Introduction

Summing up 2024, it is impossible not to mention the outstanding achievements of Curve Finance, which solidified its status as a leader in DeFi.

This year, the platform showed significant growth, strengthening its position as the main liquidity hub and foundational infrastructure solution.

In this material, we will take a detailed look at the key events of the past year:

Significant Events in 2024

CRV Marks 4th Anniversary with Historic Inflation Reduction

On August 13th, 2024, Curve DAO celebrated it's 4th anniversary, and reached two predetermined tokenomics milestones: the protocol's standard 16% annual reduction in CRV emissions took effect, and all vesting from the initial token launch concluded.

With these updates, all future CRV emissions are now directed to liquidity providers, reducing the total inflation rate from over 20% to 6%. Curve's remaining CRV emissions will continue to decrease 16% annually, which is a 50% reduction every 4 years, matching Bitcoin's halving model.

These changes mark the end of the high-inflation era of CRV and the transition to a more stable model, strengthening the long-term value of the CRV token.

Major CRV Distribution Leads to Record Locks

June 2024 marked a major market event for Curve Finance when a large position of CRV tokens, used as collateral in Llamalend and across many DeFi platforms, underwent simultaneous liquidation. Curve's lending system maintained steady operations throughout.

The liquidation event distributed CRV tokens widely across DeFi participants, businesses, and buidlers. This created the broadest token distribution since the protocol's launch, significantly increasing Curve's decentralization.

Following the market revaluation, CRV locking hit impressive new records. Between July 6th and 7th, users locked an all-time high of 34.9M CRV, which was part of a broader trend that saw total locked CRV rise 22% from 765M to 937M over the next two and a half months, as shown in the chart below. Yields on CRV wrapper tokens (sdCRV, cvxCRV, yCRV) also surged above 50% annualized, driving robust protocol engagement.

LlamaLend launch

On March 12, Curve Finance introduced **LlamaLend (Curve Lend)** — an innovative interface allowing users to safely lend and trade with leverage. The new product uses a liquidation protection mechanism available for collateral assets. This mechanism protects borrowers from instant liquidations typical of other platforms by gradually converting collateral into crvUSD stablecoin when the price falls, and back to the collateral asset when it rises again.

LlamaLend aims to significantly increase crvUSD utilization, which ultimately leads to higher fees and income for veCRV and scrvUSD holders. Users can efficiently use their capital for borrowing and trading, as well as earn interest by providing their assets to other participants. User-friendliness and low risk make LlamaLend attractive to both newcomers and experienced traders in the DeFi ecosystem.

Due to the permissionless nature of LlamaLend markets, which allows anyone to create a new market, various protocols—such as YieldNest, Inverse, and Frax, among others—have established their own lending markets.

The launch of scrvUSD

On October 31, Curve Finance launched **Savings crvUSD (scrvUSD)** — a yield-bearing stablecoin designed to scale crvUSD and increase revenues for veCRV holders.

Immediately following a successful DAO vote, the “Fee Switch” was activated, redirecting a portion of fees from crvUSD markets to scrvUSD holders.

In its first month, crvUSD attracted over $20 million in deposits, offering double-digit annualized yields. Its market cap increased by 30%, reaching $78 million, while borrowing rates gradually declined, stabilizing the market.

With the launch of the Savings Vault, the DAO approved a reallocation of veCRV fees: initially 10%, then 20%, and from December onward, up to 50% of revenues are directed to scrvUSD holders.

Since its launch, scrvUSD has been integrated into DeFi products such as Spectra and Pendle, providing additional yield-farming opportunities. It is also available on the SOFA platform, which offers a wide range of strategies varying from low-risk to high-yield.

Over 30% of all issued crvUSD is now used for farming in scrvUSD, stimulating demand, lowering borrowing rates, and strengthening the ecosystem’s stability.

The Savings crvUSD flywheel is up and running, with borrowing rates declining substantially and crvUSD remaining very tight around $1.

