The Curve DAO has officially approved a proposal to greenlight the launch of Yield Basis, a new protocol created by Curve Finance founder Michael Egorov.
The proposal, which centers on utilizing Curve’s native stablecoin, crvUSD, for Yield Basis operations, has been a key focus of the Curve community, with a vote that concluded today.
The core of the proposal involves the establishment of a 60 million crvUSD credit line to power the initial operations of Yield Basis. This new protocol is engineered to address one of the most persistent challenges in decentralized finance (DeFi): impermanent loss (IL) in volatile asset pools. By mitigating IL, Yield Basis aims to unlock meaningful and sustainable yield opportunities for Bitcoin on the Ethereum mainnet, a feat that has largely eluded the DeFi space.
Convex’s system, which holds the majority of veCRV, allows users to vote for or against on-chain in proportion to internal tallies. After those blocs voted in, smaller holdings and individual wallets rounded up the turnout, which exceeded 80%.
Egorov, who alone holds over 3% of the votes, said that he waited to participate until the result was no longer in doubt
A phased rollout toward mainnet
Originally proposed by Curve founder Michael Egorov in August, the initiative has now passed a governance vote in the Curve DAO, marking the start of a phased launch.
The approved credit line will initially support three Bitcoin-focused liquidity pools: Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), Coinbase Wrapped Staked ETH (cbBTC), and tBTC. Each of these pools will have an initial cap of $10 million, providing a foundational infrastructure for a leveraged Bitcoin yield primitive.
Bitcoin’s yield dilemma on Ethereum
Bitcoin has long faced hurdles when it comes to earning returns in DeFi. Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) holders can use lending markets such as Aave, or provide liquidity on AMMs like Uniswap, which exposes them to impermanent loss risks.
For years, earning meaningful returns on Bitcoin in DeFi seemed nearly impossible, with most valuable opportunities capped at ~1–2% yield. Yield Basis aims to address this gap by allowing single-sided BTC deposits, designed to reduce impermanent loss while generating yield from trading activity.
By advancing Yield Basis, Curve enters an already competitive sector where protocols like BadgerDAO have experimented with Bitcoin yield products on Ethereum. At the same time, development of Bitcoin-native DeFi on Layer 2s continues, creating two distinct approaches to making BTC productive.
The approval and stepwise execution of Yield Basis is a technical point for Curve, as the DAO aligns around a Bitcoin yield product tightly linked with crvUSD. It can expand Curve’s fee base but also test whether Ethereum-based solutions can compete with emerging Bitcoin-native DeFi platforms.
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