Curve Finance

Curve Finance is the decentralized exchange built for one job and built exceptionally well: swapping assets that should trade at the same price. Launched in early 2020 by Michael Egorov, Curve's StableSwap invariant concentrates liquidity around the peg, so a million-dollar USDC-to-USDT trade can execute with a fraction of the slippage a classic AMM would charge.

Over time Curve expanded with v2 pools for volatile pairs, the TriCrypto markets and crvUSD — its own overcollateralized stablecoin with a novel soft-liquidation mechanism (LLAMMA). The CRV token anchors a famous governance economy: locking CRV as veCRV grants boosted rewards and voting power over emissions gauges, a system that spawned the 'Curve Wars' as protocols competed to direct liquidity to their pools.

For stablecoin issuers, treasuries and yield farmers, Curve remains essential infrastructure with deep, sticky liquidity across Ethereum and major L2s. The trade-offs are a famously utilitarian interface and CRV emissions that dilute holders — and stablecoin-focused pools mean impermanent loss is low but not zero when pegs break.