Curve-Lite - a lightweight DEX version for quick deployment on EVM networks

In late November, Curve introduced Curve-Lite, a simplified version of its platform for instant deployment of a Curve DEX instance on any EVM-compatible network. Allowing prospective chains to offer liquidity providers, market-makers and asset issuers the tools they are familiar with from the get-go.

Curve-Lite provides a minimal yet full-featured set of functions:

1. Core DEX smart contracts: Allows the permissionless creation of StableSwap and CryptoSwap pools.
2. Interface integration: Pools, networks, and swaps automatically connect to Curve.fi.
3. CurveDAO management: Management of contract assets, fee collection into the DAO treasury, and the option to receive CRV emissions authorized by DAO voting.

Curve-Lite currently supports OP Stack, Arbitrum Nitro, Polygon CDK, and Taiko Stack, with further integrations planned.

Curve news are back!

Towards the end of 2024, Curve relaunched its blog and news site to provide consistent updates on developments and ecosystem advancements. This initiative aims to enhance transparency, ensure widespread dissemination of information, and solidify Curve's reputation as the leading DEX for stablecoins and DeFi tools.

Increased visibility in major crypto publications and successful co-marketing efforts with partners, including protocols, asset issuers, and blockchains, have already shown positive results. These efforts will continue throughout 2025, maintaining strong communication and collaboration to further grow Curve's presence and impact in the DeFi space.

Subscribe to the newsletter to get the freshest news about Curve and its ecosystem.

New DAO UI and ongoing UI/UX improvements

From late November to early December, Curve Finance carried out a major interface update, including its main site and DAO platform. The new designs make governance and interaction with the protocol more intuitive and accessible.

Key changes:

• Updated design: The entire Curve ecosystem, including the main site and DAO, received a modern and user-friendly interface.
• CRV management: Simplified management of locked tokens for voting and boosting liquidity.
• Voting and proposals: A single interface for proposals and voting.
• VeCRV analytics: Ability to monitor veCRV data for vote tracking.
• Convenient CRV calendar: Easy token unlock scheduling.

These updates aim to increase transparency, accessibility, and community involvement, reinforcing the core principles of DeFi. This is the beginning of the ongoing efforts to make using Curve more accessible, easy to use and comfortable.

TradFi institutions choose Curve for integrating institutional capital into DeFi

Curve is part of any asset issuer strategy, from DeFi native to TradFi issuers entering DeFi.

One such example is Blackrock: As its BUIDL fund reaches over $640M in value, stablecoins backed by the fund's assets increasingly select Curve as their liquidity hub.

Collaboration with Ethena and Elixir strengthens Curve's position as a platform for high-quality stablecoin liquidity. Elixir uses Curve to trade deUSD, and Ethena has launched liquidity pools for USDtb, backed by BlackRock's assets.

These integrations from BlackRock-backed protocols demonstrate Curve's growing role in connecting institutional assets with decentralized finance. Curve continues to cement its position as a key platform for institutional-backed liquidity in DeFi.

Curve's ecosystem keeps on growing: From Defi.Money to CrossCurve and Spectra

Throughout 2024, several major protocols adopted and implemented technology developed by Curve.

CrossCurve and Spectra integrated StableSwap and CryptoSwap pools as the foundation of their functionality, while MONEY issued stablecoins using the crvUSD engine under an official license from Curve, fostering a mutually beneficial collaboration.

Additionally, in September, Curve, in collaboration with the TON Foundation, announced a contest for teams capable of adapting Curve’s Stableswap algorithm to the TON Virtual Machine. The two winning teams were granted permission to use the algorithm.

Curve is increasingly solidifying its role as a foundational building block for the future of DeFi. Stablecoins, cross-chain swaps and transfers, yield trading — what else can be built on Curve’s infrastructure?

Yield-bearing Stablecoin Pools

Since the fall-winter period of 2024, the number of pools with yield-bearing stablecoins on Curve DEX has been growing rapidly. These pools make yield-bearing stablecoins even more profitable thanks to trading fees and additional incentives.

Yield-bearing (or “savings”) stablecoins are an ideal tool for generating trading fees with minimal impermanent loss risk. Their prices remain pegged to the dollar, and their yields are similar. At the same time, short-term volatility stimulates active trading, which significantly increases commission income for liquidity providers.

