Curve Finance Allocates $3 Million in Admin Fees to Governance Token Holders 

Curve Finance, one of the top decentralized finance (DeFi ) projects of the year, has confirmed a $3 million payout to holders of its governance tokens. Following a week-long voting period, the decentralized exchange (DEX) platform has reached a consensus on allocating administrative fees.

Maintaining Decentralization

As the voting log shows, the process ended in favor of governance token holders. As such, these holders are set to receive about $2.63 million in fees. The fees were accrued before the vote opened. As Curve Finance chief executive Michael Egorov told CoinDesk, they will be dispersing the funds every week following the initial payout.

Curve has been one of the star participants of the 2020 DeFi rally. It is currently the sixth-largest DeFi protocol on the market with about $884 million in locked assets, per data from DeFi Pulse.

However, the service also owes its impressive run to its focus on decentralization. The vote on allocating admin fees is part of Curve’s work to ensure that all community members have a voice. To vote, users will need to stake CRV tokens to Curve’s voting contract, which will then supply them with veCRV. So far, veCRV holders have earned half of all trading fees on Curve – the other half goes to liquidity providers.

Curve Finance in an Evolving DeFi Market

Now that Curve appears to have sorted out its fee distribution mechanism, the service can now focus on maintaining its rally. The DeFi market has been particularly active this year, with protocols posting upticks in their user numbers.

Last month saw a bit of a drop in the market, with assets locked falling and many DeFi tokens dropping in value. However, metrics remain strong. Data from Dune Analytics shows that there are now 860,000 DeFi user addresses, increasing about 1,000 percent over the same period last year.

Even in October, when the DeFi rally halted, user numbers increased, as Dune Analytics’ numbers showed the month saw a 40 percent surge in user count, with the metric moving from 555,000 to 755,000.

The strongest gainers include lending protocol Compound and DEX Dydx. Both increased their user numbers by 250 percent and 50 percent, respectively, over the past month. Compound has lost its position as the industry’s top lending protocol to Maker, but its growth of 135,000 new users shows that it could be making a run for the top spot soon enough.

As for Curve, it still has Uniswap to contend with when it comes to top decentralized exchanges. Dune Analytics’ data shows that Uniswap holds 63.6 percent of all DEX trades, with Curve coming in a distant second in 12.2 percent. SushiSwap and Ox have 8.64 percent and 7 percent of volumes, respectively, meaning that just four DEXs hold over 90 percent of all exchange volumes.