Curve used July to bring Llamalend V2 from Optimism to Ethereum mainnet, opening three isolated lending markets and widening the range of assets that can be used across its lending system. The rollout was staged through governance, with sDOLA and sfrxUSD activated on 21 July and syrupUSDC deployed on 24 July.

The launch coincided with a sharp drop in crvUSD borrowing costs. Curve said the debt-weighted average rate across mint markets fell from 5.6% at the end of June to 2.0% by the end of July, while borrower-minted crvUSD rose 29% to $36.7 million and the collateral supporting those loans increased 43% to $70.5 million.

Three V2 markets go live on mainnet

Llamalend V2 changes Curve’s lending design by removing the requirement for crvUSD to appear in every market. According to Curve, each market can now use supported assets on either side and carries its own oracle, interest-rate model, parameters and borrow cap. The system can also support productive collateral such as Curve LP tokens and yield-bearing vault tokens.

For Ethereum mainnet, the first markets focused on yield-bearing stablecoin collateral. Governance activated borrowing of crvUSD against sDOLA and sfrxUSD on 21 July with caps of $12.4 million and $28.4 million respectively. A syrupUSDC market was deployed on 24 July with a $51.8 million cap, although Curve noted that the cap was approved by a vote that executed on 2 August. Each market includes a 10% admin fee to the DAO.

Curve said new markets are launched with borrowing disabled and only receive non-zero caps after governance approval, making the process intentionally gradual. By the end of July, borrowing across Curve’s mint and lend markets had climbed to $80.2 million from $72.6 million at the start of the month, while total collateral rose from $102.6 million to $123.5 million. Curve also cited early activity including Substantia Fund moving its BTC borrowing from Aave to Llamalend and Stake DAO committing $200,000 from its treasury to support liquidity through OnlyBoost.

Lower rates support crvUSD demand

Curve reported that minting demand increased in every weekly snapshot during July as borrowing became cheaper. Borrower-minted crvUSD rose from $28.5 million to $36.7 million over the month, while collateral behind those positions grew from $49.4 million to $70.5 million.

The protocol said crvUSD’s peg remained stable, with daily closes between $0.9992 and $0.9998. Peg stability reserves, which had been at zero at the end of June, became active again when the crvUSD/USDT keeper made 24 consecutive provisions between 3 and 10 July, reaching $33.75 million. Curve said that ceiling reflected a rule limiting how much a single keeper may deploy while others remain idle, rather than the full size of its allocation.

Curve added that no withdrawal followed once that threshold was reached, leaving demand for crvUSD pressed against a limit the DAO has not yet revised. Founder Michael Egorov said on 2 July, while presenting a separate $5 million cap raise for the YieldBasis WETH pool, that further research and a mechanism for raising pool caps without a fixed bound would follow.

Governance work extends beyond lending

Alongside the mainnet launch, Curve wrote a new monetary policy class called HyperbolicMP and put it to governance for the mainnet sDOLA and sfrxUSD markets as well as the Optimism V2 markets. July also brought a public search for a new risk provider after LlamaRisk’s engagement ended in June.

The DAO opened a call for proposals on 7 July covering crvUSD peg and mint market risk as well as isolated Llamalend markets. Curve said nine proposals were submitted within two weeks, including bids from Curvature, Pharos Watch, Xerberus, BA Labs, Tulipa Capital, Manifold, CrossWorlds, yRisk and Blockworks Advisory. The mandate had not been awarded by the end of the month, with discussions continuing and DAO votes scheduled for early August.

Treasury decisions also advanced. One vote enabled crvUSD held by Arbitrum and Base fee collectors to be bridged to the treasury on Ethereum, including both previously accumulated balances and future amounts entering those collectors. Another transferred ownership of the Treasury Stable Diversification contract to the DAO and authorized it to pull treasury crvUSD for controlled conversions into selected yield-bearing stable assets, initially sDOLA and sfrxUSD, though the vote did not itself carry out a conversion.

Broader ecosystem activity and the next questions

Outside lending, Curve said it deployed contracts on Robinhood Chain, added MetaMask Connect to its app, joined Money League as a liquidity venue for member stablecoins, and passed 1,000 Stableswap-NG pools on Ethereum. Flying Tulip, Andre Cronje’s latest venture, also brought ftUSD to Curve, where a gauge for the FT/ftUSD pool passed on its second attempt.

Market data for the month showed a mixed picture. Curve’s DEX total value locked rose 2.4% to $1.367 billion, but monthly volume fell 42% to $3.40 billion and trading fees dropped 41% to $2.96 million. Meanwhile, lending metrics strengthened, with borrowing up 10% and collateral up 20% across mint and lend markets.

The immediate next steps center on limits and oversight rather than additional headline launches. Curve closed July with open questions about how quickly the DAO will raise V2 borrow caps market by market, whether it will revisit the PegKeeper deployment limit that stopped at $33.75 million, and which provider will take on the protocol’s next risk mandate in August.

Source: news.curve.finance