Key Takeaways:
- CRV coin aims to regain altitude, but the recovery is fragile.
- Curve Finance crypto CEO buys mansion allegedly jeopardizing the protocol.
- Justin Sun bought out part of Egorov’s share to “help” the protocol. What is his agenda?
YEREVAN (CoinChapter.com) — Curve Finance, formerly one of the largest DeFi protocols on the Ethereum blockchain, saw its in-house CRV coin price recover 25% on Aug 1. It had crashed 35% crash on July 30-31 in panic selloff led by Curve Finance’s $47 million exploit.
Trivia: Curve Finance is a stablecoin-oriented protocol. It holds liquidity throughout 12 blockchains and launched its own algorithmic stablecoin, crvUSD, in May 2023. The platform supports many stablecoins, including USDT, USDC, DAI, TUSD, USD, etc.
CRV coin price under pressure
The recovery, however, remains fragile as the team scrambles to undo the damage and assure the holders their funds are Exchangeshanges have NOT taken action against CRV withdrawals, except for South Korea-based Upbit, which cited “certain vulnerabilities in some of the stablecoin pools.”
Meanwhile, the protocol’s total value locked (TVL) plummeted after reaching $1.67 billion, half its start-of-year level.
Moreover, the chart below contains all the events that contributed to sharp TVL shifts in the previous two years: Magic Internet Money (MIM) depeg in early 2022, UST depeg in May 2022, and the FTX collapse in Nov 2022.
The latest Reentrancy hack is not the only Curve Finance exploit. The Defi protocol lost about $570,000 after attackers compromised the front end of its liquidity pool in August 2022.
Notably, the largest trading volumes for Curve come from Ethereum. They have surged in the previous two days, going from $62 million on July 29 to north of $340 million on July 30-31.
Meanwhile, as the CRV coin bleeds, certain aspects of Curve officials’ lives become relevant.
The help is questionable
As sources reported back in May 2023, Curve Finance CEO Michael Egorov and his wife Anna bought two mansions in Melbourne worth around $40 million after allegedly taking out a DeFi loan with Curve tokens.
A crypto analyst with nearly a million followers, Scott Melker, commented that Egorov put the whole DeFi sector at risk while serving personal agenda.
The founder of Curve took out a DeFi loan with his own tokens. Fine, great, whatever. But… liquidation would put all of DeFi at risk. Yesterday’s hack came close to making it happen. What did he use the money for? Mansions. Plural. Two of them.
tweeted Melker.
Still, while the hack devastated Curve Finance rug pull is not a valid term as, formally, Egorovctually rug his customers, albeit the CEO’s behavior could be considered reckless.
Moreover, Justin Sun, the founder and CEO of layer 1 blockchain Tron, scooped out nearly $3 million worth of Egorov’s governance tokens to “help” the situation. For those out of the loop, Justin Sun is a controversial figure in the crypto community with several market manipulation accusations under his belt, adding FUD to the case.
Thus, his presence might not add trust points for Curve customers. “We will collaborate with Curve on a stUSDT staking pool, so the CRV coin I bought will be used to vote for the pool,” added Sun.
