Curve Founder Proposes Market-Driven Solution for $700,000 in Troubled Debt

Curve's founder, Michael Egorov, has introduced a market-oriented plan to address approximately $700,000 in bad debt associated with LlamaLend, the platform's lending arm. Egorov outlined a 'free-market based method of recovery with option-like payoff' in a governance post, stating that Curve DAO is 'invited but not required' to participate.

The bad debt is currently situated in LlamaLend's CRV-long market, where users can borrow Curve's crvUSD stablecoin against CRV, the protocol's governance token. This trade functions as a wager that CRV will maintain or increase its value.

If CRV's value drops too quickly, the collateral may not be sold rapidly enough to repay lenders in full. This scenario occurred following the October 10 crash, triggered by President Donald Trump's announcement of tariffs on all Chinese goods via a post on Truth Social. Rather than requesting Curve's DAO to cover the shortfall, Egorov proposes packaging the affected lender positions into a tokenized vault and enabling traders to buy and sell them through a dedicated Curve pool. The objective is to provide trapped lenders with an exit strategy while allowing outside buyers to determine the value of the distressed claims.

LlamaLend's bad debt resulted from the crash, which saw over $19 billion in leveraged liquidations within hours, the largest single-day deleveraging on record. Curve's crvUSD minting markets withstood the sell-off, but LlamaLend did not escape unscathed. Prices plummeted while gas costs rose, leading to a situation where some liquidations could not occur in time.

Lenders in the CRV-long market were left with deposits backed by approximately 70% of their stated value. The market is designed to mitigate this risk through an automated market maker integrated into the lending system, LLAMMA. Instead of selling a borrower's collateral all at once when prices fall, LLAMMA converts the collateral in stages as the market moves.

Egorov argued that the providers of borrowable liquidity in this market were exposed to losses during liquidation protection and, as a result, cannot withdraw their positions, which are currently around 70% backed. During the October 10 crash, the market moved too quickly. Arbitrage traders, who help maintain the system's balance by buying and selling across price gaps, could not keep up.

Some lender positions ended up in a vault token that cannot be redeemed at full value today. Egorov contended that the token still holds value because the loss is not open-ended. The distressed positions already hold crvUSD that was converted from CRV, so further CRV declines should not deepen the shortfall.

If CRV rises above approximately $0.96, the conversion starts to reverse, and the positions begin taking in CRV collateral again. Full recovery would occur around $1.24. The proposed pool would utilize Curve's Stableswap design, with a 1% swap fee and liquidity centered around 71% solvency rather than full value. This means the pool would not treat the distressed token as if it were worth one dollar on the dollar; instead, it would price the token closer to the amount currently backing it.

For trapped depositors, the pool offers a choice: they can either wait for a CRV recovery or sell their vault tokens at a discount and move on. For buyers, the trade resembles a long-term bet on CRV. They purchase a claim that is partly backed today and could become more valuable if CRV recovers.

This gives the token an 'interesting option-like property' on CRV's recovery, with some backing already in place. The token's 'fair price and price floor go up if CRV price goes up, and does not go down if CRV price goes down,' Egorov wrote. Liquidity providers in the new pool would earn swap fees and any CRV incentives that Curve's DAO chooses to allocate.

Admin fees would partly accrue in the distressed vault token itself. Egorov has asked the DAO to retain those tokens rather than convert them, which would gradually transfer some of the bad debt onto Curve's balance sheet through trading activity.

The proposal's timing lends it added significance. Earlier in the month, an attacker exploited Kelp DAO's LayerZero bridge and released 116,500 unbacked rsETH worth about $292 million. The attacker then deposited that unbacked rsETH into Aave as collateral and borrowed real WETH against it.

Aave now faces up to $230 million in bad debt. The industry response has been a coordinated bailout through DeFi United, a recovery effort led by Aave service providers that raised about $160 million of the roughly $200 million needed so far, with contributions from Mantle, Aave DAO, EtherFi, Lido, and Aave founder Stani Kulechov.

KelpDAO, one of the entities affected by the exploit, has committed 2,000 ETH to DeFi United, joining a group of major Ethereum-linked organizations. It's currently unclear whether LayerZero is participating in the initiative. Egorov is presenting Curve's pool as a different model.

Rather than passing the hat across the industry, Curve would build a market for distressed claims and let buyers decide the price. If this proves to be a successful pilot study, it could be applied in 'similar difficult situations' at Curve or other protocols.