Controversy Spirals Around Curve Finance (CRV) Anonymous Deployment

One of the more popular protocols in the DeFi space, Curve Finance, saw its CRV token deployed by an anonymous developer who appears to have front-run their efforts.

The team has confirmed the legitimacy of the deployment and its further adoption. Shortly after, some of the major exchanges, Binance and Poloniex, announced their support for trading the token.

Curve Finance (CRV) Token Deployment

Things happen fast in the cryptocurrency industry and even quicker in the booming DeFi space. Earlier today, CryptoPotato reported that Curve Finance saw its governance token CRV deployed by an anonymous developer.

According to the team, “someone deployed CRV based on smart contracts we had published on Github, frontrunning our efforts. While we initially were skeptical, it appeared to be an acceptable deployment with correct code, data, and admin keys. Due to the token/DAO getting traction, we had to adopt it.”

Later on, it became clear that the developer who did this was a Twitter user 0xc4ad, who also commented:

“… Saw your DAO is ready to rock and I gots to maximize my alpha! So I went ahead and deployed it for you. Get at me in DM to verify and let’s get this party started.”

The profile of the user is created in August, and even though it’s not specified when, he only has a few tweets, all related to this event, somewhat pushing the assumption that it was created for this occasion.

And this is where the controversy starts.

Industry Experts Concerned

Adam Cochran, a partner at Cinneamhain Ventures, as well as a well-known analyst, expressed his concerns about the launch of CRV in a detailed Twitter thread.

In Layman’s terms, he explained that there were a lot of “sketchy” details around CRV’s launch.

“No one can force you to adopt a contract that is external to your existing infrastructure. That’s not how blockchains work. No one can force signing authority on to you.” – He said.

He also claimed that what happened was an antithesis of DeFi’s concept of decentralization.

4/16

Option 3:

They deployed the contract as a community member for sake of trying to premine for themselves and their friends.

Which is sketchy and the antithesis of DeFi.

— Adam Cochran (@AdamScochran) August 14, 2020

Indeed, the coincidences appear to be piling up. The Twitter profile of the anonymous developer has no other tweets apart from those related to Curve’s launch. Cochran outlines that “the facts here are sketch, someone apparently randomly spent 19.9 ETH ($8k) to deploy a contract they don’t own and just kind of hoped it would be accepted? In the meantime, the CRV team said not to use it, but a bunch of big stakers found out about it right away?”

In conclusion, Cochran said:

“So we have a team that either makes bad impulse choices to validate a front-runner and reward pre-mining, stores keys incorrectly, wanted a payday for them and their friends, or let people get a payday for bad legal advice.

Either way, it’s bullshit.”

Binance, Poloniex, and OKEx Launching CRV

Despite all of the above, it took less than 12 hours for major exchanges to announce their listings for the new cryptocurrency.

Trading on Poloniex is already active, and the price currently rests at around $13, having dropped from $100 immediately after the launch.

Binance, on the other hand, announced that it would open trading for CRV/BNB, CRV/BTC, CRV/BUSD, and CRV/USDT at 4:00 AM UTC on August 15th (tomorrow).

OKEx also said that it will support trading for the cryptocurrency.

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