Skip to content

Curve Lending: Overview

Curve lending allows the creation of permissionless lending/borrowing markets to borrow crvUSD against any token, or to borrow any token against crvUSD in an isolated mode, powered by LLAMMA for soft-liquidations. All markets are isolated from each other and do not intertwine.

The borrowable liquidity is provided by willing lenders through Vaults, which are ERC4626 contracts with some additional methods for convenience.

Contract Source & Deployment

Lending-related deployments can be found here.
Source code for all lending-relevant contracts is available on GitHub.

Overview

The entire system is similar to the one for minting crvUSD. Every lending market has a individual Controller, LLAMMA, and Vault.

The Controller is some sort of on-chain interface. Most user actions, such as creating or repaying loans or managing existing ones, are done through this contract.

The LLAMMA is an AMM that holds the collateral assets. This is where the magic around soft-liquidations happens. Full documentation can be found here.

The Vault is where willing lenders provide assets to be borrowed. The contract does not actually hold any borrowable assets; they are held by the Controller.


LLAMMA and Controller

Because Curve Lending operates very similarly to the system for minting crvUSD, both Controller.vy and AMM.vy (LLAMMA) can be used for lending markets. To ensure full compatibility with both systems, several modifications have been made to their codebases:

More here

Vault

The Vault is an implementation of the ERC4626 vault which deposits assets into the Controller contract and tracks the progress of fees earned. It is a standard factory (non-blueprint) contract that also creates the AMM and Controller using initialize().

initialize()

Function which initializes a vault and creates the corresponding Controller and AMM contract from their blueprint implementations.

@external
def initialize(
        amm_impl: address,
        controller_impl: address,
        borrowed_token: ERC20,
        collateral_token: ERC20,
        A: uint256,
        fee: uint256,
        price_oracle: PriceOracle,  # Factory makes from template if needed, deploying with a from_pool()
        monetary_policy: address,  # Standard monetary policy set in factory
        loan_discount: uint256,
        liquidation_discount: uint256
    ) -> (address, address):
    """
    @notice Initializer for vaults
    @param amm_impl AMM implementation (blueprint)
    @param controller_impl Controller implementation (blueprint)
    @param borrowed_token Token which is being borrowed
    @param collateral_token Token used for collateral
    @param A Amplification coefficient: band size is ~1/A
    @param fee Fee for swaps in AMM (for ETH markets found to be 0.6%)
    @param price_oracle Already initialized price oracle
    @param monetary_policy Already initialized monetary policy
    @param loan_discount Maximum discount. LTV = sqrt(((A - 1) / A) ** 4) - loan_discount
    @param liquidation_discount Liquidation discount. LT = sqrt(((A - 1) / A) ** 4) - liquidation_discount
    """
    assert self.borrowed_token.address == empty(address)

    self.borrowed_token = borrowed_token
    self.collateral_token = collateral_token
    self.price_oracle = price_oracle

    assert A >= MIN_A and A <= MAX_A, "Wrong A"
    assert fee <= MAX_FEE, "Fee too high"
    assert fee >= MIN_FEE, "Fee too low"
    assert liquidation_discount >= MIN_LIQUIDATION_DISCOUNT, "Liquidation discount too low"
    assert loan_discount <= MAX_LOAN_DISCOUNT, "Loan discount too high"
    assert loan_discount > liquidation_discount, "need loan_discount>liquidation_discount"

    p: uint256 = price_oracle.price()  # This also validates price oracle ABI
    assert p > 0
    assert price_oracle.price_w() == p
    A_ratio: uint256 = 10**18 * A / (A - 1)

    borrowed_precision: uint256 = 10**(18 - borrowed_token.decimals())

    amm: address = create_from_blueprint(
        amm_impl,
        borrowed_token.address, borrowed_precision,
        collateral_token.address, 10**(18 - collateral_token.decimals()),
        A, isqrt(A_ratio * 10**18), self.ln_int(A_ratio),
        p, fee, ADMIN_FEE, price_oracle.address,
        code_offset=3)
    controller: address = create_from_blueprint(
        controller_impl,
        empty(address), monetary_policy, loan_discount, liquidation_discount, amm,
        code_offset=3)
    AMM(amm).set_admin(controller)

    self.amm = AMM(amm)
    self.controller = Controller(controller)
    self.factory = Factory(msg.sender)

