Curve DAO (CRV)

What Curve DAO is

Curve is an automated market maker built for trading between assets that are meant to hold the same value, and CRV is the token that governs it and receives its fees. Curve's own repository describes the protocol as "an exchange liquidity pool on Ethereum designed for extremely efficient stablecoin trading and low risk, supplemental fee income for liquidity providers, without an opportunity cost" (source: Curve contract repository README, read September 2026).

The Curve DAO contracts repository states the governance side just as directly: "Curve DAO has a token (CRV) which is used for both governance and value accrual," with a voting system based on locking those tokens. CRV is not a fee token you spend. It is a claim on decisions and on revenue, and the size of that claim depends on how long you are willing to lock it away.

For where to buy Curve DAO from your country or state, see the availability tables on this site and the venues listed at Exchanges.

How it works

A general-purpose automated market maker prices two assets on the assumption that they can diverge without limit, which makes it expensive to swap between two dollars that are already worth roughly the same. Curve's repository describes its answer as "a bespoke low slippage, low fee algorithm" optimized for "trading between correlated cryptocurrencies." Concentrating the curve around the point where the assets trade at parity means a large swap between two stablecoins moves the price far less than it would on a constant-product pool, so slippage on the trades Curve is built for stays small.

Depositors earn from two places. The repository notes that in some pools "the liquidity pool is also supplied to lending protocol where it generates additional income for liquidity providers," on top of the trading fee. A liquidity provider therefore holds a lp token whose value reflects trading fees, lending interest, and any CRV emissions the pool's gauge attracts.

The gauge system is where CRV emissions and governance meet. New CRV is not distributed evenly across pools. It flows to liquidity gauges in proportion to the votes those gauges receive, and the votes come from locked CRV. Curve's documentation index describes gauge weights as the mechanism by which "CRV emissions are distributed via gauge voting," and describes a separate revenue-sharing path by which protocol revenue reaches veCRV holders.

Locking is handled by the VotingEscrow contract, and its parameters are explicit in the code. The maximum lock is four years, set as MAXTIME = 4 * 365 * 86400 seconds, and lock expiry is rounded down to whole weeks, WEEK = 7 * 86400. Voting weight decays linearly from the moment of locking to the moment of expiry, and the contract's own header states the principle behind it: "Vote weight decays linearly over time," so that "users are committed to the future" (source: Curve VotingEscrow contract, read September 2026). A holder who locks for four years starts with the full weight per CRV. A holder who locks for one year starts with a quarter of it, and both decay toward zero as expiry approaches. Weight has to be renewed by extending the lock; it does not sit still.

Supply and tokenomics

CRV's issuance is fixed in the token contract rather than set by a vote, and the constants are readable in the source. The contract mints INITIAL_SUPPLY = 1_303_030_303 CRV at launch, which its own comment describes as "leading to 43% premine." Emissions then follow what the contract calls a piecewise-linear mining supply: a constant rate for a year, then a step down.

The initial rate is 274_815_283 * 10 ** 18 / YEAR per second, where YEAR is 86400 * 365. Once every RATE_REDUCTION_TIME, which is one year, the rate is divided by RATE_REDUCTION_COEFFICIENT, a value the contract annotates as 2^(1/4). Dividing by the fourth root of two once a year is the same as halving every four years, which is the shape of the schedule in one sentence. An INFLATION_DELAY of 86,400 seconds, one day, sits between deployment and the start of emissions.

Two things follow from this that are easy to misread. The first is that the emission rate is not a governance parameter. Governance decides where new CRV goes through gauge votes; the contract decides how much there is. The second is that the 43% pre-allocation was distributed over vesting schedules rather than all at once, so early circulating supply was a fraction of the premine.

History

Curve's design answers a problem that appeared as soon as several dollar-pegged tokens existed at once: swapping between two assets pegged to the same thing on a general-purpose AMM cost far more than it should. The stableswap curve made that swap cheap, and the pools that resulted became the plumbing that other protocols route through.

The vote-escrow model that Curve introduced with veCRV turned out to be the more widely copied idea. Tying governance weight to lock duration, then letting that weight direct emissions to particular pools, created a market in which protocols compete for CRV emissions by rewarding lockers. Vote-escrow systems on other protocols, including the ve(3,3) designs used by later exchanges, descend from this contract.

Risks and what to watch

Governance concentration is the structural risk. Weight belongs to whoever locks longest, and entities that accumulate and lock CRV in order to direct emissions to their own pools hold durable influence over where new supply goes. That is the system working as designed, and it is also a concentration a holder should measure rather than assume away.

Emissions continue regardless of revenue. The contract's schedule steps down once a year and does not respond to trading volume, so in a quiet period new CRV still arrives while fees do not.

Providing liquidity on Curve is not risk-free even between correlated assets. A stablecoin that loses its peg leaves the pool holding mostly the broken asset, which is the sharpest form of impermanent loss in these pools. Pools routed into lending protocols add that protocol's smart contract risk on top of Curve's own.

Frequently asked questions

How much CRV was created at launch?

The token contract mints 1,303,030,303 CRV as INITIAL_SUPPLY, described in the contract's own comments as a 43% premine, split 30% to shareholders, 3% to employees, 5% to a DAO-controlled reserve and 5% to early users.

How fast does CRV inflation fall?

The contract holds the emission rate constant for a year, then divides it by 2^(1/4). Applied once a year, that is a halving every four years. The starting rate was 274,815,283 CRV per year.

What is veCRV?

CRV locked in the VotingEscrow contract. The maximum lock is four years, expiry rounds down to whole weeks, and voting weight decays linearly to zero as expiry approaches, so weight must be renewed by extending the lock.

What do veCRV holders decide?

Gauge weights, which determine how CRV emissions are split across liquidity pools, and protocol governance generally. Curve's documentation also describes protocol revenue being distributed to veCRV holders.

Where can you buy Curve DAO?

Availability depends on your country or US state. See where to buy Curve DAO for the exchanges serving your jurisdiction, and Exchanges to compare fees, kyc requirements and payment methods.