Curve Finance Founder Secures $5 Million for Yield Basis Project
Michael Egorov, founder of Curve Finance, raised $5 million for his new project Yield Basis, achieving a fully diluted valuation of $50 million. The fundraising was oversubscribed by 15x, with 10% of the total token supply (100 million YB tokens) sold to investors.
The funding round, which began in January 2025, concluded within two weeks. Investors face a six-month cliff followed by a two-year linear vesting schedule.
Yield Basis is currently in a "test-in-production" phase, undergoing audits before launch. Initial deployment will focus on liquidity pools, while the full rollout of its native token YB will take longer.
Key Features of Yield Basis
- Aims to mitigate impermanent loss for liquidity providers in DeFi.
- Introduces a 2× leverage mechanism allowing liquidity providers to borrow crvUSD, doubling their liquidity in pools like BTC/USD.
- Concentrates liquidity where trading activity is highest to address borrowing and rebalancing costs.
- Historical backtesting suggests an average APR of 20.5% from 2019 to 2024, peaking at 60% during the 2021 bull market.
- Potential to scale liquidity management to tens of billions; however, the model may not suit more volatile assets.