesting because it exposed Curve and Swerve users to risk of massive financial loss, but went undiscovered despite multiple contract audits." He got paid a 'very generous bug bounty' by Curve.
  • Martinet Lee and Jun-You Liu found some exploits in the yCurve yVault (10-8-2020).
  • Curve found a vulnerability (19-4-2020) in the Curve sUSD code. Funds were safe.
  • Samczsun found a bug in their project.

Governance

"While news of Curve’s new governance token remains vague, we can assume it will follow a SAFG model like Compound or FutureSwap in which those using the protocol are the first to earn the native token. As stated in the original tweet:

“All liquidity providers since the inception in January 2020 will be considered for the initial distribution proportionally.”

To this end, we also know that Curve is exploring the use of an Aragon DAO to introduce unique voting frameworks for the growing liquidity aggregator. More so, they’ve stated they will look to make enhancements on the “one token one vote model” likely introducing some sort of weighted voting schema where those who actually earned and used the protocol might have more voting power than someone who comes across tokens otherwise."

Admin Keys

"Admin controls are easy to find. However, they need updating so that users can find them all in one location with sufficient detail yet still in straightforward language. Relevant contracts are clearly labelled as upgradeable or immutable in the various sections of their technical documentation. Ownership is in the hands of the DAO, as stated. An in-depth mention of a their pause control is documented here.

No timelock documentation is detailed. However, their DAO structure fundamentally operates like a timelock due to admin's giving up ownership to the DAO, and every vote on contract changes has to go through a lengthy voting process. In addition, Curve has clearly stated that the only contract that the DAO does not have full ownership of is the CRV DAO token. Regardless, the token contract restricts all admin access and external call possibilities. This renders the need for a timelock effectively useless for any Curve contract. The voting of the DAO acting as a timelock, its length is parallel to the overall voting process which takes 10 days."

"[Has] a group known as the Curve Emergency DAO, 9 people with basic multisig control over CRV emissions."

DAO

"CurveDAO will use time-weighted voting to give those who lock their tokens more governance weight than someone who participates for the first time. This weighting is likely to be modified relative to how the community sees fit and is really geared at trying to mitigate the 1 token 1 vote model which drastically favors those with deeper pockets."

"A recent DAO and governance token launch brings Curve one step closer to decentralization. CRV holders can vote to introduce an admin fee to the protocol and back the tokens with steady cash flow.

From a governance perspective, the DAO will facilitate on-chain voting for proposals. Employees and shareholders hold the majority CRV voting power at commencement. While LPs account for 62% of total supply, it will take years to accrue more votes than seed investors and employees because of Curve’s slow token release mechanism.

As a result, the team and shareholders will control the network with the majority vote in the early days. This dynamic is very likely to reverse over time, giving LPs more power in the future. Unfortunately, the botched token launch and concentration of critical votes place Curve low on the list of top DeFi projects."

"Curve passed an unanimous governance vote to distribute $3M worth of protocol fees to CRV holders staked into the CurveDAO over the weekend."

With just under 50% of all staked token holders voting on the proposal, the 100% majority vote signals strong alignment for the stablecoin AMM to distribute the 2.9M yCRV accrued to the Set converter over the past 62 days to veCRV holders.

Curve is the first AMM after SushiSwap to distribute protocol fees directly to token holders. It’s not a coincidence that the two projects to do this are led by anonymous teams; fee distribution is similar to a dividend payout, which may raise regulatory concerns for US-based projects such as Uniswap."

"The community-lead proposal to align incentives between veCRV holders (governance participants) and liquidity providers got off to a very strong start with total fees accrued reaching $1m in its first month. Governance subsequently chose to distribute those fees as 3Pool LP tokens which will start in the coming weeks. After the admin fee proposal was approved by governance, lock rates started to rise. They were around 10% of the total supply and currently stand at 17% and growing rapidly.

With the number of vote locked users fast approaching 3,000, the DAO has become increasingly decentralized with voters holding under 0.5% of voting power accounting for 46% of the total voting power, in stark contrast of early days of decentralized governance."

"veCRV holders can determine the allocation of CRV inflation across the different pools. As Convex now holds the greatest number of votes, they’ll be able to have considerable say in where newly issued CRV is directed. We could see a scenario in which Convex votes to allocate CRV to pools which would maximize their boosts rather than Yearn’s."

