Convex Finance (CVX)

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Historical price evolution of Convex Finance

Daily historical data. Updated automatically.

Convex Finance was born in April 2021 when an anonymous team of developers known under the pseudonym "C2tp" registered the protocol on the Curve Finance whitelist. The founders are believed to possess experience in software development and deep knowledge of the Curve ecosystem. The official launch took place on 17th May 2021 on Ethereum, recording $68 million in TVL during its first month. The CVX token debuted with an initial price of approximately $6.19 and experienced a 203% rise within a few weeks, reaching $18.8.

The protocol's growth was extraordinarily rapid during its first months. In June 2021, Convex surpassed $1,000 million in TVL whilst accumulating large amounts of CRV in staking, positioning itself as the largest holder of veCRV and dominant actor in the so-called "Curve Wars", the competition to control Curve governance. By October 2021, TVL had grown to exceed $12,000 million, with CVX reaching $20.78. The all-time high came on 1st December 2021, when CVX touched $62.69 ($60.09 according to other sources) and the protocol exceeded 31,000 users.

During December 2021, Convex expanded its services to the Frax Finance ecosystem with the launch of cvxFXS, a tokenised version of Frax FXS locked in Convex, allowing FXS holders to access advantages similar to those available for CRV. In that same period, the CVX/ETH incentives programme migrated from SushiSwap to Curve v2 pools. The year 2022 brought some challenges, including a DNS hijacking incident in June that temporarily redirected the protocol's front-end, although user funds were not compromised. By mid-2022, Convex maintained approximately 50% of all veCRV in staking.

In November 2022, Convex began its multichain expansion by deploying the protocol on Arbitrum One, later expanding also to Polygon. During 2023, Convex's TVL entered a bearish trend following the general evolution of the DeFi market, whilst the protocol integrated Prisma Finance and f(x) Protocol, expanding its yield optimisation model beyond Curve and Frax. The year 2025 began with turbulence when in June the Resupply exploit stole $9.5 million by exploiting a valuation error in cvCRVUSD, causing falls of up to 7% in CVX and YFI in subsequent days.

The most recent developments include the launch in November 2025 of the Creator Collective programme, which distributes 10,000 CVX monthly amongst Convex content creators. On 22nd December 2025, Convex holders voted through vlCVX against a Curve DAO proposal to allocate 17.4 million CRV (approximately $6.2 million) to Swiss Stake AG, demonstrating Convex's governance power when addresses linked to Convex and Yearn Finance represented nearly 90% of the votes against. In January 2026, CVX experienced a 28.5% rise in 24 hours on 4th January, whilst Convex's TVL grew to $1,280 million. More than 40% of the CVX supply (approximately 90 million tokens) remains locked in vlCVX contracts, and the protocol generates annualised revenue of approximately $3.33 million.

Convex Finance functions as a yield optimiser that resolves a structural limitation of Curve Finance: to maximise rewards on Curve, users must lock large amounts of CRV tokens for up to four years to obtain veCRV (vote-escrowed CRV), something inaccessible to small investors. Convex aggregates the CRV from all its users in a collective pool and locks it as veCRV, distributing the benefits of the maximum boost amongst all participants proportionally. Curve liquidity providers deposit their LP tokens in Convex and automatically receive amplified CRV rewards (thanks to Convex's collective veCRV boost), Curve trading fees and additional CVX tokens as an incentive. Although Convex began as an exclusive Curve optimiser, it has extended its model to other protocols with locked tokens: Frax Finance, Prisma Finance and f(x) Protocol. The protocol operates on Ethereum and on L2 chains.

The power of Convex resides in that it controls approximately 40-50% of all veCRV in the Curve ecosystem, granting it dominant influence over Curve's gauge weights, that is, which pools receive more CRV emissions. Users who deposit CRV in Convex receive cvxCRV in a 1:1 ratio, a transferable token that represents permanently locked CRV. This cvxCRV can be staked to receive 10% of the CRV harvested by Convex's pools in the form of cvxCRV, whilst 4.5% is distributed to CVX stakers also in cvxCRV and 2% to the protocol treasury.

CVX is the native governance and fee distribution token, with a maximum supply of 100 million tokens whose emission is proportional to the CRV harvested. Holders can lock CVX as vlCVX for periods of 16 weeks, obtaining the right to vote every 14 days on how Convex allocates its voting power in Curve, Frax and other integrated protocols. This dynamic has generated the so-called "Convex Wars", where other DeFi protocols buy large quantities of CVX to influence the direction of Curve emissions towards their own liquidity pools.

Data verified against external sources. Some values may have changed since the last update.