Curve Finance Founder Unveils Yield Basis: Bitcoin BTC Protocol Eliminates Impermanent Loss

Michael Egorov, the founder of leading DeFi protocol Curve Finance, has launched Yield Basis, a new decentralized platform engineered to generate sustainable bitcoin (BTC) yield while completely removing impermanent loss (IL), a major and persistent challenge in decentralized finance. Historically, Bitcoin holders have encountered limited options for earning on-chain returns, with lending markets offering minimal interest and automated market maker (AMM) pools exposing users to significant IL risk, where yields seldom exceeded 1-2%. Yield Basis addresses this by fundamentally redesigning the AMM model, eliminating IL to facilitate deeper Bitcoin liquidity and more attractive yields for institutional and professional investors. Initial growth is managed through three launch pools, each with a $1 million deposit cap. Leveraging Curve's proven five-year infrastructure resilience, the protocol incorporates a vote-escrow (veYB) governance model where token holders lock YB to participate and earn fees in crvUSD or wrapped Bitcoin. A key differentiator is its "value-protecting" token emission model, which ties emissions directly to position yield rather than indiscriminately distributing them to liquidity providers. Backed by $5 million in funding secured in early 2025, Yield Basis is the inaugural project on the combined Legion and Kraken launchpad, making its token sale accessible to the community. While initially focused on Bitcoin, Egorov indicates the protocol's IL solution is scalable to Ethereum (ETH), tokenized commodities, and stocks, potentially expanding the universe of yield-generating on-chain assets.