In this post, I’ll be providing a step-by-step guide on how to earn rewards using Curve’s LUSD+3Pool.
You might have some questions already, so I’ll start with the basics:
What is Liquity? Most of you know this by now if you’ve been following my content, but it’s a decentralized borrowing protocol that allows you to draw interest-free loans against Ether used as collateral. Loans are paid out in LUSD (a USD pegged stablecoin) and need to maintain a minimum collateral ratio of 110%.
What is Curve Finance? Curve is a decentralized exchange specifically built for efficient trades between stablecoins. Like Uniswap, there are liquidity pools (e.g. the LUSD+3Pool) where users can provide liquidity and earn trading fees & rewards. I would recommend reading their docs if needed before continuing.
Now, let’s get this farm started.
Navigating through Curve’s homepage
On Curve’s homepage, there’s a section that shows liquidity pools.
You can see that I highlighted the LUSD+3Pool. The 3Pool contains USDC, DAI, and USDT. So, this means that LUSD is paired against those three stablecoins.
- Base APY: This represents the APY you’ll receive (trading fees) just from providing liquidity.
- Rewards APY: This represents the APY you’ll receive if you decide to stake your LP tokens after providing liquidity. At the time of writing, the rewards for the LUSD+3Pool are 15.12% — 37.79% in CRV depending on the boost, and 11.59% in LQTY (which will end in ~3 weeks).
- Volume: This represents the daily volume for each pool.
Now that you’re aware of the potential rewards, you’ll want to click on the LUSD+3Pool.
This is where users can make trades in the LUSD+3Pool, but it’s not where you provide liquidity.
At the top of the page, there are multiple tabs. Click on “Deposit” and you’ll be brought here.
Providing Liquidity
In order to start earning rewards, you need to provide liquidity in LUSD, DAI, USDC, or USDT. Keep in mind that you can also add all of the coins in a balanced proportion if you want to.
As shown above, I’m opting to only deposit LUSD. You can acquire LUSD by opening a Trove or buying it off of a DEX.
I personally decided to open a Trove & borrow LUSD instead of buying it. Here’s a tutorial I previously wrote on how to do so.
Once you have this figured out, there are two options:
- Deposit: This will allow you to earn the Base APY (only trading fees) and you’ll be free to do what you’d like with the LP tokens, such as deposit them into the Yearn CrvLUSD Vault (wink wink, a future tutorial).
- Deposit & Stake in Gauge: This will allow you to earn the Base APY and the Rewards APY, since you will be staking your LP tokens instead.
For this tutorial, I’m going all in for the staking rewards, so I’m choosing “Deposit & Stake in Gauge”.
Withdraw Tab
Now that you have provided liquidity, you’ll be able to see your deposit balance & rewards in the “Withdraw Tab”.
As you can see above, my LUSD deposit got split between other stablecoins in the pool. This is by design, and your balance will change constantly as people trade in the LUSD+3Pool.
The available functions in this tab are quite self-explanatory, so I won’t get into them.
Quick note: You can withdraw, claim, unstake, etc at any time.
You finally used the LUSD+3Pool to earn rewards!
If you’d like to explore Liquity further, check out their documentation or join the community Discord — You can find me there too!
