Introduction

What is Curve?

Curve is one of the largest Dex on Ethereum with the highest TVL amongst any DEX. Curve specializes in stableswaps of tokens that have highly correlated values. The nativ token of the curve is the CRV token; this token gives holders governance rites over the protocol.

What are the Curve wars?

In Defi we’re seeing marketplaces for liquidity, where leading protocols can aggregate various opportunities for depositors to earn yield income by becoming liquidity providers. And where protocols can pay investors to help them increase the liquidity of their tokens. The competition for liquidity that comes with it, is playing out across many platforms but the battle is most noticeable on Curve Finance.

What is the [redacted] Cartel?

[redacted] Cartel is a Olympus fork with a high APY. But under the hood, they’re They’re deploying a version of the consumer CVX bribe strategy, buying and staking CRV and CVX to earn as much additional CRV and CVX as possible, to control more votes and win the Convex war.

Methodology

• We will look at the CRV and CVX holdings of redacted cartell, Votium, and Votemak.

• We are looking to see what protocols have the most control over CRV.

Curve Wars

Observations

The [redacted] Cartel has about 4 - 5 Million USD worth of CRV and CVX and they use the voting power they get from these holdings to give rewards to their token holders and to stack more CRV and CVX. Less that 100 People hold the BTRFLY token the token that the value of the [redacted] Cartel's treasury accrues to.

Conclusion

• The [redacted] Cartel has about 4 - 5 Million USD worth of CRV and CVX and they use the voting power they get from these holdings to give rewards to their token holders and to stack more CRV

• Most weeks there are 0 - 3 bribes distributed to CVX holders with each program giving $50K - $500K worth of tokens.

• Since July of 2021 all of the tokens involved in the curve wars have been increasing in price.

Observations

• The two graphs above show the Weekly count and volume by token. Most weeks there are 0 - 3 bribes distributed to CVX holders with each program giving $50K - $500K worth of tokens.

• There have been 24 different addresses bribing convex holdes and when these addresses pay the CVX holders the rewards on their respective pools increase for the liquidity providers.