The Day Someone Else Launched Curve’s Token
Five years ago, something strange happened in DeFi. Curve Finance—now one of the oldest protocols still running—had its governance token, CRV, launched by someone who wasn’t actually part of the team.
It started with a tweet from an account called @0xc4ad. On August 13, 2020, they casually announced they’d gone ahead and deployed CRV’s contracts before Curve’s developers could do it themselves. The tone was playful, almost cheeky. “Yo, @CurveFinance! Saw your DAO is ready to rock and I gots to MAXIMIZE MY ALPHA! So I went ahead and deployed it for you,” they wrote.
Attached were links to the token contract, the deployment address, and even a freshly created Aragon DAO. The account insisted everything matched Curve’s specs. Then came the kicker: “You guys ready to harvest some CRV with me or what?!?”
Curve’s Cautious Response
The Curve team’s reaction was careful, maybe even a little stunned. Their official account replied, “Interesting. We are proceeding with caution here, so far looks like contracts are the correct ones.” They needed time to verify, but once they did, the outsider’s deployment became the official launch.
And just like that, @0xc4ad disappeared. No follow-up, no explanation. To this day, nobody really knows who was behind it. Curve’s founder, Michael Egorov, later compared the mystery to Satoshi’s identity. “Good question! I still don’t really know today,” he told Blockworks.
From Chaos to Cornerstone
Looking back, it’s wild how much Curve has grown since that unorthodox start. What began as a stablecoin-focused exchange is now a key piece of DeFi’s infrastructure. Egorov admitted that while the demand for stablecoin swaps was expected, Curve’s central role in the ecosystem “was a bit surprising, but not totally unexpected.”
It’s one of those stories that feels almost too weird to be true—a token launch hijacked (or maybe just helped along?) by an anonymous stranger. But that’s DeFi for you. Even now, with billions locked in its contracts, Curve’s origin story remains one of the quirkiest in crypto.
And honestly? It’s hard to imagine something like that happening today. The space has changed, gotten more polished. Maybe that’s why people still talk about it. There was something raw, unpredictable, and oddly fitting about the whole thing.
No grand plan, no carefully staged rollout. Just someone on Twitter saying, “Here, I did this for you,” and vanishing into the ether.
