Curve DAO Rejects $6.2 Million Swiss Stake Funding Proposal

The Curve DAO has rejected a governance proposal to allocate 17.4 million CRV tokens, worth about $6.2 million, to the decentralized exchange’s (DEX) development team.

The proposal submitted by Curve Finance founder Michael Egorov sought approval for a grant of CRV tokens to fund Swiss Stake AG, the core development firm behind Curve, managed by Egorov.

The funding is intended to cover software development, infrastructure, security work and ecosystem support for Swiss Stake’s roughly 25-person team working on the protocol, which is the third-largest DEX in decentralized finance (DeFi) with over $2.1 billion in total value locked, according to DeFiLlama.

However, the vote ended with 54.46% of participants against and 45.54% in favor. Voting data shows that addresses linked to two major DeFi protocols, Yearn Finance and Convex Finance, accounted for nearly 90% of the votes cast against the proposal.

Voting data on proposal #1286. Source: Curve Finance

Some community members noted in forum comments that the proposal raised centralization concerns, questioning whether Curve’s governance was too dependent on a small group. Others suggested that Swiss Stake should better explain how past funds were spent before any new funding is approved.

The Curve Finance team did not respond to The Defiant’s request for comment.

Curve community members also argued that past allocations already distributed significant protocol funds and that further grants could “be spread in several installments” to avoid negatively impacting the price of CRV.

Another DeFi giant, Aave, recently faced similar controversy when Aave Labs redirected some fees to itself rather than to the DAO, sparking debates over tokenholder rights.

This is not the first time Egorov has sought the community’s approval to use the project’s funds to support Swiss Stake. In August 2024, Egorov sought over 21 million CRV tokens, valued at around $6.3 million at the time, to “build and support the growth of the Curve ecosystem.” That proposal passed with nearly 91% of voters in favor.

As of press time, CRV is trading up 1.5% on the day but is down nearly 50% over the past three months, per CoinGecko data.