August 13, 2024: The Most Hated Rally 4️⃣🥳

$CRV Celebrates 4th Birthday with Major Emissions Reductions

Thanks to mini_wagmi for the commemorative artwork

Curve’s $CRV token officially turned 4!

Once per epoch the update_mining_parameters() function can be called by anybody directly on the $CRV token address to officially set the new mining parameters.

If nobody calls the function for some time, the officially supply can actually trickle upwards slightly. It was officially triggered at Aug-12-2024 10:21:59 PM UTC

“What’s the BIG DEAL! Curve has an inflation reduction every year? Why make a big deal now?!?” — Death Spiral000r

Curve has enjoyed a handful of emissions decreases so far, but this one is more significant than most.

You may recall a multicolored image from Curve almost as iconic as its logo: its initial token release schedule.

In addition to the sizeable purple band of community $CRV emissions, streamed to Curve gauges (mostly distributed as rewards to Curve pools), the first four years featured a larger set of tokens earmarked to other groups, including a sizable chunk to the core team released in a linear fashion for the first four years.

As of yesterday, everything has dried up except community emissions, marking the most significant drop in emissions ever.

Snapshots from the Curve Resources Supply Calculator show off how different emissions looked as of launch day, last week, and today:

Note that there’s an inaccuracy to be corrected in the above screenshots… the emissions rate as of last week was actually 20.17% before the emissions cut. It’s now dropped to a mere 6.34% as a result of cutting off the core team emissions.

Hereforward, the only emissions tranche remaining is the “community emissions”, which also will decrease every year at a rate approximating the Bitcoin halving cycle (albeit smoother). Next year this will drop to 5.01%, then 4.02%, et al.

You can observe the effect of the change in community emissions by observing the Reward tAPR from the Curve UI. We snapshotted the top yielding $crvUSD pools as of yesterday and today:

When we first started blogging about Curve, one of the earliest and arguably fairer complaints was its hyperinflation. All variety of scorn was heaped on Mich for the excessive emissions directed toward the founding team.

The scorn was quite unfair in our opinion. Mich proved extremely philanthropic with the emission of $CRV earmarked towards him. He used it for a variety of investments around DeFi, such as Vyper, as well as to quickly kickstart emissions to new pools and chains before gauge rewards could kick in.

The era of easy $CRV has come to an end. Perhaps one day the heady early days where anybody could easily accumulate large piles of $CRV for LP-ing at a price of $0.20 might look as ridiculous in hindsight as the first four years where Bitcoin could be bought for a CAPCHA or a pizza.

We’d argue the first four years of $CRV emissions was doled more wisely than Bitcoin.

Through a DeFi bull and bear market, the $CRV firehose was directed strategically to drive as much short-term revenue as possible back towards veCRV holders. The final scorecard:

This era is no more, and the remaining $CRV rewards will be directed as judiciously as possible.

Perhaps a new FUD may be that Mich doesn’t have enough $CRV at his disposal to speed growth? Inflation too low?

We doubt the crafty $CRV haters throw in the towel so easily. Any variety of traumatizing events can and will materialize. In crypto always expect the worst.

But for today, we celebrate our triumphs, because we know our haters won’t! Whether in anticipation of the emissions reduction or unrelated, it’s the first time in years $CRV has enjoyed such a glorious green candle.

Here’s to everybody who’s celebrating the start, or end, of what’s been dubbed as the most hated rally. Whether you’re a deeply underwater bagholder getting your first gasp of air, or whether you happened to buy the dip of the dippity dip dipperino, you’re all invited to party with us, for we live to fight another year!

One day they’ll say you were lucky. We’ll say you were smart and strong.

While DeFi has been a horrendous investment to date, it’s been such a blast watching the tech stack of the new financial infrastructure taking shape.

Let’s hope this marks the beginning of the flywheel spinning into motion.

Take a moment to make note of who stayed with us through thick and thin.

For more, check out our throwback to Curve’s emissions cut from two years back

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Disclaimers!

Special artwork courtesy mini_wagmi, drop a follow!