Curve Finance ended Week 16 of 2026 with $2.09 billion in total value locked (TVL), a 3.9% increase week-over-week, according to on-chain data published in the protocol's weekly newsletter. The uptick came alongside two active governance votes that could reshape both Curve's fee structure and its product direction through early 2027.

Swiss Stake AG Grant Nears Approval

The more consequential vote this week concerns a funding proposal championed by Curve founder Michael Egorov. The DAO is considering a grant of 17.45 million CRV tokens, currently worth approximately $6.7 million or CHF 5.3 million, to Swiss Stake AG, the operational entity that supports Curve's core development team of more than 25 contributors. The grant covers a 12-month budget running from January 2026 to January 2027. As of April 16, more than 68% of all vote-escrowed CRV (veCRV) had participated in the vote, with support described as near-unanimous.

The roadmap tied to the grant includes several substantial upgrades. Llamalend V2 would expand Curve's lending infrastructure to accept liquidity provider tokens and yield-bearing assets as collateral, while giving the DAO direct control over borrow limits, introducing updated ERC-4626 vault accounting, and improving admin fee routing. A second major deliverable is FXSwap, a foreign exchange product built using Curve's Twocrypto-ng pricing framework and intended for low-volatility currency pairs. Initial target pairs include the Swiss franc, the Brazilian real (BRZ), and the Indonesian rupiah (IDR). Additional planned work covers new collateral types and risk models for the crvUSD stablecoin, lightweight deployments on more EVM-compatible chains under the Curve-Lite label, and ongoing front-end and multi-chain governance tooling. Semi-annual financial disclosures and quarterly technical updates are pledged as conditions of the arrangement.

The grant arrives after a strong 2025 for the protocol. During that year, crvUSD supply tripled, Curve's share of the Ethereum DEX fee market rose from 1.6% to 44%, and the protocol processed roughly $126 billion in annual trading volume. The Swiss Stake roadmap is designed to build directly on that momentum.

Fee Reallocation Proposal Targets scrvUSD Split

A second vote proposes adjusting how crvUSD minting fees are distributed. Currently, 80% of those fees flow to scrvUSD (Savings crvUSD, a yield-bearing wrapper for the protocol's stablecoin), with the remaining 20% going to veCRV holders. The proposal would reverse that weighting to a 50/50 split, redirecting more revenue back to governance participants. The rationale is that scrvUSD was deliberately incentivised at an elevated rate to help grow crvUSD adoption. With the peg now holding firmly at $1.00 and peg stability reserves expanding by $34.8 million in a single week to reach $38.5 million, the DAO appears to view the elevated incentive as no longer necessary.

The scrvUSD yield stood at 3.1% in Week 16, down 1.1 percentage points on the week. If the fee split is adjusted, veCRV distributions, which already rose 16.4% this week to $78,200, would increase.

DEX Volume Fell While Fees and Swap Counts Rose

Weekly decentralised exchange (DEX) volume on Curve dropped 17.6% to $640 million, a notable pullback. However, total swap counts rose 6.0% to 299,000, and total fees collected increased 9.1% to $166,000, suggesting more but smaller transactions. The top pool by volume was PYUSD/USDS at $265.8 million.

Notable pool-level TVL movements this week added further texture to the liquidity picture. The USDC/crvUSD pool gained $33.5 million following a PegKeeper deployment, a development that directly reinforces the peg stability cited in the fee reallocation discussion. The OETH/WETH pool added $11.3 million in TVL, while PYUSD/crvUSD saw a $10.7 million decline.

The highest-yielding pool available to liquidity providers this week was frxUSD/ebUSD on Ethereum at 28.7% APY, followed by frxUSD/evaUSDT at 20.6% and frxUSD/scrvUSD at 17.9%.

Curve's lending market, Llamalend, held $111 million in TVL, up 0.4%. Total supplied reached $62 million, a 3.7% decrease, while total borrowed reached $58 million, a 3.0% increase, with 929 active loans outstanding. The average crvUSD borrow rate fell to 3.3%, down 1.8 percentage points on the week.

As of Week 16, CRV in circulation stood at 1.5 billion tokens, up 0.2%, while veCRV locked totalled 857 million, down 0.1%. The veCRV APR was 2.334%, an increase of 0.261 percentage points on the week. Weekly CRV emissions were approximately $482,000. These figures are particularly relevant context for veCRV holders evaluating the fee reallocation proposal.

Regional Relevance: Africa and South Asia

Those borrow rates carry real meaning for users outside North America and Europe. Nigeria ranks second globally in the 2026 Crypto Adoption Index, and Ethiopia (#10), Kenya (#13), and Ghana (#20) also place in the top 20. Sub-Saharan Africa processed more than $205 billion in on-chain value between mid-2024 and mid-2025, with stablecoins representing 43% of that total. Nigeria alone recorded roughly $22 billion in stablecoin transactions during that period, partly because traditional remittance services charge average fees near 8.45%, while stablecoin transfers typically cost under one dollar. A crvUSD borrow rate of 3.3% may compare favourably against dollar-denominated credit products available in the region, and Curve's high-yield pools are technically accessible to any user with a Web3 wallet and a stablecoin on-ramp.

Institutional infrastructure in the region is also developing. Nigeria's cNGN, a naira-backed stablecoin launched in 2025, and M-Pesa's January 2026 ADI Chain L2 partnership both signal growing integration between traditional African financial rails and on-chain ecosystems, infrastructure that could eventually bridge into Curve's liquidity ecosystem.

India leads the same adoption index at number one, and Pakistan ranks eighth. For South Asian users already engaged with stablecoins for remittances or savings, scrvUSD's passive yield and crvUSD's low borrow cost represent accessible entry points into decentralised finance. The FXSwap initiative's focus on non-Western currency pairs is also worth watching. If IDR and BRZ infrastructure proves viable, proposals for INR, PKR, or BDT markets become more plausible.

What to Watch

If the Swiss Stake grant passes in its current form, the most immediate deliverable to track is Llamalend V2, which would broaden collateral options and give the DAO finer control over lending market risk. The fee reallocation vote is likely to affect scrvUSD yield in subsequent weeks. One operational note: the author of Curve's weekly newsletter, writing under the name Saint Rat, indicated uncertainty about the publication's long-term continuity, which is worth monitoring for anyone who follows the protocol's communications closely.