This thread is an introduction to @CurveFinance and the $CRV token. The end of the thread includes a buying and staking guide for $CRV. Nothing in this thread is financial advice.
$CRV is currently rated as a lower to middle risk (risk level 1.5 out of 4, Lowest to Middle Risk Level, 4 being highest risk) crypto.
One way to understand Curve Finance is to see it as a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) and an exchange at the same time. Curve Finance has become the premier exchange of choice to trade stable coins due to its low slippage and low fees.
It is a specialized exchange for specifically stable coin trading, although now other pools for other major cryptos are now available.
Also, Liquidity Providers are able to provide stable coin pairs while minimizing chances of impermanent loss due to them being stable coins and not increasing or decreasing much in price.
LP providers are most concerned about impermanent loss in other exchanges and they do not have to worry about that here.
$CRV is the official protocol token. It has use cases that include: being locked up for enabling governance (voting) of the protocol, being used as LP rewards, and being locked up for staking rewards.
When staking: CRV is locked into the Curve Protocol for a predesignated amount of time so the staker can receive veCRV. veCRV can be used to vote on protocol decisions and earn trading exchange fees.
The longer you decide to stake lock your CRV, the more veCRV you will be promised in return. Also, holding the veCRV will earn you trading fees in the mean time, as stated before.
The decisions of the protocol are made by the people with veCRV, so the basically the people who locked up their CRV can vote.
Curve Finance is incredibly important in the world of DeFi because it is the main trading hub for all types of stable coins. And stable coins are currently the foundation that DeFi sits on. So you when you think stability in the world of DeFi, think of Curve.
Volatility is a huge occurrence in DeFi and protocols like Curve bring balance to the space by providing the foundational stability that meshes the DeFi world together. For this reason: major DeFi applications, such as Sushi and Aave, are using Curve Finance.
Curve Finance has the most value deposited of all the DeFi exchanges in the world. Curve works with many other DeFi protocols. Curve provides CRV as its main reward token. CRV essentially runs the Curve Finance DAO.
There are Curve Liquidity Pools on the Curve Protocol. For example: (MIM + CRV) is one of the liquidity pools listed on the site used for the exchange. $MIM is Magic Internet Money and is a popular stable coin from the Abracadabra lending DeFi protocol.
There are different incentives to providing liquidity to different pools. All pools earn interest from trading fees. Some pools earn interest from lending and finally some pools have extra incentives for providing liquidity.
You can earn CRV tokens on top of the fees and interest for providing liquidity.
Now, letβs cover something huge going on in DeFi called the βCurve Warsβ, which makes the CRV token very important during this time.
Remember when I mentioned voting by veCRV holders? What are they voting on? One major decision they are voting on is the amount of CRV being distributed to each pool as rewards.
So different external protocols and Curve Fi users can vote to influence the Curve Protocol to lean in different directions via changing the distribution of the CRV token.
So basically, voting can be done to increase the CRV token APY for a certain pool, thereby encouraging more tokens to be provided as liquidity for that pool to get this higher APY as passive income, and thereby increasing the influence and power of that particular stable coin.
This would increase the power and success of the project that backs that stable coin.
A DeFi protocol called @ConvexFinance has the objective to accumulate as much CRV as possible to sway the voting power provided by the veCRV token. At this time, Convex owns about 51% of the $CRV circulating supply.
So now, both CVX (Convex) and CRV (Curve) token holders are being incentivized or rewarded by other protocols in different ways to vote for their represented pools on the Curve Protocol.
Major protocols are now literally paying for these votes. Abracadabra is one. Terra Lunaβs stable coin protocol for $UST is another.
Curve Finance is THE major stable coin exchange DAO protocol in DeFi. The life blood of DeFi essentially is the stable coin at the moment, and this life blood runs through Curve Finance. Curve Finance has 23.17 billion dollars worth of crypto locked up in total volume (TVL).
