• Curve founder says DeFi must ditch token emissions for real revenue Curve founder Michael Egorov told Cointelegraph that protocols cannot “live without real revenues flowing” as token incentives lose power to attract liquidity. • Cointelegraph in your social feed Decentralized finance (DeFi) can no longer rely on inflationary token incentives to sustain growth, according to Curve Finance founder Michael Egorov. • In an interview with Cointelegraph, Egorov said protocols must generate real revenue rather than depend on emissions to attract liquidity. • “Your yield should come from revenues, not from tokens,” Egorov told Cointelegraph. • “You need real revenues flowing.” He added that if a token “is not doing something, maybe it’s better for you to not do token at all.” Egorov contrasted the current environment with the “DeFi summer” of 2020, when triple-digit and even 1,000% annual percentage rates drew capital into new protocols. • He said that at the time, speculative premiums drove token prices and bootstrappedtotal value locked (TVL)for protocols.
Article Summaries:
- Curve Finance founder Michael Egorov argues that decentralized finance can no longer depend on inflationary token emissions to attract liquidity. In a Cointelegraph interview he urged protocols to generate real revenue rather than rely on token rewards, citing a 38 % drop in DeFi TVL from $158 billion in August to $98 billion in October 2025. Egorov contrasted the 2020 “DeFi summer” of high APYs with today’s risk‑aware investors, noting that tokens should serve decentralization, not speculative gains. He echoed views from Polygon’s CEO and Vitalik Buterin that sustainable returns must stem from genuine economic activity, not token inflation.
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