    # ERC20 set up
    self.precision = borrowed_precision
    borrowed_symbol: String[32] = borrowed_token.symbol()
    self.name = concat(NAME_PREFIX, borrowed_symbol)
    # Symbol must be String[32], but we do String[34]. It doesn't affect contracts which read it (they will truncate)
    # However this will be changed as soon as Vyper can *properly* manipulate strings
    self.symbol = concat(SYMBOL_PREFIX, borrowed_symbol)

    # No events because it's the only market we would ever create in this contract

    return controller, amm

More here

OneWay Lending Factory

The factory allows the permissionless creation of borrowing/lending markets without rehypothecation, meaning the collateral asset cannot be lent out. A distinctive feature is its ability to generate markets from Curve pools with a price_oracle() method, eliminating the need for a separate price oracle. Nonetheless, these pools must adhere to one of the following standards:

More here

CryptoFromPool

CryptoFromPool.vy is a price oracle contract which uses the price_oracle() method of a Curve tricrypto-ng, twocrypto-ng or stableswap-ng pool. This contract is created from a blueprint when using the create_from_pool() function.

create_from_pool(borrowed_token: address, collateral_token: address, A: uint256, fee: uint256, loan_discount: uint256, liquidation_discount: uint256, pool: address, name: String[64], min_borrow_rate: uint256 = 0, max_borrow_rate: uint256 = 0) -> Vault:

Function to create a vault using a existing oraclized Curve pool as price oracle.

@external
@nonreentrant('lock')
def create_from_pool(
        borrowed_token: address,
        collateral_token: address,
        A: uint256,
        fee: uint256,
        loan_discount: uint256,
        liquidation_discount: uint256,
        pool: address,
        name: String[64],
        min_borrow_rate: uint256 = 0,
        max_borrow_rate: uint256 = 0
    ) -> Vault:
    """
    @notice Creation of the vault using existing oraclized Curve pool as a price oracle
    @param borrowed_token Token which is being borrowed
    @param collateral_token Token used for collateral
    @param A Amplification coefficient: band size is ~1/A
    @param fee Fee for swaps in AMM (for ETH markets found to be 0.6%)
    @param loan_discount Maximum discount. LTV = sqrt(((A - 1) / A) ** 4) - loan_discount
    @param liquidation_discount Liquidation discount. LT = sqrt(((A - 1) / A) ** 4) - liquidation_discount
    @param pool Curve tricrypto-ng, twocrypto-ng or stableswap-ng pool which has non-manipulatable price_oracle().
                Must contain both collateral_token and borrowed_token.
    @param name Human-readable market name
    @param min_borrow_rate Custom minimum borrow rate (otherwise min_default_borrow_rate)
    @param max_borrow_rate Custom maximum borrow rate (otherwise max_default_borrow_rate)
    """
    # Find coins in the pool
    borrowed_ix: uint256 = 100
    collateral_ix: uint256 = 100
    N: uint256 = 0
    for i in range(10):
        success: bool = False
        res: Bytes[32] = empty(Bytes[32])
        success, res = raw_call(
            pool,
            _abi_encode(i, method_id=method_id("coins(uint256)")),
            max_outsize=32, is_static_call=True, revert_on_failure=False)
        coin: address = convert(res, address)
        if not success or coin == empty(address):
            break
        N += 1
        if coin == borrowed_token:
            borrowed_ix = i
        elif coin == collateral_token:
            collateral_ix = i
    if collateral_ix == 100 or borrowed_ix == 100:
        raise "Tokens not in pool"
    if N == 2:
        assert Pool(pool).price_oracle() > 0, "Pool has no oracle"
    else:
        assert Pool(pool).price_oracle(0) > 0, "Pool has no oracle"
    price_oracle: address = create_from_blueprint(
        self.pool_price_oracle_impl, pool, N, borrowed_ix, collateral_ix, code_offset=3)

    return self._create(borrowed_token, collateral_token, A, fee, loan_discount, liquidation_discount,
                        price_oracle, name, min_borrow_rate, max_borrow_rate)

Semilog Monetary Policy

Lending markets uses a semi-log monetary policy for lending markets where the borrow rate does not depend on the price of crvUSD but just on the utilization of the market.

More here