Founder took 71% of voting power

"Governance wars have started. Holders of yEarn Finance decided to allocate their CRV treasury ($2.5M) to Curve Finance, taking advantage of their 2.5x rewards multiplier while gaining political power. Curve's team quickly responded by locking the team's CRV tokens, kickstarting a flurry of attention around the hottest governance token on the block.

Later Curve modified their allocation and now no participant owns more than 27% of the voting power."

"Curve lets holders of its CRV governance token lock up their tokens to obtain a separate voting token, veCRV. Holders can then use veCRV to vote on network proposals submitted through the Curve DAO, and those with a high enough veCRV can even submit their own proposals for consideration.

However, since the token’s launch on August 14, only a small fraction of CRV holders have vote-locked their tokens, leaving a handful of addresses with a large amount of voting power. 

In fact, Egorov told Decrypt that only 6.7% of the nearly 10 million CRV tokens currently in circulation are vote locked right now—an indication of how few token holders are actually participating in the DAO.

This made it fairly easy for an address controlled by yield aggregating platform Yearn.finance, which runs a Curve liquidity pool, to obtain a significant proportion of the voting power (close to 58%).

In an apparent move to counter this, Egorov (who controls address 0x9b...36b029) extended a vote lock for a total of 621,860 CRV tokens (worth ~$1.7 million) under a single address, netting him 618,568 veCRV, or 71% of the voting power. The longer a user locks up their tokens, the more voting power they have. He maxed out his vote time to four years. “Maybe too much,” he said.

Meanwhile, if Egorov plans to hold back on voting—a promise, at best—that also means nobody else's vote matters either until the community resolves the issue or comes up with a more permanent fix, since they need a quorum of at least 33% to propose a change and above 50% to pass an update."

"The response from Curve takes on much more meaning when you consider who controls the 0x431 wallet. Nansen lists 0x431 as being the first wallet to farm YFI. As well as holding a large amount of K3PR, this wallet is also now voting to increase the gauge weight of the Fantom pool, so perhaps you can draw your own conclusions."

veCRV Whitelist

For a protocol to use veCRV, they must be listed on Curve’s “SmartWalletWhitelist” contract. As veCRV from smart contract addresses can be transferred between owners, smart wallets go through a whitelisting process in order to prevent abuse. Currently, only Yearn, Stake DAO, and Convex are on this list. At a CRV token price of $2, a protocol must attract around $130 M worth of veCRV (30% of the supply) to become whitelisted on Curve. However, the whitelist is not easy to access, even if the funds are available. There have been multiple failed proposals, which were turned down for not having enough direct benefit to the Curve protocol or its token holders.

Treasury

  • From their forum (15-4-2021):

"The Curve team would like to propose to use a share of the community fund to farm and lock CRV:

  1. Farmed CRV will be locked and used to repay collateral
  2. Admin fees will be used to buy CRV (and lock it or repay collateral)
  3. Voting power will be used to vote to pools with the most volume
  4. Pay out community grants and make the community fund self sustaining
  5. No CRV would be sold"

Token

Launch

"Someone deployed $CRV based on smart contracts we had published on github, front-running our efforts. While we initially were skeptical, it appeared to be an acceptable deployment with correct code, data and admin keys. Due to the token/DAO getting traction, we had to adopt it."

  • More info on the premature launch can be read here (14-8-2020).

Token allocation

"The current proposal suggests CRV will be issued with a supply of 1B CRV which will be gradually inflated to a max supply of 3.03B Curve. Inflation is set to be the highest in the first year and scale up over time, suggesting early adopters will see the most upside from protocol usage. Just as with Compound and Balancer, CRV will be earned by those who provide liquidity to the protocol."

"The total supply of 3.03b is distributed as such:

  1. 62% to liquidity providers
  2. 30% to shareholders (team and investors) with 2-4 years vesting
  3. 3% to employees with 2 years vesting
  4. 5% to the community reserve

The initial supply of around 1.3b (~43%) is distributed as such:

  1. 5% to pre-CRV liquidity providers with 1 year vesting
  2. 30% to shareholders (team and investors) with 2-4 years vesting
  3. 3% to employees with 2 years vesting
  4. 5% to the community reserve

The circulating supply will be 0 at launch and the initial release rate will be around 2m CRV per day."

Utility

  • From DeFi Rate (30-6-2020):

"The paper suggests that Curve will collect all protocol fees and redirect them to the DAO, ultimately being used to burn CRV off the open market."

