# Building DeFi's $25B Liquidity Engine, with Curve Founder Michael Egorov

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-fintech-blueprint-1372983/building-defi-s-25b-liquidity-engine-with-curve-founder-michael-egorov
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-fintech-blueprint-1372983/building-defi-s-25b-liquidity-engine-with-curve-founder-michael-egorov.md
Podcast: [The Fintech Blueprint](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-fintech-blueprint-1372983)
Published: 2026-01-05T15:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://lex.substack.com/
Audio file: https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/7051d3f0-1ddb-41e0-b514-e52dd30df9ac/episodes/77d9d7b8-038f-48ec-8184-93886453e3c8/audio/35aa2773-1a09-4b14-bd5e-325644e6a6d8/default_tc.mp3?aid=rss_feed&feed=sQKPtdhq
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-fintech-blueprint-1372983/episodes/building-defi-s-25b-liquidity-engine-with-curve-founder-michael-egorov
Duration seconds: 2911

## Resource

In this episode, Lex speaks with Michael Egorov - Founder of Curve Finance and YieldBasis. Kicking things off about his journey from experimental physicist to founder of Curve Finance and YieldBasis, highlighting how theoretical physics concepts influenced his creation of financial invariants in DeFi protocols. Curve pioneered fully automated concentrated liquidity for stablecoins and introduced veTokenomics, a governance model rewarding long-term commitment with voting power and protocol fees. Egorov defends veTokenomics against criticisms of unlock-driven volatility, citing that most CRV locks average over 3 years and behave like permanent commitments. YieldBasis expands Curve’s approach by offering impermanent gain strategies to counter impermanent loss in volatile markets like Bitcoin, aiming to scale toward a $50B market ceiling. The discussion closes with reflections on DeFi token market structure challenges and Egorov’s call for protocols to connect token value to real economic flows by activating fee-sharing mechanisms.

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## Transcript

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