The governance token CRV of Curve, exchange liquidity pool on , was launched prematurely by an anonymous 'Chad,' and major exchanges moved to list it, as numerous theories are flying around, while YAM announced its transition to 2.0. This all happened in a matter of hours.
The Cryptoverse went from Yamming straight to Curving in less than a day, as cryptography and cyber security expert Alex Taghavi summarised the situation.
Curve's smart contract for the token was available for all to see on GitHub, a software development platform. An anonymous developer decided to pay the ETH 19.9 (USD 8,427) fee and go ahead and deploy "the most anticipated DeFi project and the darling of yield farmers," as Adam Cochran, Partner at decentralized autonomous organization Metacartel Ventures, described it.
In an unexpected twist, the team behind the Curve said they had to adopt it, which Cochran found "the worst possible choice [which] shattered significant trust in their team." He also offered several possibilities of what might have happened, ranging from genius to scamy.
Someone deployed $CRV based on smart contracts we had published on github, front-running our efforts.
While we initially were skeptical, it appeared to be an acceptable deployment with correct code, data and admin keys.
Due to the token/DAO getting traction, we had to adopt it.
— Curve (@CurveFinance) August 14, 2020
Per CoinGecko, CRV, with a market capitalization of USD 5.7 million, is trading at USD 16.25 (at 8:11 UTC). Its 24-hour trading volume is USD 12.4 million. At one point today, it reached the price of USD 54. Its fully diluted valuation is USD 54.4 billion at the moment.
There is barely any liquidity, depth or circulating supply but at $20 CRV's fully diluted market cap is $66 billion.
— Anthony Sassano | sassal.eth ????? (@sassal0x) August 14, 2020
All this has led some, like Bitcoin evangelist at , Pierre Rochard, to wonder if the future of finance is front-running, and many seem to believe that this situation will be damaging for Curve. Furthermore, some say there is something "fishy" happening - Truffle Suite CEO Tim Coulter, for example, said that Curve Finance has the authority on which deployed contracts to use. "A quick “nope” would have directed everyone not to use it. In fact, you could have even earned some security street cred by directing the world not to trust random deployments claiming to be CRV," he wrote.
Some fishy as hell stuff going on here.
Anyone can deploy code that points to your existing code doesn't mean you need to use it.
I could deploy a copy of the CRV contracts saying existing LP tokens can deposit, wouldn't make it official....
— Adam Cochran (@AdamScochran) August 14, 2020
And then, as a cherry on top of a cake in an open-air circus on a scorching hot summer day, major crypto exchanges started listing the token. announced that it would list CRV at the same time they were stressing the current "insanity" of DeFi - with some people claiming that the listing wasn't discussed with the team, and the team reacting with "OMFG."
Market is DeFinitely beyond insanity now. Curve’s price is $30 now on Uniswap, meaning fully diluted market cap is $90 billion. Release rate is 2m ($60m) curve token per day.
Use your own judgement. Be responsible for your own actions. https://t.co/1NYRqqKzoA
— CZ BINANCE (@cz_binance) August 14, 2020
too announced the listing. And it's not all - "in the true spirit of DeFi Listing Week, we're listing [Curve] on right away," said the exchange in an announcement.
As this is all developing, don't you think that there's a chance to catch a breath, as the coin that just yesterday announced that it had lost the battle with a code bug - following a 'we started from the bottom and now we're here' 3-day long story - has announced its second iteration.
Already yesterday, upon the that the unprecedented community effort wasn't able to eradicate the bug issue, YAM Finance said they'll be back. But, as everything in DeFi, things progress quickly, and everything happens in a matter of just hours - the team today announced their YAM migration plan. "If the community chooses, we will facilitate this 2-phase plan over the coming weeks to migrate to audited versions of the YAM protocol," said the blog post, stressing that the community still controls the project.
YAMv2 tokens will not rebase, meaning that no new coins will be released, and will have no on-chain governance functionality in phase 1, while in phase 2, YAM system will be audited and redeployed as YAMv3. More details coming soon, the team said.
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Reactions:
You mean validated right ? Cause that's exactly what happened. Highly suspicious.
— Thomas Zarebczan ?? ?? (@TomZarebczan) August 14, 2020
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Everyday this week I'm like "oh my god, that's bad!" and then the next day is somehow worse.
NUGS exit scamming. Yikes.
YAMS blowing up losing hundreds of millions of dollars. Holy shit, that's bad.
CRV contract compromised and prelaunched ?? then adopted by the team? WTF!!!
— ?ully (@BullyEsq) August 14, 2020
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I'm pretty sure the Canadian girlfriend did it, right before her tragic boating accident, which was reported to the same FBI office that all the hacked projects report to, except the dog ate the paperwork. Or something. https://t.co/OdqHXf2uGb
— Emin Gun Sirer (@el33th4xor) August 14, 2020
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Lol 37k liquidity, broken UI on launch people cant claim. Yeah Ima go get some KFC and be back in an hour, not worth playing currently #CRV
— George Harrap (@George_harrap) August 14, 2020
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$CRV has climbed to $123B at launch, roughly half of $BTC on day 1. pic.twitter.com/BM00pwcwfQ
— Jason Choi (@mrjasonchoi) August 14, 2020
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Look I fully get that it’s Chad, it’s a sexy move but this kind of antisocial action should not be rewarded https://t.co/awHoGDglQv
— Matthew Graham (@mattysino)
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