"On [its] volume, Curve levies a trading fee of 0.04%. As of September 19th, an "Admin Fee" was implemented which diverts 50% of all trading fees (i.e. 0.02%) to CRV stakers, with liquidity providers receiving the other half. The question is, can Curve generate enough volume and trading fees that people are incentivized to stake CRV faster than it’s released? With 22.5% of issued CRV already locked for 3.62 years on average, it's not unreasonable."

"Curve passed an unanimous governance vote to distribute $3M worth of protocol fees to CRV holders staked into the CurveDAO over the weekend."

"The protocol will continue to disburse fees on a weekly basis following this initial payout, Curve CEO Michael Egorov told CoinDesk.

In order to vote, users must stake CRV tokens to the protocol’s voting contract which then supplies users with veCRV, creating a kind of voting escrow. Since September, veCRV holders have earned half of the 0.04% trading fee the protocol levies, with the other half going to liquidity providers."

"When users lock CRV in the protocol they receive governance rights, 50% of the Curve trading fees on the AMM, and the ability to “boost” their liquidity provider rewards up to 2.5 times what they would be otherwise. The recent flurry of airdrops have likely been a nice cherry on top."

Token Details

  • Has CRV and veCRV, from Bankless (17-6-2021):

"Although it can be held like any other asset, tokenholders can lock their CRV to access the full benefits of the asset. Locking is the process of staking CRV tokens within Curve for a period of time, between one week to four years, in order to receive vote-escrowed CRV (veCRV). It should be noted that this process cannot be reversed, meaning that once you convert CRV to veCRV, you will not have access to your underlying tokens until the lockup period ends. In addition, veCRV is non-transferrable.

To incentivize longer lockups, the amount of veCRV you’ll receive is proportional to how long you decide to lock your CRV. For instance, you’ll receive 1 veCRV for every CRV you decide to lock for four years, 0.50 veCRV for every CRV locked for two years, 0.25 veCRV per CRV for one year, and 0.02 veCRV per CRV locked for one month.

Post locking, veCRV holders are then entitled to:

  1. Governance rights (like deciding on the allocation of CRV inflation between different pools)
  2. 50% of protocol trading fees (0.02% of every trade for non-volatile pools)
  3. Boosted CRV rewards

While the first two are relatively straight forward, this final point needs some unpacking. Boosts act as a multiplier on the amount of CRV inflation a liquidity provider can earn. Boosting can be highly lucrative, as it is capable of increasing an LP’s CRV rewards by up to 2.5x."

Coin Distribution

"At least one person was able to farm CRV for hours while others waited for confirmation from the Curve team that the contracts were safe. Some skeptical users assumed an illicit pre-mine. It [also] emerged that the development team owns a majority of governance tokens."

"63% of the circulating CRV supply has been locked for veCRV. Of the 212 million veCRV, the two entities holding the most are Convex with 35.5 million (17.1% of the supply), and Yearn with 18.3 million (8.7% of the supply)."

Tech

  • Whitepaper can be found here (10-11-2019). The whitepaper of their AMM with Dynamic Peg (aka V2) can be read here (9-6-2021).
  • Code can be viewed here. From DeFi Safety (31-1-2022):

"At 898 commits, this repo is almost as endless as Curve's logo."

Implementations

"The majority of the liquidity, or 93%, is represented by Ethereum. Polygon ranks in the second place with an amount of $542M, a 5% of the volume on Ethereum."

How it works

"Curve Finance is an automated market maker (AMM) designed to facilitate low slippage swaps between tokens with similar prices. Dollar pegged stablecoins like DAI, USDT, and USDC or BTC-pegged tokens like sBTC, RenBTC, and WBTC can be traded for one another at the best prices. Curve was developed as an alternative to trading stablecoins on general-purpose DEXes like Uniswap, whose algorithm isn’t optimized for such trades."

Fees

Upgrades

"Curve has continued to ship new features and product upgrades such as adding virtually one new Curvepool per month, enhanced swap interfaces and automatic staking onramps for liquidity incentives like Synthetix.

This cadence is best highlighted by Curve’s integrations with top DEX aggregators like 1inch, Paraswap and DEX.ag in tandem with asset management partners like Zapper, Zerion and InstaDapp."

"In a white paper released Wednesday, Curve describes a model in which greater liquidity could be achieved on a pool of volatile assets by using a dynamic peg. Curve’s new version should be appealing to liquidity providers because it will offer much of the attractive liquidity depth that Uniswap has enabled without the active management it requires. Curve has deployed this new model on a USDT/wETH/wBTC pool now live on Ethereum."

Staking

  • veCRV is locked up CRV which gives it revenue and lockup bonusses. 63% of the supply has been taken out of circulation in this way (17-6-2021).

