Who Is Michael Egorov? Founder of Curve and Yield Basis

Michael Egorov is the founder of Curve, the decentralized exchange that launched in 2020 for swapping stablecoins at low cost, and of Yield Basis. His loans backed by Curve's CRV token were liquidated in June 2024. His newer protocol Yield Basis is built to let wrapped bitcoin holders earn pool fees without impermanent loss, the shortfall against simply holding the coins.

In 2026 Egorov's attention has gone to Yield Basis. Through late October, his GitHub account wrote all 386 of the year's saved changes to Yield Basis's core code and none of the 762 to Curve's stablecoin code. Egorov hasn't left Curve, and two code repositories can't show everything he does, but the direction is plain.

Michael Egorov at a Glance

Michael Egorov's Career and Background

Michael Egorov came to crypto from physics. CryptoSlate's profile, whose details a representative of his confirmed, lists a physics PhD from Swinburne University of Technology (2008 to 2011) and a degree in applied mathematics and physics from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. It also credits Egorov with a bronze medal at the International Physics Olympiad.

The same profile has him at LinkedIn as a senior software engineer from May 2014 to December 2015. It also lists him as CTO of NuCypher, a project he co-founded, from March 2015 to June 2020. NuCypher built encryption for decentralized networks, and the way it protects your data comes down to spreading cryptographic keys across many network nodes.

Curve launched in 2020, the same year the profile has Egorov leaving NuCypher.

CryptoSlate says Egorov is best known for designing Curve's automated market maker. In 2025 he launched Yield Basis, and his GitHub profile listed both projects as his company in October 2026.

Who Is the Founder of Curve?

Michael Egorov is the founder of Curve, and Curve's own news site used that title for him in a late-October 2026 poston its launch on the Stellar network. In that post Egorov says "we started exploring possibilities of launching beyond EVM chains if there is demand", meaning networks that don't run Ethereum's software.

The founder title also shows up in Curve's code. A deployment file in Curve's repository lists four addresses under a comment reading "Founder", with about 801 million CRV set aside between them. That supply vested from August 2020 to August 2024, and all four had claimed their full share by late October 2026.

The file doesn't say who controls each address, so we don't treat all four as his.

How Does Curve Finance Work?

Curve Finance works as an automated market maker, a smart contract that holds pools of tokens and sets prices by formula. You trade against the pool, with no other trader on the far side.

Its StableSwap design is for coins that should trade at nearly the same price, such as two dollar stablecoins. The pool packs its liquidity around that price, so less of your swap is lost to slippage, the gap between the price you expect and the price you get. Think of it as a currency booth that swaps only dollars for dollars and keeps a thick stack at one rate.

Deposit coins into a pool and you earn a share of each swap's fee. Curve later added crvUSD, a dollar stablecoin, and crypto lending markets that sell a borrower's collateral in stages as its price falls. Egorov's own borrowing ran partly through those markets.

What Happened to Michael Egorov's Loans?

Michael Egorov's CRV-backed loans were liquidated in June 2024, says Pharos's crvUSD case study. It describes a very large set of loans spread across several lending venues. A loan like that holds only while the collateral is worth enough. Once it isn't, the platform sells the collateral to repay the debt, and those sales can push the price lower.

The study puts the bad debt at about $10 million and says it was repaid within days.

LlamaRisk's incident report of 1 July 2024 gives the setting. An exploit on the UwU lending platform on 10 June put about 23.6 million CRV into circulation, which it says "may have contributed" to downward pressure on the price.

On 12 June a falling price began a liquidation cascade in a Curve lending market that wiped out what the report calls "a major position". It doesn't name the borrower, so it doesn't tie that position to Egorov.

The report also cites a post by Egorov saying the staged liquidation gave liquidators time to clear the exploiter's loan.

When a founder borrows against a large stake, the founder's finances and the token's price start moving together, and you can watch those loans on the chain.

What Is Yield Basis?

Yield Basis is Michael Egorov's newer protocol, built on Curve's pools to let holders of wrapped bitcoin earn trading fees without impermanent loss, the shortfall a pool deposit can suffer against simply holding the coins. Its code repository dates from February 2025.

Curve's October 2025 recap explains the design. Yield Basis keeps a 2x position on deposited bitcoin by matching it with an equal value of crvUSD, drawn from a credit line that the Curve DAO approved. That DAO is the body of token holders who govern the protocol. The doubled position is meant to cancel the drag a normal pool puts on a rising coin.

