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

Curve's founder, Michael Egorov, has put forth a market-oriented approach to address approximately $700,000 in bad debt associated with LlamaLend, the platform's lending arm. In a governance post, Egorov outlined a 'free-market based method of recovery with option-like payoff,' inviting Curve DAO to participate but not requiring its involvement.

The bad debt is tied to LlamaLend's CRV-long market, where users borrow crvUSD, a stablecoin, against CRV, the protocol's governance token. The trade essentially bets on CRV's value remaining stable or increasing. However, if CRV's value drops rapidly, the collateral may not be sold quickly enough to repay lenders in full. This scenario played out after the October 10 crash, triggered by an announcement from President Donald Trump regarding tariffs on Chinese goods.

Rather than seeking a bailout from Curve's DAO, Egorov proposes packaging the affected lender positions into a tokenized vault, allowing traders to buy and sell them through a dedicated Curve pool. The objective is to provide trapped lenders with an exit strategy while enabling outside buyers to determine the value of the distressed claims.

LlamaLend's bad debt stems from the October 10 crash, which saw over $19 billion in leveraged liquidations within hours, marking the largest single-day deleveraging on record. Although Curve's crvUSD minting markets withstood the sell-off, LlamaLend was not entirely spared.

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, LLAMMA, built into the lending system. Instead of selling a borrower's collateral all at once when prices fall, LLAMMA converts the collateral in steps as the market moves. According to Egorov, the providers of borrowable liquidity in this market were exposed to losses during liquidation protection and cannot withdraw their positions, which are currently around 70% backed.

During the October 10 crash, the market moved too quickly, and 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 argued that the token still holds value since the loss is not open-ended. The distressed positions already hold crvUSD 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.

Egorov noted that if CRV's price grows, positions with bad debt will deliquidate, meaning the system would start converting crvUSD back into CRV collateral. If CRV's price falls, the collateral is already converted to crvUSD, so the vault deposits will not be less backed. At the time of writing, CRV is trading near $0.23, well below both levels.

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 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, as 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, according to Egorov. 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,' he wrote. Liquidity providers in the new pool would earn swap fees and any CRV incentives allocated by Curve's DAO.

Admin fees would partly accrue in the distressed vault token itself. Egorov has asked the DAO to retain these tokens rather than convert them, which would gradually transfer some of the bad debt onto Curve's balance sheet through trading activity. The proposal comes at a time when the DeFi industry is addressing bad debt. Earlier in the month, an attacker exploited Kelp DAO's LayerZero bridge, releasing 116,500 unbacked rsETH worth about $292 million.

The attacker then deposited the 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. Egorov is presenting Curve's pool as an alternative model, where instead of relying on a bailout, the protocol would create a market for distressed claims and let buyers determine the price. If this approach proves successful, Egorov believes it could be applied to similar challenging situations at Curve or other protocols.