Curve Finance looks like a classic case of the market being the last one to figure out what is actually going on. The protocol is generating about $500,000 in daily revenue with its token trading around $0.438, levels it only saw back when the price was over $6. Curve has quietly clawed its way back into the center of decentralized finance activity, and the numbers show a protocol that is behaving more like a cash machine than a zombie relic of the last cycle. The gap between what the protocol earns and how the market values its token sets the stage for a sharp repricing if these trends hold.
The growth of crvUSD is the clearest signal that Curve is not just surviving but evolving. The supply of crvUSD recently hit a $500,000,000 all time high and the stablecoin has become the third largest stablecoin by volume on Ethereum behind USD Coin and Tether. This matters because Curve is not just a place where crvUSD trades, it is the protocol that issued it. Every dollar of demand for crvUSD reinforces Curve’s role as critical infrastructure for stablecoin and collateral based trading. The more crvUSD circulates and changes hands, the more fees the protocol can capture.
On top of that, Curve’s core business is throwing off serious cash relative to its token valuation. With current revenue levels, the protocol is on pace to generate roughly $150,000,000 annually while the market cap of the CRV token sits around $626,000,000. That implies a revenue to market cap ratio of about 0.24 which starts to look more like a profitable tech company than a speculative meme token. In traditional equity terms, traders would be arguing over price to earnings style multiples and whether this level of income is sustainable. In crypto, many participants strangely ignore the fact that real users are paying real fees that flow back into the protocol’s ecosystem.
The strategic importance of crvUSD deepens the story. Every yield basis trade that involves borrowing against Bitcoin to earn carry or to lever up on yield strategies increasingly requires crvUSD as part of the plumbing. That means sophisticated players who want to run these basis trades are indirectly forced to use Curve’s products. This kind of embedded demand is powerful because it is driven by strategy, not speculation. As long as yield seekers continue to run structured trades with Bitcoin and other volatile assets, crvUSD stays in the loop, and Curve continues to skim revenue from that activity.
The looming Fusaka upgrade on Ethereum adds a final layer of fuel. The upgrade raises Ethereum’s block gas limit significantly, with targets moving from tens of millions of gas units per block toward levels that can effectively triple current capacity over time. Higher gas limits translate to more transactions and more complex smart contract activity per block which is a direct positive for heavy DeFi protocols such as Curve. If the network can process 3 times the load at similar or lower costs, high volume systems like Curve can scale trading, minting, liquidations, and arbitrage activity without choking on gas fees.
Put together, this creates a sharp valuation disconnect. Curve is producing around 9 figures of annualized revenue, powering a stablecoin that has climbed into the top tier on Ethereum, and preparing to benefit from a major infrastructure upgrade that lets it operate at larger scale. Yet its token trades at levels associated with much weaker fundamentals. If these conditions persist, traders who only look at price charts may find themselves blindsided when the market finally revalues Curve to match its cash generation and strategic position. In a sector filled with empty narratives, this is one of the rare cases where the numbers tell a straightforward story: the protocol is already performing, and the token has not fully caught up.
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