Curve founder seeks $6.6 million grant from DAO to support core development

Michael Egorov, the founder of Curve Finance, presented a gift of 17.45 million CRV tokens to support the development of the lending protocol's ecosystem, research and technological development.

The grant, worth about $6.6 million at current prices, will be made to Swiss Stake AG, the company behind the Curve, and follows a previous grant made in late 2024.

In a proposal posted on Curve DAO's management forum on Sunday, Egorov said the funds will be used to support various technological and security improvements to the lending protocol, as well as sustaining the contribution team.

“This grant will support software research and development, infrastructure, security, and ecosystem support, which will enable the 25-member team at Swiss State AG to continue their ongoing contribution to Curve,” he said.

The founder presented the long-term goals that Swiss Stake AG sees in 2026. The list includes launching and updating the new lending system Lamaland, creating an on-chain foreign currency exchange and improving the Curve user interface.

“This proposal seeks to develop and maintain the Curve smart contract ecosystem and software repositories, support future integrations, cross-chain functionality and user interface improvements, and strengthen the Curve DAO management and operational infrastructure,” Egorov said.

The organization will release any IP created through the grant “under an open source license compatible with Curve's software repositories.”

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If approved, Swiss Stake AG will be allowed to receive a portion of the CRV (CRV) received for additional production for its operations, but will not be able to use the funds for any of the purposes listed in the proposal. The organization said it would commit to “bi-annual reports” on GrantAmount spending.

Swiss Stake AG pushes self-sufficiency

In the proposal, Ergorov said that while Swiss Stake AG generates multiple sources of revenue through CRV, it is “heavily dependent on the support of the community to continue its operations.”

As such, the funding will help the team continue to build the Curve ecosystem and push for self-sustainability.

“Swiss Stake AG has been able to establish some ancillary revenue streams, primarily through the deployment of Curve Lite on other networks. We've also received system fees from VeCrV as a minority participant in several bundled protocols (Convex, StakeDAO, Yearn),” he said.

“All such incomes have been used strictly for the purposes stated in the grant. However, this income does not make the company sustainable at this level,” the founder added.

In the year Founded in early 2020, Curve Finance has a total locked-in value of around $2.2 billion, according to Defillama data, making it the 21st largest DeFi protocol on the market.

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