Curve governance votes on $6M team funding proposal

The DAO community governing Curve finance is on the verge of approving a 21 million CRV (about $6 million) 1-year funding proposal from Swiss Stake AG, Curve Finance’s lead development team headed by the protocol’s founder Michael Egorov.

Curve proposals require a quorum of 30% of all vote-escrowed CRV (veCRV) to participate, with a majority voting in favor. As of Friday at 2:00 pm ET, the votes cast amount to 28.55% of the total, with nearly 100% in favor.

An initial version of the proposal faced community resistance due to a lack of clarity regarding proposed budget allocations, the management of CRV tokens and the implementation of protective measures like vesting, tied to project milestones.

Read more: Curve founder faces community pushback on DAO funding proposal

In response to the community’s concerns, Egorov has updated the proposal with more detailed information. The revised proposal specifies that the requested funds, totaling 21 million CRV, will be allocated to developing key technical features such as scaling supply sinks for crvUSD and improving foreign exchange pools.

Rather than a lump sum, tokens will be vested over one year to a smart contract and staked with major liquid locker projects such as StakeDAO, Convex and Yearn, with safeguards allowing the Curve DAO to intervene if necessary.

Egorov himself and Swiss Stake staff are not required to abstain from the vote, and they collectively hold up to 15% of the veCRV, according to a spokesperson.

“There is no internal policy or anything like it for that. However, with typical quorums we have in votes, it wouldn’t matter. What matters is to not get voting power related to the team to be over, say, 20% in total,” the spokesperson told Blockworks citing the Curve Finance team. 

It won’t be known how much veCRV from Egorov or other members of Swiss Stake AG voted in favor of the proposal until the end of the voting period, they said.

Since the start of 2024 out of 190 votes passed, 138 of those (about 73%) were passed with 100% approval.

Per the revised proposal, Swiss Stake AG commits to producing biannual reports detailing the use of funds and the progress of ongoing initiatives. Additionally, the company plans to improve the user interface and governance site. All related code will be open-sourced.

According to Egorov this proposal has been in the works since the end of 2023, before the completion of the team’s initial vesting of 900 million CRV (30% of the total supply) which was distributed over a period of four years, but ended earlier this month.

Much of his personal holdings of CRV were used as collateral in DeFi protocols backing stablecoins loans and liquidated in June as the price of CRV plunged to an all-time low, following an exploit of UwU lend and a cascade of liquidations.

“That was pretty tough,” Egorov told Blockworks in an interview prior to the current funding request.

“Looking at fundamentals, it did look like having those tokens is much better than having the loans which were taken against them,” he said.

Egorov and his wife purchased a $41 million mansion in Melbourne, Australia, in 2023 according to the Australian Financial Review.

The Curve founder retains “a bunch” of CRVs locked as veCRV. The new proposal will give him a chance to rebuild his personal supply.

“In fact, I was funding a lot of company operations previously from my personal funds. I have CRVs locked, and system fees I am earning by having those CRVs locked are enough of a motivation for me to work on the project,” Egorov said, shortly before the funding proposal moved to an onchain vote.

Egorov’s primary motivation “is to develop and make Curve Finance more secure,” a spokesperson told Blockworks, and not to earn more CRV.

Update following publication:

The governance proposal passed on September 2 with a final tally of roughly 91% in favor and 64.71% of the veCRV participating, well above the quorum threshold.

Updated, September 2, 2024 at 9:38 am ET with additional context.

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