Liquidity Mining

"Just like Uniswap and Balancer, anyone can deposit tokens in Curve and become a liquidity provider. Users who do this are rewarded with fees accrued from token swaps. When yEarn Finance announced liquidity mining, there was a burst of activity on Curve. This is because yEarn users had to liquidity mine with the yCRV token. yCRV is the pool token for the Curve market consisting of yEarn’s wrapped DAI, USDC, TUSD, and USDT tokens."

Scaling

Different Implementations

Interoperability

"1inch exchange aggregates liquidity from Curve pools to ensure that users on their platform are getting the best prices possible. Another integration with various DeFi lending and borrowing platforms like Aave, dYdX, and Compound, also see Curve users earn interest on top of their trading fees. So, on top of the 0.04% on fees that LPs collect, they are also earning healthy interest rates. In many ways, Curve Finance fulfills the “Money Lego” meme by interacting with other legos in the ecosystem. Even without this composability, Curve still serves arbitrage traders better than many of its competitors."

Other Details

Oracle Method

  • "The oracles don't act like you think they do. They are far more manipulatable than expected." (30-11-2023). Their response was:

"Maybe brief summary: - Obsolete stableswap oracles are not safe to use (CURRENT ones are SAFE); - If you expect your stable to depeg <0.5 - keep it SECOND in the list of coins (say, WETH,frxETH instead of frxETH,WETH); - Learn how oracle works before using!"

"Curve uses TWAP oracles. Curve details front-running mitigation in their docs. Flashloan countermeasures are implemented."

Privacy Method

Compliance

  • A discussion around intellectual property has been started by a lawyer and CRV holder (18-6-2021). It got extra attention due to the Saddle fork/competitor.

Their Other Projects

crvUSD

"Like other overcollateralized stablecoins, the dollar-pegged crvUSD will be available to users who deposit other crypto assets as collateral. According to the white paper, crvUSD will use a novel lending-liquidating AMM algorithm, or LLAMMA, to protect borrowers whose collateral drops below the liquidation price.

As the ETH used as collateral drops in value, approaching its liquidation price, the protocol will convert it to US Dollars; as the price of ETH rises, the dollars are converted to ETH.

“This transforms liquidations from a jagged, all-at-once, all-or-nothing affair with huge slippage losses,” according to crypto developer foobar, “into a smooth transitioning that could even earn the collateral holder swap fees if they weather the volatility.”"

Roadmap

  • Can be found [Insert link here].

Usage

"Volume on Curve Finance jumped by $213M on the week COMP distribution launched, a ~16x increase from the previous week, as farmers scrambled to get their hands on USDT to maximize their earnings. In the past two weeks, Curve’s cumulative volume has grown over 120% to just over $550M at the time of writing from $250M on June 15th. The hunt for CRV combined with a top trading venue for tokens which yield the highest APYs has propelled Curve to the 2nd slot amongst all DEXs, from 7th before the yield farming boom started, sitting behind Uniswap’s $142M, at $82M worth of volume in the past week according to Dune Analytics.

"On the 13th of August, total value locked (TVL) on Curve Finance peaked $263m. As the news of the CRV launch spread, TVL grew rapidly to reach a new all time high of $825m by the next day and eventually to $1b three days later to make Curve Finance the 3rd DeFi protocol to reach the milestone. Curve Finance also crossed $2.5b in cumulative volume. (Source)"

"The sheer magnitude of trading volume that Curve has generated YTD is impressive, reaching a monthly high of $5.85 billion in September."

"Curve is currently the largest DEX with a TVL of ~$17B; in extension, the protocol’s ongoing CRV token emissions have become pivotal revenue avenues for many DeFi projects."

Projects that use or built on it

"Curve is not just a money factory. The existence of Curve’s stable and secure liquidity pools has allowed an entire ecosystem of DeFi projects and services to be built off of Curve’s backend. Curve operates a pool factory, allowing users to generate their own pools built on Curve’s infrastructure. Many sites within DeFi integrate directly with Curve pools to allow users to make transactions or earn yield on coins."

