July 28, 2023: Big Round Numbers 🔢🧮
$crvUSD retakes $100MM TVL, fees and locks up + Zunami’s Curve War strategy
After the Conic Finance hack, $crvUSD surrendered the psychologically important $100MM marker. Oh well, we’re already back!
The path back to $100MM was a bit unexpected. One chad had a whopping 16MM leveraged long ETH position that they closed out, dropping borrow rates.
However, instead of a sharp upwards depeg from the sudden drop in supply, instead it got absorbed within the protocol. Protocol Extractable Value?
Borrow rates bottomed out…
And degens flooded in, pushing $crvUSD back above $100MM as if it never left.
Maybe a billion this year is still in the cards? Degens are starting to figure out how to integrate $crvUSD into their trading strategies
And along the way, it’s all printing money for veCRV stakers
Fees
Precisely how much money is $crvUSD minting? It’s still not terribly straightforward to calculate as it turns out.
We know that veCRV had a great week, unfortunately at the expense of Conic
This marks the highest weekly fees since March and the USDC FUD
The question is what is this delta… the great Defi Llama is only at $390K.
The obvious thought is that the $260K gap is $crvUSD fees, which would be very exciting if true.
However, the amount appears to be reduced, so it’s unclear what accounts for the delta.
Roughly since the launch of $crvUSD, the veCRV has been quite a bit positive, so whatever the cause it’s nice to see an consistent antidote to the bear market is fully in effect.
Lockers
Is the uptick in veCRV revenue fueling more locking? Anecdotally, it certainly feels like it.
The effect is slight, but does appear to be up somewhat in July.
It might be a dump token for most, but those who take time to figure out what to do with $CRV seem to enjoy it.
Zunami
Don’t look twice, but Zunami might be the most impressive co-belligerent to join the Curve Wars of late. Their UZD/crvUSD pool just went live and is currently the top yielding destination for $crvUSD.
Nor is this the only place they’re splashing cash.
At play is some innovation in Curve warfare arms technology.
Now, it’s still a very young protocol, and they’ve not received a Llama Risk report so ape at your own peril. At this early stage though, we like what we see!