A rejected funding proposal at Curve exposed a tension familiar to token-governed communities: supporting the people who build a protocol does not necessarily mean accepting their funding requests without conditions.
In commentary published on December 25, 2025, at 21:00:42 UTC+8, PANews reported that a proposal to allocate 17 million CRV tokens to development team Swiss Stake AG had failed several days earlier. Convex and Yearn voted against it, with voting power substantial enough to influence the outcome. The amount described in the article’s body was denominated in CRV tokens, not US dollars.
A development budget meets demands for accountability
The proposal came from Curve founder Mich. According to the commentary, Swiss Stake AG had been among the teams maintaining Curve’s core codebase since 2020. Its proposed roadmap included further work on LlamaLend, including support for PT and LP assets, alongside onchain foreign-exchange markets and expansion of crvUSD.
The source distinguished the potential value of that work from whether it justified a 17 million CRV allocation.
It also described some community voices as supportive of funding Swiss Stake AG in principle, but wanting clearer answers about previous spending, future allocations, sustainability and benefits delivered to the project. That is not the same as blanket opposition to developer funding.
The commentary argued that an unrestricted grant leaves the DAO with little control once funds have been transferred. It proposed a more formal treasury structure, transparent income and expenditure, or additional governance constraints as possible responses.
Who gets to define value for Curve?
A second tension concerned the interests of large veCRV voting blocs. The author interpreted their position as resistance to diluting their holdings’ value, arguing that grant-funded work would struggle to gain support unless it could foreseeably benefit veCRV holders.
That explanation was an interpretation, not a documented account of every voter’s motives. The commentary also acknowledged that Convex and Yearn had interests of their own, without examining them in detail.
Against the backdrop of governance disputes at Aave, the author saw Curve’s rejection as evidence that automatic approval of funding requests was beginning to face resistance. Curve’s particular structure mattered: voting power was concentrated among several teams with distinct positions.
Participation through intermediaries
The article’s broader argument concerned vote-escrow, or ve, governance. It described this model as linking voting power to cash flow through control over liquidity allocation, with outside demand for liquidity generating payments to influence that allocation.
Users unwilling to lock tokens for the long term could instead participate through intermediaries such as Convex and Yearn, seeking returns while retaining more liquidity and flexibility.
The author called the possible long-term outcome “governance capitalism”: tying influence to long lockups may favor participants with substantial capital, tolerance for illiquidity and the ability to sustain long-term strategies. Delegation can further concentrate influence among intermediary platforms.
Under that reading, Curve’s founder would not necessarily remain its central governance actor; large voting blocs could increasingly shape decisions. Whether that arrangement produces better governance remained an open question in the commentary—not a settled verdict.