Liquidity providers deposit funds into Curve and receive trading fees from traders (supply-side fees).

Curve is a non-custodial exchange protocol built originally on Ethereum. Curve was founded by Michael Egorov and launched in 2020.

CRV tokenholders own and govern the protocol. They currently take a cut of the total trading fees paid by traders (revenue). 

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Exchanges (DEX)

Curve

# Curve Average fees per user (AFPU) Methodology

## 1. Overview

Average Fees Per User (AFPU) measures the average amount of fees generated per daily active user on the Curve protocol. This metric is calculated by dividing total daily fees by the number of daily active users (DAU). It provides insight into fee generation efficiency and user monetization across Curve's decentralized exchange operations, stablecoin issuance, and voting incentive mechanisms. The calculation uses a comprehensive fee aggregation approach that includes trading fees, crvUSD stability fees, and voting incentive deposits.

## 2. Data sources

- **Blockchain events**: Parsed Ethereum `TokenExchange` events from Curve pool contracts (TwoCryptoPool, TriCryptoPool, StablePool variants) capturing all DEX trading activity
- **Transaction data**: Ethereum transaction records to extract user addresses from trading activity  
- **Pool state data**: Daily snapshots of Curve pool states including virtual prices, xcp_profit values, and protocol fee tier configurations
- **Pool balance data**: Daily balance snapshots from all Curve liquidity pools for TVL calculations
- **crvUSD protocol events**: `CollectFees` events from the crvUSD Controller contract capturing stability mechanism fees
- **Voting incentive data**: Function calls to `deposit_reward_token` on registered Curve gauge contracts
- **Staking rewards data**: Lido stETH rebase events (`PostTotalShares`, `TokenRebased`) for rebasing token APR calculations
- **External data**: End-of-day token price feeds for USD conversion and token metadata for decimal corrections
- **Registry data**: Curve gauge registration data from GaugeController contract for validation

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Daily active users calculation
- **Purpose**: Count unique users who traded on Curve DEX pools each day
- **Logic**: Extract all `TokenExchange` events from Curve pool contracts across different pool types (stable pools, two-crypto pools, tri-crypto pools). Join with transaction data to get user addresses (transaction `from_address`). Group by day and count distinct user addresses using HyperLogLog aggregation for efficient distinct counting across multiple dimensional breakdowns
- **Key fields**: `user_address`, `block_timestamp`, `transaction_hash`, `account_address` (pool address)

### Component B: DEX trading fees calculation  
- **Purpose**: Calculate fees generated from automated market maker trading activities
- **Logic**: Calculate Annual Percentage Rates (APRs) for each pool using different methodologies based on pool type. For stable pools, calculate APR from virtual price changes between consecutive days, filtering outliers above 0.05% threshold. For volatile pools, calculate APR from xcp_profit changes using the formula: (current_profit - previous_profit) / previous_profit where profit equals (xcp_profit/2 + xcp_profit_a/2 + 1e18)/2. Apply calculated APRs to previous day's pool Total Value Locked (TVL) to estimate fees generated. Adjust for protocol fee tiers when available, defaulting to 100% fee capture if tier data unavailable. Subtract rebasing token APRs (like stETH) to isolate trading-specific returns
- **Key fields**: `virtual_price`, `xcp_profit`, `xcp_profit_a`, `net_deposits`, `protocol_fee_tier`, `apr`

### Component C: crvUSD stability fees calculation
- **Purpose**: Calculate fees from crvUSD stablecoin minting and redemption operations  
- **Logic**: Sum all `CollectFees` events from the crvUSD Controller contract. These events capture fees generated from the stability mechanisms including minting, redemption, and liquidation operations. Group by day and aggregate total fee amounts
- **Key fields**: `amount` from `CollectFees` events, `block_timestamp`

### Component D: Voting incentives calculation
- **Purpose**: Calculate fees from external incentive programs for Curve governance voting
- **Logic**: Extract all `deposit_reward_token` function calls to registered Curve gauge contracts. Validate gauges against GaugeController registry to ensure they are legitimate Curve gauges. Sum incentive deposit amounts by day. These represent fees paid by external parties to incentivize votes for specific Curve pools
- **Key fields**: `amount` from `deposit_reward_token` calls, `gauge_address`, `reward_token`

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: Sum all fee components (DEX trading fees + crvUSD stability fees + voting incentives) to get total daily fees across all Curve protocol activities
- **Currency conversion**: Convert all fee amounts to USD using end-of-day token prices. Apply decimal corrections based on token metadata before price conversion
- **Time aggregation**: Aggregate all data to daily boundaries using timestamp truncation to day level
- **Final calculation**: Divide total daily fees in USD by daily active user count to get Average Fees Per User. Apply zero-filling strategy to ensure continuous time series with no gaps in the data

*This methodology was automatically generated by Token Terminal's methodology analyzer.*

CurveCRV

Average fees per user (AFPU)

Average fees per user (AFPU)

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