Curve Finance Weighs Ending L2 Development Amid Mounting Costs and Low Revenue
A Curve Finance proposal questions the value of L2 development, citing high costs and minimal revenue. Ethereum remains the core focus.
A new governance proposal within the Curve Finance community is calling for a radical shift in strategy: abandoning development across layer-2 (L2) chains and refocusing entirely on Ethereum. Spearheaded by community member phil_00Llama, the proposal argues that L2 deployments are unprofitable, inefficient, and a drain on developer resources.
Curve, a major player in decentralized finance with over $21 billion in total value locked (TVL), currently operates on approximately 25 EVM-compatible blockchains including Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, Avalanche, and Base. Yet these deployments contribute less than 7% of the protocol’s revenue. Since 2020, Ethereum has consistently generated over 93% of Curve’s trading fees.
"All 24 L2s combined generate just $1,500 in daily revenue—$62 per day per chain on average," phil_00Llama wrote. In stark contrast, Ethereum pools alone can yield $28,000 in revenue on a slow day. The post also criticized L2 platforms for their high upkeep costs and short lifespans, which strain developer capacity.
The proposal recommends halting new L2 initiatives, maintaining existing operations for now, and removing L2-related tasks from developers’ to-do lists. Instead, it suggests concentrating on Ethereum-native goals, such as scaling adoption of Curve’s stablecoin scrvUSD.
While the proposal reflects a growing internal critique of L2 economics, it has not yet garnered wide support from the Curve community. One commenter asked for more context before backing such a significant directional change. Still, the sentiment mirrors similar strategic pullbacks across DeFi: two weeks ago, Aave co-founder Marc Zeller announced plans to stop development on Bitcoin L2 BOB, citing unprofitability across multiple networks.
Despite the tension, Curve’s fundamentals remain strong. The protocol recorded $13.26 million in fees and $6.62 million in revenue so far in 2025, with a 30-day trading volume of $7.45 billion. The CRV token is up 63.3% over the past month, trading at $0.8784.
As Curve grapples with the scalability-versus-profitability dilemma, this proposal underscores an increasingly pressing question for decentralized finance: how much experimentation on emerging networks is worth the cost?
