Farmers delight! DefiLlama has released their yield farming dashboard via collaboration with Yield Ape!
Charlie Work
Charlie is on the core team at Curve Finance. Anybody who has interacted with the Curve channels on Telegram or Discord knows Charlie already β insanely bright, great sense of humor, passionate about Curveβs mission and cryptocurrency. He was gracious enough to sit down and answer your questions about Curveβs past, present, and future, as well as thoughts about DeFi more broadly.
The interview will be paywalled for 72 hours, at which point it will be open to everybody.
CMC: Charlie, thanks for joining. Whatβs your role at Curve?
Charlie: My role evolved quite a bit, I used to do a lot of dev work but with Curve scaling up, I mostly focus on managing dev teams, public relations, strategic decisions and overall, keeping the Curve wheels turning.
It's more managerial and further away from the people as I once was.
CMC: What did you do before Curve, and how did you find your way onto the core team?
Charlie: I was doing arbitrage starting in late 2013. I dropped in and out of crypto over the following years, before starting doing CEX to DEX arbitrage when KyberSwap, Oasis and Uniswap started growing. I just saw DeFi as the original promise that people talked about in 2013 after discovering MakerDAO.
Eventually, I came across Curve and did some arbitrage there, especially during March when DAI depegged. Got talking to Michael after writing about Curve and becoming active within the community, which was very niche at the time. I just thought the whole thing was brilliant.
It was all very raw, even more difficult to take on than it is now, but the enthusiasm from people showed there was something truly special there.
CMC: Curve must have changed a lot since those early days.Β For somebody new to Curve, what was Curve like back then
Charlie: We were four and weΒ were just figuring things out, trying to organize the protocol and build it out in an industry that was growing at an incredible pace. Everyone had a lot of responsibility and it was very full on.
The DAO launch in particular, I think it took everyone weeks to feel normal after everything that went down. MichaelΒ made all the right decisions when it came to the DAO at a time where there wasn't so much to draw inspiration from.
We made mistakes and tried to learn from them, with security and decentralization always in mind.
CMC: Did you ever find the Chad who deployed the first contracts?
Charlie: We never heard from him after the launch, no. There was a guy who would come to the Telegram using his alt but he didn't seem to have the technical knowledge to do what 0xc4ad did, so we assumed it was an imposter.
CMC: You've always been a full-throated advocate of the values underlying DeFi.Β What are some of these core principles?
Charlie: Especially at a time of increased regulatory scrutiny, it's sad to see some large protocols failing to take decentralization seriously. Decentralization and permissionless are the two main ones for me. Users being on equal footing, no funds custody and limited admin rights is the bare minimum and so many protocols are failing at it.
Curve isn't perfect by any means but we try to do right by those core principles.
CMC: Was there ever any pushback from stakeholders to avoid decentralizing?Β Keep Curve centrally controlled to speed up growth?
Charlie: We're lucky enough to not have any VCs stakeholders and a founder who believes in those principles, so no.
We never want to be in a situation where we're asked to stop/pause/kill something and we're capable of doing so.
We also want the protocol to be able to keep going if the entire team dies tomorrow. Those are important tests to consider IMO.
CMC: Do you see an increasingly hostile regulatory environment as the biggest threat to Curve, or is there other issues that keep you up at night?
Charlie: We are lucky enough to have a Swiss legal entity so we are well shielded from overly aggressive governments.
We are approaching a point where Curve needs us less and less, so if anything I sleep better at night.
CMC: Lucky!Β If Curve needs you less, then does this mean Curve is done innovating?Β Or is there more excitement ahead?Β Feel free to leak as much alfa as you like
Charlie: At this stage, we are mostly looking at improving what we have. Deploying crypto factories on sidechains and L2s, an improved router and then there is something people have been asking about for two years which Michael is working on, it's very special but it's a bit too early to talk about unfortunately.
CMC: Fair enough.Β I'd asked some users what to ask you, and the most popular question was: "What's your favorite seed phrase?"
Charlie:
Do people have favorite seed phrases?
Bored Ape owners maybe?
CMC: LOL. Any other thoughts about overall trends you're seeing around DeFi and crypto?
Charlie: Increased hostility? Likely to do with the bear market and increasingly competitive landscape.
The industry has a long way to go, it's improving on many fronts but it also seems like it might be losing focus lately.
Building out stupid things on top of stupid things and rewarding bad actors just because they shout the loudest on CT.
CMC: Great, anything I missed?Β Parting words of wisdom?
Charlie: I'm all out of wisdom I'm afraid. I love the newsletter though, hope you keep it going, it's a great way to catch up with all Curve things.