Debit/credit cards using Savings-crvUSD

A major integration for scrvUSD was implemented by Holyheld, an on-chain crypto debit card. This integration enables users to hold scrvUSD and spend it directly using the card.

In November 2024, another card teaser - this time a credit card - was revealed. This unique product, the physical Savings crvUSD card, operates on the Safe protocol and is issued by a Hong Kong-registered legal entity. Allegedly, the card allows users to make everyday payments with Savings crvUSD (scrvUSD), featuring automatic withdrawals. This marks the first product to combine DeFi on Ethereum with the traditional financial sector.

Among the card’s integrations are WeChat Pay and Grab, making it particularly convenient for residents of China and Southeast Asia.

Coinbase 50 Index includes CRV

On November 12, Curve DAO Token (CRV) was included in the **Coinbase 50 Index (COIN50)** — an index tracking the 50 largest and most liquid digital assets traded on Coinbase.

COIN50 is used in investment products such as exchange-traded funds and derivatives, paving the way for the inclusion of CRV in major investor portfolios. The index’s transparency and high liquidity strengthen CRV’s market position and highlight its significance in decentralized finance.

Adding CRV to COIN50 attracts the attention of institutional investors and confirms its status as an important element of the Curve and DeFi ecosystems.

Coinbase also announced plans to tokenize the index, which could simplify its trading via Base and make it even more accessible to DeFi users.

Vyper becomes part of the Ethereum Foundation program

In early September 2024, the Vyper programming language, used for Curve’s smart contracts, was officially included in the Ethereum Foundation’s bounty program.

Integrating Vyper into the Ethereum Foundation program opens up new opportunities for its further development and adoption by developers.

In November, at the DC7 SEA DEVCON conference, Vitalik Buterin — Ethereum co-founder — drew developers’ attention to Vyper, urging them to use it for creating smart contracts.

Interestingly, Vitalik initially developed this language but left it unattended for a long time.

Despite the absence of official Ethereum Foundation support, Vyper’s development continued thanks to enthusiasts and small teams. Among them is Mikhail Egorov, the founder of Curve Finance, who actively supported the language. During this time, Vyper became the foundation for smart contracts of leading protocols, including Curve, AAVE, and Yearn.

Curve 2024 in Numbers

Curve Becomes the Hub for LRT Tokens

In early 2024, the market meta switched from traditional ETH staking to Restaking. With EigenLayer’s growth reaching $4 billion in deposits, protocols competed vigorously for leadership in the restaking space. Key LRT tokens chose Curve for their liquidity provisioning, while protocols with more than $10 million in offerings actively participated in vote-buying to receive CRV incentives for their pools.

Thanks to the unique StableSwap pool architecture, Curve became the key platform for LRT liquidity.

The Rise of NG Pools

At the end of the year 2023, Curve announced NG (Next-Generation) pools designed to bring significant improvements and become the basis for new opportunities. Among these improvements are built-in oracles for accurate price reflection, trading without prior approvals, gas optimization, as well as the introduction of dynamic fees in StableSwap pools.

These pools did not only became the foundation for crvUSD markets. And now, LlamaLend also uses them.

In 2024, NG pools became the primary version of pools on Curve due to higher rewards for Liquidity providers and cheaper swap rates for traders.

Users and Historical TVL

Curve experienced a significant surge in unique users in 2024, more than doubling its user base from 30,000 in 2023 to over 60,000 - a year-to-year increase of 127.7% - highlighting growing adoption and interest in its platform.

The total value locked throughout 2024 remained relatively consistent, with the majority originating from liquidity pools. Nonetheless, Q3 to Q4 saw an increase of 14.2%.

The top 5 tokens by volume throughout the year come as no surprise. Curve's efficiency in facilitating exchanges of pegged tokens, such as stablecoins and liquid staking derivatives (LSD) like stETH, makes it clear why these tokens dominate the list. Their alignment with Curve’s core strengths underscores the platform’s position as a leader in stable and LSD token trading.

