How to Trade Curve Finance (CRV)

Michael Egorov, a physicist who won a bronze medal in the 2003 International Physics Olympiad, launched Curve Finance as a DEX focused on stablecoins. It used a proprietary algorithm he designed to minimize slippage, starting with $1 million in TVL.

CRV launched in one of the most unusual events in DeFi — an anonymous account (@0xc4ad) deployed the CRV contracts before the Curve team did. Egorov had to confirm the contracts were legitimate and accept the unplanned launch, comparing it to the unknown identity of Satoshi.

Curve Finance became the largest DeFi protocol by TVL, reaching $20 billion by the end of 2021. It became the backbone for yield farming and stablecoin liquidity across the entire DeFi ecosystem.

Curve was hacked for $65 million from the TriCrypto pool. At the same time, Egorov had over $100 million in personal DeFi loans using CRV as collateral. He sold CRV to investors to reduce debt, raising concerns in the market, but Curve survived the crisis.

Michael Egorov launched a new project called Yield Basis, raising $5 million at a $50 million valuation. The project aims to solve impermanent loss affecting liquidity providers on AMMs, using crvUSD as overcollateralization.