crvUSD

crvUSD launched on May 14, 2023 as an overcollateralized stablecoin minted through isolated collateral markets. A borrower does not hand assets to a corporate reserve. The market Controller records crvUSD debt and places collateral into its paired LLAMMA, an AMM dedicated to that collateral and crvUSD.

At loan creation, collateral is spread across 4 to 50 bands. Above that range it remains collateral. As the oracle price crosses the range, arbitrageurs can buy the cheaper side, progressively turning collateral into crvUSD. A recovery can send trades in the other direction, so the position may emerge with collateral again rather than having been closed at the first threshold.

The word soft describes pacing, not protection from loss. Band trades pay fees and execute against market prices; a round trip does not restore the original quantity. Curve's own risk text warns about soft-liquidation loss, de-liquidation loss, thin arbitrage during volatility or expensive gas, and the possibility that a loan's health reaches zero.

Inside the range, borrowers cannot freely withdraw or add collateral under the documented constraints, though they can repay debt. If health becomes negative enough, a liquidator can perform hard liquidation, close the loan and take the remaining collateral. crvUSD therefore changes the path to liquidation without abolishing its endpoint.

ControllerFactory gives each approved mint market a debt ceiling and pre-mints crvUSD to its Controller. The Controller transfers part of that allocation to borrowers and accrues interest; repayment reduces individual and total debt. The stablecoin's minter can mint or burn, so supply is the result of governed allocations and contract flows rather than a fixed cap.

PegKeepers use a different ledger. Within a factory ceiling, PegKeeperV2 can add crvUSD to an approved pool when crvUSD is expensive and remove one-sided liquidity when it is cheap, subject to regulator and oracle checks. The LP inventory and counterparty stablecoins are protocol peg machinery. They do not create a $1 redemption claim for whoever merely holds crvUSD.

Borrowing price is the third lever. Aggregated monetary policies read the crvUSD price, PegKeeper debt and total or per-market debt. The January 22, 2026 update smoothed the PegKeeper-debt fraction with a 9-day EMA, but left the direct price signal responsive. The goal was steadier rates, not a fixed borrowing contract.

Savings crvUSD launched on October 31, 2024 as a separate ERC-4626 share token. Deposited crvUSD stays idle in the Ethereum vault instead of being lent into a strategy. Controller fees pass through a FeeSplitter and RewardsHandler; as crvUSD is added, each scrvUSD share can redeem more underlying even though the share count does not rebase.

This income route is governed. The DAO chooses whether the rewards handler is a fee receiver and sets or delegates bounds and timing controls. A privileged vault role can irreversibly stop new deposits while leaving withdrawals available. Ordinary crvUSD has no automatic fee claim, and scrvUSD has no promised APY.

Curve DAO administration can add collateral markets, select price oracles and monetary policies, change debt ceilings and fee routing, and point ControllerFactory at new AMM or Controller blueprints. Those blueprint changes govern future deployments; they do not mutate already-deployed non-proxy market contracts. Replacing a design therefore appears as new markets, offboarding and migrations.

PegKeeperV2 likewise is described by its audit as non-upgradeable, while its surrounding Regulator retains DAO admin parameters and an Emergency DAO pause path. A proposal posted September 3, 2026 asks governance to stage a PegKeeper V3 migration that would trade through designated AMMs and hold approved backing tokens instead of V2 LP positions. One day later it remains a proposal, useful evidence of the next design debate but not evidence that V3 already protects the peg.