Curve DAO

Curve is a decentralized exchange built specifically for trading assets that should hold similar values, such as different dollar stablecoins or different wrapped versions of the same asset. Its pricing formula is designed for that case, offering far lower slippage than a general-purpose automated market maker when the assets in a pool trade near parity.

That specialization made Curve foundational infrastructure in decentralized finance. Its stablecoin pools became the main venue for moving between dollar tokens at scale, and its liquid staking pools handle the same job for staked ether derivatives.

The veCRV model

Curve introduced the vote-escrow mechanism that many protocols later copied. Holders lock CRV for up to four years to receive veCRV, which gives voting power over how CRV emissions are distributed across pools, boosts the holder's own liquidity provision rewards, and entitles them to a share of trading fees.

Because emissions determine where liquidity goes, and liquidity determines which stablecoins can trade at scale, control of veCRV voting became commercially valuable. This produced what became known as the Curve wars, in which protocols accumulated CRV or paid for votes to direct emissions toward their own pools.

Supply and crvUSD

CRV has a maximum supply of 3,030,303,031 tokens, with total supply at roughly 2.41 billion and around 1.55 billion circulating. Emissions decline on a fixed schedule over time.

Curve also issues crvUSD, its own collateralized stablecoin, which uses a liquidation mechanism that converts collateral gradually as prices move rather than in a single liquidation event. That design aims to reduce the sudden losses borrowers face in conventional liquidation systems.