The recap dates the main steps, and later votes may have moved its ceilings.

• Curve's DAO approved a credit line of up to 60 million crvUSD on 24 Sep 2025.

• A later Curve DAO vote raised that line to 300 million on 14 Oct 2025.

• YB token emissions began on 15 Oct 2025 with 75 million YB due to vest to the DAO over the coming years.

Yield Basis needs Curve's pools and Curve's stablecoin, and Curve's recap has the DAO collecting YB in return. Egorov founded both sides of that arrangement, so a CRV holder has a reason to follow Yield Basis.

Where Does He Write Code in 2026?

Between Yield Basis's core code and Curve's stablecoin code, all of Michael Egorov's 2026 commits to late October went to Yield Basis. A commit is one saved change to a project's code, and we counted the account under his name on each repository's main branch.

The shift came fast, from about 72% of the stablecoin repository's commits in 2024 to 1.5% in 2025.

Curve's stablecoin code didn't slow down without his commits. That repository took 762 commits in the first ten months of 2026, about two-thirds of them from one other developer's account. Yield Basis looks like the opposite, with only five of its 1,170 core commits coming from anyone else.

Two repositories aren't a whole working life, and commits don't measure thought or review. Egorov's profile lists Curve, and his own account pushed a repository called curve-uniswap-hook in September 2026 and a Curve demo app in October 2026.

To us that looks healthy for Curve and concentrated for Yield Basis. Others have picked up the stablecoin code, and one account carries the other project's core.

How Many Votes Does He Hold?

We can't give one total for Michael Egorov's votes, but the four Founder addresses in Curve's deployment file held about 9.7% of Curve's voting power at the late-October close. The file doesn't say who controls them, and Egorov could hold votes elsewhere.

Votes on Curve come from veCRV, which you get by locking CRV for up to four years, and the longer the lock the more votes it carries. The first address on that list had about 27 million CRV locked until July 2030, and the contract rejects an early withdrawal.

Convex pools CRV from smaller holders and votes it for them. Its voting contract held about 54%, more than five times the founder-list share. The fight over where those votes send CRV rewards has its own name, the Curve Wars. To us, Egorov's name carries more weight at Curve than the votes on that list do.

Why Does Michael Egorov Matter for CRV?

Michael Egorov matters for CRV because he's tied to its supply and to the credit line that links Curve to Yield Basis.

The founder vesting schedule finished in August 2024, so it no longer adds CRV. The lock on the first address runs to 2030, so that CRV can't reach the market before then.

The credit line is in crvUSD, so trouble at Yield Basis would land on Curve's stablecoin. Curve's recap warned in October 2025 that raising the line without deeper crvUSD markets would risk price instability. If you hold CRV, we'd watch that credit line more than the commit log, since it ties Curve's stablecoin to a protocol whose core code runs through one account.

The June 2024 liquidation is history, and it isn't a call on where CRV goes from here.

CRV closed late October at about $0.28 on Phemex spot, where you own the coin itself. Its perpetual was delisted under a notice dated 14 Aug 2026, so there's no live CRV perpetual on Phemex. Phemex's futures market covers other coins. Futures use leverage, and a leveraged position is closed automatically if losses reach its margin.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Curve Finance safe?

No protocol can promise that, and Curve's wording is conditional. Its October 2026 post says a stablecoin deposit avoids the swings of volatile pools "as long as the pegs hold". LlamaRisk has crvUSD briefly rising above its dollar peg in June 2024, causing liquidations in other Curve lending markets.

Has Michael Egorov left Curve?

No, Curve's news site quoted Egorov as its founder in October 2026, and his GitHub profile lists Curve beside Yield Basis. Up to late October 2026, his last commit in Curve's stablecoin repository dated from March 2025, but that's one repository.

What does the CRV token do?

CRV is Curve's governance token, and locking it as veCRV gives you votes on where CRV rewards go. Longer locks give you more votes. Curve's October 2026 post says swaps on Stellar earn for the Curve DAO too.

Does Yield Basis compete with Curve?

It's built on top of Curve, using Curve's pools and a crvUSD credit line that the Curve DAO approved. Curve's recap of October 2025 says 75 million YB is due to vest to that DAO.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. Cryptocurrency trading involves substantial risk. Always do your own research before making investment decisions.