For Its Birthday the Curve DAO Is Dramatically Cutting Daily CRV Rewards

For the first time, the circulating supply of the CRV token will grow far less quickly today.

The Curve DAO started with the release of the CRV token and the beginning of liquidity mining on Curve Finance, the automated market maker that stands out as one of the best places to trade tokens that have the same value (such as DAI and USDT, or renBTC and wBTC).

Based on the release schedule set out at launch, new circulating supply on a daily basis will drop by nearly 30% when CRV hits its anniversary a little after 22:15 UTC tonight, according to an email from Curve founder and Swiss Stake CEO Michael Egorov.

$CRV inflation going down for the first time in about 9 hours, will also mark the end of pre-launch LP rewards. That's a big drop in emissions (close to 30%). Onwards!https://t.co/uy8uG70ZZc

— Charlie Watkins (@charlie_eth) August 13, 2021

For liquidity miners who are using Curve’s gauge system, total daily rewards will drop to 633,126.5 CRV from about 752,918.6.

Also when CRV launched, 5% of the initial 1.3 billion CRV supply was set aside for early liquidity providers, but that reward vested over the course of the first year. That period also ends today, meaning that allocation will be completely unlocked.

CRV Wars

The initial distribution to investors and employees will continue for the next couple years, however, which accounts for about 33% of the initial supply.

CRV has been one of the most sought after governance tokens since launch in 2020.

Long coveted by the robo advisor for yield, Yearn Finance, this summer has seen CRV wars break out as Convex Finance has competed with Yearn to be the best place to stake Curve’s governance token. A new app was just released to facilitate bribing CRV holders to vote for better rewards for Curve’s liquidity pools.

CRV price is up this week from a little under $2 a week ago to $2.29, in mid-afternoon trading ET, according to CoinGecko, with a market cap of $822 million.

[CORRECTED on Aug. 13 @ 4pm EST to reflect accurate timing for CRV supply change]