On a cold Moscow winter day, Michael Egorov sat in his academic office, delving into the world of ultracold atoms. This young physicist, with a red diploma from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, stood at the forefront of science. However, deep within his heart, an interest in cryptocurrency was quietly budding.
Early Pursuits#
Michael Egorov was born into an education-oriented family. His parents, both educators, instilled in him a thirst for knowledge from a young age. At the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), he not only demonstrated a passion for physics but also a profound interest in mathematics, earning bachelor's degrees in both subjects. His academic talent was internationally recognized, and he won a bronze medal in the 2003 International Physics Olympiad. However, his interests were not limited to traditional physics. During his university years, he delved into the study of quantum computing and cryptography.
Egorov was not satisfied with just that. He decided to further his education and pursue a doctoral degree at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia. There, he delved into the coherence and collective oscillations of Bose-Einstein condensates, a highly complex field of physics.
Career#
Michael Egorov is the current CEO of Curve Finance, a Swiss company he founded in June 2020. Prior to this, he served as the Chief Technology Officer of NuCypher, a big data encryption layer that enhances data security through proxy re-encryption. Michael founded NuCypher in March 2015 and served as CTO until June 2020. He also worked as a physics postdoctoral researcher at Monash University from 2011 to 2014, during which he established a new Rb-K BEC machine. Michael has worked as a software engineer at several companies, including LinkedIn, WorkLifeGroup, Netagi, and VGTRK. He has experience in Python programming and has been involved in projects such as Django web development and configuration tools for deploying hundreds of products on tens of thousands of servers.
Transition to Cryptocurrency#
Despite his success in academia, Egorov's interest in cryptocurrency continued to grow. In 2013, while working as a physics postdoctoral researcher, he bought some Bitcoin. Shortly after, he moved to the United States to work in the high-tech industry, specifically at LinkedIn. During this time, Egorov learned a great deal about cryptocurrency and founded a company called Zero DB, now known as Nucipher, which operates in the cryptocurrency field.
Egorov became an active DeFi user starting from late 2018 when Maker DAO entered the stablecoin market. He had been facing difficulties in swapping stablecoins efficiently on Coinbase. At the same time, Egorov was also working on some trading bots, which sparked his idea of how to efficiently swap stablecoins. This was the origin of Curve Finance. In early 2020, Egorov implemented the algorithm and basic user interface on Vyper and launched Curve. So, what we see today as Curve is a continuation of that.
Rise of Curve#
Curve quickly became a leader in stablecoin trading. Unlike other exchanges, Curve allows users to trade directly with smart contracts, greatly improving transaction efficiency. Egorov's innovative thinking and deep understanding of technology have led Curve to tremendous success in the cryptocurrency field.
So, what sets Curve apart from other DEXs like Uniswap? Essentially, many AMM mechanisms have one thing in common: there is some liquidity in all the currencies. For example, when you exchange from currency A to currency B, as a user, you buy some B from the pool, and the pool gets more A, causing a slight change in price. The bought currency B becomes slightly more expensive. The so-called Bonding Curve describes the way these price changes occur. Different protocols have different bonding curves. For example, Uniswap V2 uses a constant product bonding curve, where the pool essentially rebalances all positions. What Curve does is concentrate liquidity around the price of 1.0, which is where liquidity is most needed. As you move away from the price of 1.0, liquidity exponentially decays. When you approach 1.0, you get the highest liquidity depth. It is this mechanism of highly concentrated liquidity around 1.0 that makes Curve particularly suitable for stablecoins, making it the infrastructure for DeFi yields as soon as it was launched.
However, success is not always easy. Egorov faced many challenges, including technical challenges and market competition. We later learned about the Curve War, the centralized liquidity of Uniswap V3, the Vyper vulnerability exploit, and even the liquidation crisis caused by his own excessive collateral borrowing. Will there be other crises in this dark forest of DeFi? Only time will tell.