Thatβs why it sits at #1 on the TVL rankings in DeFi and thatβs why all these DeFi protocols are fighting to take control over it.
Basically, the $CRV token is becoming quite valuable in DeFi. Hence, this guide was created.
Curve is a Multichain protocol. So it runs on Ethereum mainly, but also on Avalanche, Fantom, Harmony, etc.
Side Note: It will worth it to buy some CRV on Ethereum because it seems that CRV needs to be staked on the Ethereum version of Curve Finance, which is the main version of Curve Finance.
So I will have 2 separate guides below. One is just buying and holding through the Avalanche blockchain to save on gas fees. The other is buying and staking through Ethereum. Plan out what you want to do first before choosing which guide to follow.
Guide To Just Buying and Holding $CRV with Minimal Gas Fees:
1. Make sure your Metamask Wallet is set up and ready to go.
2. Go to Kucoin Exchange and purchase $AVAX on trade.kucoin.com.
3. Send your AVAX through the C-CHAIN to your Metamask Wallet Address.
2. Go to Kucoin Exchange and purchase $AVAX on trade.kucoin.com.
3. Send your AVAX through the C-CHAIN to your Metamask Wallet Address.
4. Go to traderjoexyz.com.
5. Copy and paste this Avalanche $CRV contract address onto your Metamask Wallet:
0x47536f17f4ff30e64a96a7555826b8f9e66ec468
5. Copy and paste this Avalanche $CRV contract address onto your Metamask Wallet:
0x47536f17f4ff30e64a96a7555826b8f9e66ec468
6. Copy and paste the exact same address into the token field on Trader Joe Exchange.
7. Designate AVAX as the βFromβ token and CRV as the βToβ Token.
8. Complete the trade.
8. Complete the trade.
Guide to Buying and Staking $CRV:
1. Make sure your Metamask is set up and ready to go.
2. Purchase Ethereum on Coinbase Exchange or Kucoin Exchange and send it to your Metamask Wallet Address.
3. Go to app.sushi.com.
2. Purchase Ethereum on Coinbase Exchange or Kucoin Exchange and send it to your Metamask Wallet Address.
3. Go to app.sushi.com.
4. In the top right corner, make sure you are connected to the Ethereum network.
5. Click on the button to the left of the βSwap Toβ token field and start typing in βCRVβ. The CRV token will show up.
5. Click on the button to the left of the βSwap Toβ token field and start typing in βCRVβ. The CRV token will show up.
6. Complete the trade from Ethereum to CRV. Leave about at least 20% of your Ethereum for gas fees for buying CRV and staking CRV later, as well as other future purposes.
If the GWEI is too high for Ethereum right now, wait for another day or time when the GWEI dips down to possibly under 50 before buying CRV.
10. You are at the staking site. Study the options and decide how long you want to lock up your CRV for and how much veCRV you want to be getting in return.
11. When you are ready, click the purple βStake CRVβ letters. You will be brought to: dao.curve.fi.
11. When you are ready, click the purple βStake CRVβ letters. You will be brought to: dao.curve.fi.
12. Scroll down and you will see 0 next to βAmountβ. Next to that, you will see your CRV balance next to βMaxβ. Click on "Max" to just stake the Max CRV amount if you want to.
13. Underneath, choose the amount of time you want to lock up your CRV. Click that button.
13. Underneath, choose the amount of time you want to lock up your CRV. Click that button.
14. Then click βCreate Lockβ. Another window will pop up prompting you to confirm, which will lead to Metamask popping up for you to finally confirm the transaction.
15. Complete the transaction and you are finished!
15. Complete the transaction and you are finished!
16. You can add the veCRV address to your metamask to track your veCRV balance:
0x5f3b5DfEb7B28CDbD7FAba78963EE202a494e2A2
0x5f3b5DfEb7B28CDbD7FAba78963EE202a494e2A2
17. Congratulations, you are done. Follow me @takegreenpill for more crypto guides and helpful crypto tweets. Nothing in this thread is financial advice. Do your own research and you are responsible for all your decisions in this field.
