Lots of detailed content has been written summarizing the cold-to-hot Curve War that broke out between Do Kwon (Terra) and Rune Christensen (Maker) with Kwon’s threat —
— and subsequent action, of building an alliance to effectively expel DAI from Curve.
As the Chinese proverb goes, “When two elephants fight, the grass gets trampled”: when two big players fight, the little people are crushed.
But when two elephants fight a Curve War, degens get richer. The latest fight for control of Curve shows how.
The past: A little algostable history
Historically there have been 3 types of stablecoins:
- Fiat-collateralized or centralized stablecoins, fully backed by fiat collateral (Tether/USDT, USDC)
- Crypto-backed, overcollateralized stablecoins (DAI v1)
- Partially-backed algorithmic stablecoins (UST, FRAX, MIM)
Centralized stablecoins, which require a direct line to a US bank in order to function, still make up 80% of the stablecoin market: USDT 45%, USDC 25%, and BUSD 10%.
Within the stablecoin market, however, centralized stables are growing much more slowly than their decentralized algorithmic stablecoin counterparts, primarily UST, DAI, and FRAX. (The former are increasingly called ‘cStablecoins’ and the latter ‘algostables,’ which I will use for the rest of this article.)
The bullish conviction around algostables is driven by a growing belief — turbocharged by the Mareva injunctions of 34 crypto donors to the Canadian Freedom Convoy and an explosion in financial censorship across the West (not to mention more and more governments at odds with the West) — that crypto on cStablecoin rails offers no privacy, no freedom, and no censorship resistance from the fiat world. The same libertarian beliefs that guided us to this new form of money, dictate that increasingly insolvent Western governments will find more and more excuses to refuse to honor more and more liabilities (which is all a currency is).
In short, crypto with cStablecoins is not real crypto, except insofar as cStables are an evolutionary pit stop on the highway out of fiat hell.
DAI, founded by MakerDAO, was the first algostable to truly break out at scale: a smart contract that minted heavily-collateralized DAI as users deposited ETH in its vaults, supported by a system of third-party arbitrageurs who could theoretically make large profits if a poorly-informed public sloppily ran for the exits.
However, if something happens which causes those third parties to lose systemic confidence, the fundamental pegs in the system (for example, DAI-USDC or DAI-USDT) lose support, and the currency ‘loses its peg.’ That happened in March of 2020, when Maker’s vaults slipped into technical default when the price of ETH dropped 30% in one day. As synthetic long ETH / short DAI positions were liquidated en masse, DAI’s value surged above its peg, causing more ETH deposits to slip into default and get liquidated.
Maker and DAI survived the ordeal, but its founder Rune Christensen permanently lost operating confidence in the algostable model. Maker/DAI migrated from a 95% ETH-collateralized algostable to a 50% stablecoin-backed algostable by 4Q20. Today, around 60% of DAI is backed by USDT and USDC.
After surviving the initial brush with death, Maker also reimagined its place in the financial world. Most crypto protocols basically want to build a primitive in the race to usurp the USD’s crown and figure out the cash-on-cash economics later. However, after the March 2020 near-death experience, Christensen seemingly reimagined the Maker DAO as a supremely-efficient neobank running on smart contracts.
Once Maker settled into this new mindset, as a vanilla real-world-asset-based lender running on a superior software and governance backbone, it embraced most of the fiat regulatory process.
A lot of that fiat love-fest was no doubt borne out of an interest in prudent regulatory posturing. It also dovetailed with other un-crypto-like convictions of the Maker DAO, such as a vocal passion about global warming and a broader focus on incorporating ESG frameworks into Maker’s credit allocation.
But as DAI changed from an ethereum-backed algostable to a mostly USDC-backed algostable, and adopted a broader belief set commonly associated with the most coercive forces in modern Western culture, DAI became seen as a sellout to centralization.
Maker’s rejection of the algostable crown, in its defense, had solid grounding in reality. Many algostables have failed. TITAN, a $2 billion algostable backed by Mark Cuban, went from $2 billion to zero in June 2021. LUNA, then just another upstart, very nearly went to zero at around the same time. Literally as I write (4/4/2022), the USDN (Neutrino) algostable, the rail on which the WAVES protocol conducts stablecoin transactions, saw a sustained 20%+ break of its peg, an implosion more severe than UST’s May 2021 depegging death-spiral.
