Crypto: 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.

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 bootstrapped total value locked (TVL) for protocols.

“Right now, news doesn’t change prices of tokens anymore,” he told Cointelegraph, arguing that users have “re-evaluated the risks.”

His comments come as DeFi’s TVL has fallen about 38% over the past six months, according to DefiLlama. Data from the analytics platform shows TVL dropped from $158 billion on Aug. 23, 2025, to about $98 billion as of Monday.

Egorov said protocols “cannot live without real revenues flowing,” arguing that sustainable returns must be tied to actual economic activity.

While token emissions once helped projects accumulate liquidity quickly, he argued that sustainable returns must be tied to actual economic activity.

“In 2020, people didn’t care that much about risks,” Egorov said. High token rewards could offset losses if projects later failed.

Source: CoinTelegraph