Curve’s Mysterious CRV Governance Token Launch

Curve – the third-largest DeFi DEX – has officially launched its long-awaited governance token, CRV.

So, Curve DAO and $CRV token are launched by https://t.co/26L8Wt13oe, we had no choice but to adopt it. The launch has happened https://t.co/5EQDwbknmP

— Curve (@CurveFinance) August 14, 2020

As you can see in the tweet, the way in which Curve launched fit right in with the mysterious roots the team has had since launch.

For those who missed it, an anonymous account spent $8k in gas to deploy all of the Curve contracts, leading to a two-hour grey area where community members were told not to engage as the CRV token was not officially *live*. However, this was then confirmed by the team as being secure, admin keyless contracts – hence the weird way in which the token became *official*. Here’s a full recap on the events that transpired yesterday evening.

10b57e6da0 🦞

The launch of @CurveFinance $CRV took place in a humble community chat. It was a Fortnite-style performance, super fun! I will write a more elaborate piece later, but now the hype is high so we need to educate quickly.

The story of 0xc4ad and LobsterDAO 🧑‍🌾 pic.twitter.com/Whe7J2LezK

— ivangbi 👾 (@IvanGBi) August 14, 2020

None the less, Curve quickly pivoted by releasing a front-end for CRV liquidity mining. Users who provide liquidity to Curve stake their positions via ‘Gauges’ to be eligible for CRV rewards. More on how this works here.

Curve has quickly broken it’s previous ATH’s for Total Value Locked, currently sitting at just south of $700M at the time of writing – good for 4th place on the DeFi Pulse leaderboard. This comes in tandem with breaking the $2B cumulative volume mark, one which has only been reached by leading projects like Uniswap so far to date.

As illustrated in our initial coverage of the pre-launch, Curve liquidity providers will compete for a daily allocation of 766k CRV tokens. Each day, 2M CRV is estimated to enter the circulating supply as early LPs and investor tokens unlock in real-time.

For more long-term supporters, CRV can be locked via the Curve DAO to earn a multiplier on liquidity mining rewards. Curve has provided a number of time intervals, with each granting higher bonuses up to a maximum of 2.5x for those who choose to lock for 4 years.

Early LP’s are also able to claim their rewards in real-time through the Vesting dashboard. Seeing as early LP rewards are vested over the course of a year, these LPs will be able to claim 1/365th of their rewards each day.

CRV Madness Ensues

Almost immediately after launch, the race to acquire CRV went ballistic with both Binance and Poloniex listing CRV within 5 minutes of launch.

#Binance Will List @CurveFinance $CRV, Deposits Now Openhttps://t.co/syvfbiKzMN

— Binance (@binance) August 14, 2020

This was accompanied by DEXs like Matcha having their front-end crash as users rushed to submit limit orders to take advantage of the gas-promotion to save on transaction costs. (which peaked at $30/swap upon launch)

CRV price traded as high as $50/token, giving the project a fully deluded (h/t Gavin for the term) valuation of ~$182B. For reference, that’s over half of Bitcoin’s fully diluted valuation. This token value gave early LPs returns as high as 10,000% APY, with returns now hovering around 2000% APY at the time of writing.

182b pic.twitter.com/D2mfDKMmLj

— Evan Van Ness (@evan_van_ness) August 14, 2020

While Curve took extensive time to map out a strong governance model in which time-weighted voting plays a key role in voting, it’s clear that the DeFi token craze has thrown all bets out the window. Many are now theorizing that the mysterious launch may have been coordinated with the Curve themselves, essentially acting as a legal loophole in terms of sufficient decentralization.

IMO this @CurveFinance launch is probably a legal maneuver 🤔

since $CRV was “launched” by community member @0xc4ad, they can likely claim “sufficient decentralization” from inception 🧐

cc @r_ross_campbell @lex_node would love to hear ur thoughts 🙏https://t.co/KGXfh22HYF

— devops199fan 🔪📜😅 (@devops199fan) August 14, 2020

Regardless of where you fall, it’s impossible to ignore Curve. To stay up with the project and any new updates, be sure to follow them on Twitter or join the Discord to chime in.