18. This is an IMPORTANT update to this guide. @ConvexFinance offers boosted APY staking for $CRV. The APY for steps for the direct CRV staking is quite low right now. See these steps below to get more APY for your locked up CRV:
19. However, when deciding to stake CRV on @ConvexFinance protocol, don't forget that you are converting your CRV to cvxCRV. This is important to note because:
20. "Converting CRV to cvxCRV is irreversible. You may stake and unstake cvxCRV tokens, but not convert them back to CRV. Secondary markets may however exist to allow the exchange of cvxCRV for CRV."
21. By staking $CRV on Convex protocol, you are converting CRV to cvxCRV first before staking cvxCRV on Convex. By staking cvxCRV, youβre earning usual rewards from veCRV plus a share of 10% of the Convex LPsβ boosted CRV earnings, and CVX tokens on top of that. Thus, higher APY.
22. If you understand all of this and still want to stake CRV on Convex for higher APY, go to: convexfinance.com and connect your Metamask Wallet to the site.
23. Fill in the amount of CRV that you want to convert into cvxCRV before staking. Approve the CRV for staking in one transaction and then stake it in the next transaction by clicking "Convert and stake".
24. Refresh the page and you should see an updated balance in your dashboard under "My cxvCRV Staked". It should be 1:1 equal to the amount of CRV that you locked up on the Convex Protocol.
25. Click on "Unstake" if you ever want to unstake.
26. CRV token address:
0xd533a949740bb3306d119cc777fa900ba034cd52
cvxCRV token address:
0x62b9c7356a2dc64a1969e19c23e4f579f9810aa7
0xd533a949740bb3306d119cc777fa900ba034cd52
cvxCRV token address:
0x62b9c7356a2dc64a1969e19c23e4f579f9810aa7
To track your CVX rewards in addition to your other rewards enter this CVX address into your Metmask for the future:
CVX token address:
0x4e3fbd56cd56c3e72c1403e103b45db9da5b9d2b
CVX token address:
0x4e3fbd56cd56c3e72c1403e103b45db9da5b9d2b
Again, you should be able to trade your unstaked cvxCRV back into CRV on the secondary market on Sushiswap if you want to do this in the future.
17. Nothing in this thread is financial advice.
Another Important Update:
You can just buy $cvxCRV and stake that on the @ConvexFinance platform. cvxCRV is slightly cheaper than CRV.
You can just buy $cvxCRV and stake that on the @ConvexFinance platform. cvxCRV is slightly cheaper than CRV.
IMPORTANT UPDATE: You can stake $CRV on app.beefy.finance. See steps below:
1. Purchase $FTM on kucoin and send it to your Metamask Wallet through the FTM network. Go to app.sushi.com and add Fantom Network to your Metamask Wallet with the top right network selection button on the dashboard, if you have not done so already.
2. Go to app.sushi.com again, make sure the website is adjusted to Fantom network, and purchase CRV with your FTM. The Fantom CRV contract address is:
0x1E4F97b9f9F913c46F1632781732927B9019C68b
But CRV should be searchable in the token fields.
0x1E4F97b9f9F913c46F1632781732927B9019C68b
But CRV should be searchable in the token fields.
3. After buying CRV and making sure you left some FTM for more gas fees, go to app.beefy.finance. Scroll down and find the CRV option. Click in that box. And the option to stake CRV will show up.
4. Designate the CRV balance. Approve the staking first and then stake your CRV in 2 seperate transactions.
Note: Staked $CRV outside of Ethereum can't be locked for voting on the @CurveFinance protocol.
Note: If you purchased cvxCRV directly on Sushiswap and you want to stake it on @ConvexFinance for rewards, go to the staking tab in the βConvert CRVβ section and click βadvancedβ. You can stake cvxCRV directly there.
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