Two algostables in particular (UST, which is basically backed by faith in its LUNA governance token; and FRAX, which started around the same time UST did) stayed true to the algostable vision, and scaled with some success. A third, MIM, rose and fell with the profile of Daniele Sestagalli.
As Terra rose, Rune Christensen increasingly attacked Terra’s “ponzu”1 customer acquisition strategy and highly promotional, personality-driven protocol marketing. Christensen had learned the hard way that in deposit-rich DeFi, borrowers — not depositors, TVL, or other more familiar metrics — are king. In my view, his suspicion of TVL-chasing was not just selfish, it was thoroughly grounded in reality.
But as much as Christensen oozed contempt for Terra, the wider crypto community cheered Kwon’s willingness to risk everything to build a successful algostable where so many others had failed. In Kwon’s pugnacious marketing style, his shadowboxing with US fiat regulators, his single-minded libertarian-ization of the stablecoin industry, and his indifference to a loud chorus of naysayers, many top crypto practitioners are reminded of Elon Musk.
At the same time, as 2022 became an ongoing advertisement for crypto payment rails, DAI’s embrace of USDC — seen by many as a privatized or prototypical Federal Reserve stablecoin — seemed increasingly out of step with the winds of change.
Curve War III: Making bribery great again, the algostable alliance expels DAI from Curve
(If you find the history and mechanisms of crypto-bribery fascinating and want to learn more, I recommend Luca Prosperi’s analysis of the recent Curve Wars.)
Do Kwon’s “we pretty much own the CVX” declaration-of-war announcement was shorthand for saying the following:
- “We” — an alliance of past and future algostable “ponzus” who’re also CRV holders (mainly UST, FRAX, and Redacted Cartel, aka OHM) — own a critical mass of CVX tokens which can control the CVX DAO, and therefore control the CRV DAO.
- CVX is basically the dominant political party in the Curve shareholder-democracy. If you control enough of the majority political party (CVX), you control the whole country (Curve).
- Kwon and his coalition voted to remove all CRV subsidies from the DAI-3Pool on Curve. This will cause DAI volume to shift further to eeUniswap v3 (already basically equal to Curve in stable-to-stable market share),
But Kwon & Co only control 12% of CVX tokens. How does that get you to 50% of CVX?
Actually, you don’t need 50% of CVX. Just like IRL democracy, you only need 50% of people who actually vote. However, even if, say, only 40% of hodlers have enough skin in the game to vote on something like this (making 20% of all CVX tokens the breakeven requirement), 12% is still not nearly enough.
Kwon & Co have corralled the additional votes through the Votium dapp, a market for CVX bribery in which major Curve players bribe CVX holders for their biweekly votes.
We can see that FRAX and UST (the leftmost two columns) paid $13m in native-token emissions to corral the additional votes. The $5m for UST is substantial, but probably not too different from what UST usually spend to consistently defend their Curve incentives. The $8m that FRAX pays — for two weeks of subsidizing the new Curve 4pool at the expense of the DAI-3pool — otoh, is enormous. On an annualized basis, FRAX is spending $210m of FRAX emissions; they have a market cap of $2.8B.
The votes occur every two weeks, so FRAX and UST are paying $13m * 26 = $338m annualized for the right to control around $270m in annualized CRV/CVX emissions. Either CVX/CRV need to go up in value, or the amount spent on bribes must come down. Or both. In any case, being bribed in crypto hasn’t felt this rewarding in quite a while.
It’s hard to see how FRAX could spend that kind of money in the real world in a way that would brand themselves as a major player to existing key players in the crypto industry, ‘rent’ market share from a competitor, and create significant additional demand for their stablecoin — although if FRAX don’t ultimately have demand use-cases for their stablecoin, their Curve promotions will indeed be another form of ‘ponzu’ marketing, lining the pockets of CVX holders.
Meanwhile, the large population of indifferent CVX tokenholders can just allocate their CVX to Votium and enjoy being bribed.
Bribery-as-a-service: staking CVX on Votium
As we can tell from Llama Air Force (above), CVX stakers are now getting >40% APYs by locking up their CVX tokens for duration (vlCVX). You can further delegate your vlCVX, via Votium, to the highest bidders for your vote — namely FRAX and UST, who are energetically bidding for your vote to keep DAI off of Curve.
