First published 14 August 2020, the day the team said it had adopted the deployment. Expanded in October 2026 so a pool receipt is not described as CRV, and so a four-year lock is not described as a savings account. Curve is software that pools deposits, mostly of tokens that aim at the same price, so a trade between them moves the price less than it would in a general pool. What is Uniswap (UNI)? is the earlier general shape. What is Dai (DAI)? is one of the dollar tokens these pools were built around. CRV is neither the pool nor the dollar. Ethereum without the jargon is the chain the original contracts sit on.
The token contract was deployed on 12 August 2020 from code the project had published, by someone who was not the team. The team checked that deployment and adopted it. The admin keys in that deployment are the ones that define this token. A later copy, with different keys, is someone else’s CRV.
A cap, and a schedule that was in the contract
The maximum is about 3.03 billion. New CRV is minted for liquidity providers on a schedule the contract has enforced since deployment. The rate falls by about 16 percent each August. It is not a vote. An initial slice was vested, and that vesting finished in August 2024. A price times 3.03 billion, in the early years, counted coins the schedule had not minted yet.
The vote is a lock. CRV locked for up to four years becomes veCRV. One CRV locked for four years is one unit of weight. A shorter lock is a fraction, and the weight falls as the clock runs down. The receipt cannot be sent. The lock cannot be opened early. When it ends, the CRV comes back and the weight is gone. People who hold the weight vote on which pools receive the new CRV, and on other decisions. A receipt for a pool deposit is not veCRV, and it is not CRV. Sending the pool receipt sends the deposit. Staking is a lock and a queue, not a savings account.
In July 2023 some pools were drained after a flaw in one version of the Vyper compiler. Pools that did not use that version were different contracts. This page will not describe the flaw. DeFi is software with rules you cannot call support about.
Curve has been deployed on other chains. A pool there is a different set of contracts. CRV bridged there is a different token. An Ethereum address will not receive it. The wrong network is still the wrong city. Nothing here is an instruction to provide liquidity, to lock CRV, or to buy it.
