August 6, 2021: The Lockening 🔓🔑
Guest Post By Crypto Breakdown
Special Guest Post by Crypto Breakdown
Thanks for having me on “Curve Market Cap”. I want to talk about “The Lockening”.
Currently, CRV is being permalocked as veCRV at an impressive pace. Convex changed the game with their platform. As of July 26th 66.7 million Curve tokens have been locked just into cvxcrv. 75.5% of all circulating CRV locked as veCRV. On July 22nd 209% of daily emissions were locked as veCRV. On July 23rd it was 273%. The rate at which CRV is being locked away and removed from circulating supply is very high and doesn’t seem to be slowing.
The above chart shows CRV locked in smart contracts. The chart was steadily dropping due to daily emission of CRV as staking rewards. That trend reversed for the first time on May 17. The exact same week Convex started trading. For the first time since the CRV token debuted, the amount of CRV locked in smart contracts is now increasing. A 15% decrease in daily CRV emissions will further increase this trend.
The above chart shows CRV balance on exchanges. This chart was relatively stable from October through May. Again, the same week Convex went live, the balance on exchanges dropped precipitously. The current balance on exchanges sits at ~25%, down from nearly 50% pre-Convex.
Consider what is happening with the circulating supply of CRV and then consider the 15% daily emissions cut in the next few weeks. All of the trends we have spoken about time and time again will now be exacerbated as the demand remains strong for CRV but the supply inflation drops significantly.
Outside of “The Lockening” there are other positive catalysts coming down the pipe for CRV. Tricrypto pools, a first for crypto, have recently been released. The team has signalled they want to move to permissonless pool deployment in the future. Imagine the race for veCRV from projects looking to incentivize their new pools. In my opinion the future of CRV is very bright. A top tier project, being led by a great team, currently outside the top 100 market cap rankings. I will take that bet anyday.
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