Pool Statistics

Throughout the year, over 700 new Stableswap pools were deployed, representing a 43.5% increase compared to the previous year. This also marks the highest number of pool deployments in a single year since Curve's launch.

Comparing the largest Curve pools from 2023 to 2024 highlights significant shifts, with many top 10 pools from 2023 dropping out and newly deployed pools quickly attracting millions in TVL. This shows Curve's real power: if asset issuers want to build liquidity for their assets, Curve remains the go-to platform.

Examining pool TVLs reveals notable trends, particularly with the stETH pool deployed by Lido. Interestingly, the stETH pool's TVL dropped significantly over the year. This decline followed the enablement of ETH staking withdrawals in April 2023, which allowed Lido to manage liquidity directly through withdrawals rather than relying on heavily incentivized stETH pools. As a result, Curve's stETH pools shifted from being the primary exit mechanism for stETH to serving as a time-arbitrage tool for bypassing withdrawal queues. Additionally, some TVL migrated to the more optimized stETH-ng pool.

While the stETH pools remained the top pool throughout 2024, the TVL rankings of pools each quarter from Q2 2023 to the end of 2024 reveal that new players like deUSD (Elixir) and USD0 (Usual) have entered the market and established their primary liquidity on Curve.

New pools like USD0/USD0++ or deUSD/USDC quickly gained traction through the usage external incentives.

LlamaLend Market TVL

The TVL of the markets over time highlights the dominance of top LlamaLend markets, with ETH and BTC-backed markets leading the way. CRV-long was among the first markets and consistently held the top spot initially, while the WBTC market only gained prominence in Q3 and Q4.

CrvUSD Market TVL

Just like in LlamaLend, plain BTC and ETH markets gained the highest popularity as collateral for minting crvUSD.

Whats Next in 2025?

Curve is steadfast in its commitment to innovation, consistently delivering features and expanding its ecosystem. As we look to 2025, several developments are on the horizon.

Here’s a glimpse of what’s coming:

LP Tokens as crvUSD Collateral

Extensive research and prototyping have been conducted to integrate Curve LP tokens as collateral for crvUSD. This initiative enhances capital efficiency while creating new opportunities for synergies across Curve’s DEX, stablecoin, and lending markets.

The development and auditing of the necessary smart contracts have been successfully completed. Following approval through a Curve DAO governance vote, the update has been deployed and is now active. This advancement enables more effective utilization of liquidity, significantly benefiting Curve’s ecosystem. Further research and ongoing enhancements to these features aim to drive even greater innovation and efficiency.

Improved CryptoSwap Algorithm

In September 2024, at the TOKEN2049 conference, Curve Finance founder Mikhail Egorov introduced the concept of Forex pools, a decentralized alternative to the traditional currency market. These pools are designed for stable currency pairs, such as USD/EUR and USD/CNH, leveraging an innovative combination of the StableSwap and CryptoSwap invariants to deliver high liquidity, minimal slippage, and efficient arbitrage opportunities.

Modeling has shown that slippage with Curve’s new structure is less than 2%—a significant improvement compared to 30% in traditional decentralized solutions and over 100% in Uniswap v2. This positions Curve not just as a competitor but as a superior option for currency operations, even outperforming many traditional financial systems.

This concept has been researched and implemented, and it is currently in the experimental stage. Production readiness is anticipated sometime in 2025. Initial test data indicates that this approach enables higher liquidity density and greater capital efficiency compared to the existing CryptoSwap model.

Further UI/UX Improvements

Curve focuses on delivering significant UI/UX enhancements, refining Curve Lend and crvUSD functionality, and open-sourcing the in the future added frontend code (as usual). These updates aim to simplify user interactions, improve onboarding, and boost overall efficiency.

A key priority will be integrating feedback from ongoing improvements, including the revamped DAO pages, to further unify and streamline governance processes.

Users can expect continued rollout of progressive updates, enhanced navigation, and broader support for innovative features like Curve-Lite, setting the stage for a more intuitive and accessible Curve ecosystem.