In the most recent 2-week epoch, due to the UST & FRAX arms race to buy enough CVX votes to control enough CRV votes to kick DAI off of Curve, CVX holders realized 57% APYs on their staked CVX. Furthermore, to keep DAI off Curve, these wars will have to continue for at least a couple of months. The ultimate reward tokens (CRV and CVX) are effectively two share classes of the most valuable stablecoin dex in the world (they’re likely to retain their value for a long time to come). And as long as the stablecoin wars continue, users will continue to reap outsized yields.
Staking at a Glance
Globally staked value rose slightly as of the week ended April 6th, on fairly tepid week-over-week crypto price growth, combined with growth in the population of global staking wallets rose 1.32% week-on-week to 4.765m.
Staking Intelligence
Global Staking Research
European Parliament Passes Bill Requiring Crypto Firms to KYC Non-Custodial Wallets
The European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) has approved provisions to Europe’s Transfer of Funds Regulation that restricts Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs) from transacting with unhosted wallets without verifying their owners’ identities beforehand.
Elizabeth Warren Calls for US to Create a CBDC
“I think it’s time for us to move in that direction,” the Democratic senator told NBC’s Chuck Todd, in an interview to be aired Thursday night.
Axie Infinity’s Ronin Network Suffers $625M Exploit
The Ronin Bridge that connects Axie Infinity’s Ronin sidechain to Ethereum has been drained of 173,600 ETH ($590M) and 25.5M USDC in what may be DeFi’s biggest exploit yet.
Government sets out plan to make UK a global cryptoasset technology hub
Among the initial steps will be legislation to recognize stablecoins as legitimate vehicles for payments.
OpenSea Adds Solana to Its Quiver of Networks
OpenSea is already the No. 1 NFT marketplace with $2.3B in monthly volume. Now it may be about to get a lot bigger. OpenSea will launch on Solana, a leading rival to the Ethereum network, in April, the company tweeted on Tuesday.
Staking Assets
Polygon Taps Zero-Knowledge Proofs to Enhance Privacy for Users
On March 29, Polygon unveiled an identity service as the latest addition to its upcoming suite of zero-knowledge (ZK) protocols, the project announced in an official blog post.
Tezos Deploys Major ‘Tenderbake’ Upgrade
The proof-of-stake blockchain has changed its consensus algorithm in order to lower block times and improve performance.
Vitalik Muses on How PoS Could Have Come Sooner
All eyes are on Ethereum’s coming transition to Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus. It’s a historic moment in the history of crypto. Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s co-founder and muse, weighed in this week with his thoughts on what’s to come, and poignantly, the significance of decisions not made in the network’s evolution.
Staking Providers
Lido reveals bug bounty program for Liquid Staking on Polygon
In collaboration with Shard Labs and Immunefi, they unveiled their comprehensive bug bounty program for Lido on Polygon. Earn up to $2 million in bounties – with no KYC requirements – for helping to ensure the security of liquid staking for Polygon.
Stakefish announces VaaS for Archway
One of the leading Validator-as-a-Service providers Stakefish will support Archway. ****Archway enables scalable cross-chain dApps that reach as many users and assets as possible in the Cosmos ecosystem.
Staking company Chorus One launches $30 million venture fund
Crypto staking company Chorus One has launched a $30 million venture fund as it seeks to spend the cash it’s accrued after a booming year for staking businesses.
Bankless: The PoW vs. PoS Debate | Lyn Alden & Justin Drake
Lyn Alden is the Founder of Lyn Alden Investment Strategy and an expert in macro markets who’s also a strong Bitcoin, proof-of-work proponent. Her friendly counterpart, Justin Drake is a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation and is pro-proof-of-stake. Watch them battle it out here.
Staking Rewards Insights
📢 New Staking Tutorial for Slavi
Easily learn how to earn up to 120% on your $SLV in just 6 steps
📢 New Team Interview with yAxis
Learn about DeFi and yAxis launching on Avalanche in this exclusive interview
🔔 New Staking Mondays Episode
We welcome Jack Zampolin of Strangelove, Sommelier, Cosmos and C1 🔥
We discussed:
- Sommelier Ethereum Bridge
- Cosmwasm
- Staking Participation boosted by Airdrops
- A Milestone for Blockchain Governance
- DAO Adoption
- IBC Adoption
- The missing piece for the Cosmos Ecosystem to take off
- Some yield alpha across Cosmos and JUNO
Watch the full episode here!
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