Curve Founder Michael Egorov Seeks 21 Million CRV From Community Fund for Swiss Stake AG

The Curve community will deliberate on a DAO funding request for 21 million CRV to be allocated to Swiss Stake AG, the company building Curve founded by Michael Egorov.

Michael Egorov, founder of decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocol Curve Finance, has published a proposal seeking funds for his company Swiss Stake AG. The entity, based in Switzerland, has been credited with building several key components of the protocol’s infrastructure, including inventing stableswap and the soft liquidations mechanism LLAMMA.

In a proposal on Curve’s governance forum, Egorov requested 21 million CRV tokens, worth around $6.34 million, to fund Swiss Stake AG’s software research and development efforts. The grant will be for one year, unused funds will be rolled over to the next year, said Egorov.

The funds would come from the Curve Community Fund, which currently holds 47.5 million CRV tokens.

So far, Swiss Stake AG has used the allocation of CRV it received in August 2020 to fund its activities, with around 25 people directly or indirectly involved with the firm on Curve-related development.

“We are aware that this proposal is a cultural shift and are seeking broad support to underpin its legitimacy,” said Egorov.

The proposal was met with some backlash from members of the community, most of whom raised concerns over the lack of a detailed roadmap on how these funds would be spent, particularly given the fact that the requested amount was just under half the Community Fund’s total assets.

“There isn’t a clear answer on what targets for fee generation for crvUSD, what growth metrics are and a path for sustainability,” said one member of the Curve community.

Mikko Ohtamaa, DeFi researcher and CEO of Trading Strategy, suggested in a post on X that Egorov’s recent onchain liquidations played a role in the depletion of Swiss Stake’s CRV allocation. 

“Mich personal liquidation had nothing to do with the company funds. Look at the token distribution,” said Curve contributor Martin Krung.