Yearn and Curve's Relationship

"Both of these projects hit their stride over the past few months, having benefited from each other in a type of symbiotic relationship, although an argument could be made that Yearn was more parasitic in nature. Through its automated Vault strategies, Yearn drove large amounts of liquidity to Curve's stable liquidity pools. In return for these asset inflows, and as part of Curve's broader liquidity mining program, Yearn's strategies earned CRV, the governance token of Curve's DAO. The strategies were designed to market sell the CRV they earned and reinvest the proceeds generated back into their Vaults. The profitability of selling CRV, at previously much higher prices, enabled Yearn's Vault strategies to offer high yields, thus attracting even more liquidity, and to Curve as well. In a way, Curve was "paying" Yearn through the inflation of its token to help bootstrap its protocol by directing liquidity towards it. As the price of CRV has continued to fall, and Yearn strategy yields along with them, these dynamics are in a state of flux. Strategies that once sold all of the CRV they earned, are now setting aside and locking up 10% of it for 4 years, in order to boost their rewards and influence over Curve DAO."

Competition

"On Uniswap, token-to-token trades are expensive. Tokens only trade directly against ETH so if you want to trade token A for token B, Uniswap will do two trades; Token A for ETH, and then ETH for Token B. This results in double the trading fees.

Uniswap’s algorithm also sips significantly for trades of any size. This is because the algorithm is designed to maximize available liquidity.

With Curve on the other hand, stablecoins trade directly between each other. You only pay one set of trading fees — currently 0.04%. Curve’s algorithm is also designed to minimize slippage. These savings are magnified as the trade gets larger."

"By changing its invariant from Uniswap in order to prioritise lower slippage for stablecoin traders, Curve is proving out to be a key venue for simple stablecoin swaps."

"mStable is a pegged asset swapping protocol that shares many similarities to Curve. It has a basket for each asset (USD, BTC, etc.) and has tokens pegged to that asset inside the basket. Both mStable and Curve serve the unique market of swapping pegged tokens for one another. mStable claims to offer “zero slippage swaps.” This is because of the protocol’s model prices each asset in a basket against every other on a one-for-one basis. Effectively, this means 1 USDT can be swapped for 1 DAI, even if the price of a single DAI is 1.02 USDT in the open market. Hence, prices on mStable are independent of the market, creating a ton of unique arbitrage opportunities. Curve, on the other hand, incorporates the active market price for an asset.

Smaller trades may be more cost-effective on Uniswap thanks to the difference in gas, but larger trades are better on Curve. mStable only has the edge over Curve in a scenario where there is a large enough spread between prices on Curve and mStable to justify paying extra in gas."

  • Saddle Finance is a fork of Curve, which Curve holders didn't let go unnoticed (20-1-2021):

"The founders of Saddle Finance are closely linked to the Thesis project - creators of tBTC. veCRV holders expressed their views on the arrival of Saddle Finance by voting to reduce CRV rewards to the tBTC pool."

"In a white paper released Wednesday, Curve describes a model in which greater liquidity could be achieved on a pool of volatile assets by using a dynamic peg. Curve’s new version should be appealing to liquidity providers because it will offer much of the attractive liquidity depth that Uniswap has enabled without the active management it requires. Basically, it identifies an internal price peg based on trading on Curve and concentrates the liquidity around that peg. The peg can move, but it will only do so if moving doesn’t cause liquidity providers to incur too much loss."

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

  • "The oracles don't act like you think they do. They are far more manipulatable than expected." (30-11-2023).
  • Got accused of censoring their community (7-11-2020):

"The evidence is clear: the Curve team censors their community. From deleting posts on their governance form to removing signaling votes from Snapshot, the Curve team has proven they are willing to censor ideas they do not like. A user named SF decided to post a proposal on snapshot and the Curve governance forum called "Stop Censorship & Embrace Transparency." In this proposal, SF called out Curve for censoring members of their Discord server.'The Curve team responded by deleting SF's account on their governance forum and removing the proposal from the Snapshot UI so users could not participate in the vote."

Team, investors, Partnerships, etc.

Team

  • Full team can be found [here].
  • Swiss Stake GmbH (Switzerland)
  • Two team members are public and they self-report working for Curve (31-1-2022).
  • Michael Egorov, the creator of Curve Finance and CTO at NuCypher. Made around $100M on his allocation, bought mansions with his leveraged positions, which, when he got liquidated, he found OTC people for to buy it off of him.
  • Has (3-3-2020) connections with iEarn. Andre Cronje from iEarn also says on his LinkdIn that he worked for/with Curve.

"In 2020, Egorov started Curve Finance. Though it is still unclear the size of the team, Egorov confirmed in a Telegram conversation with Crypto Briefing that five other members join him. These include two developers, Angel Angelov and Ben Hauser, and three community managers, “Charlie,” “Kendrick Lama,” and “Chris.”

Funding

Partners 

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