Curve CEO Michael Egorov From Physicist to Cryptocurrency Pioneer

Curve CEO Michael Egorov Physicist turned Cryptocurrency Pioneer

In a cold Moscow winter, Michael Egorov sat in his academic office, delving into the world of ultracold atoms. This young physicist, with a prestigious diploma from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, stood at the forefront of science. But deep inside, his interest in cryptocurrencies was quietly sprouting.

Early Pursuits

Michael Egorov was born into an education-oriented family. Both of his parents were educators who taught him to pursue knowledge from a young age. At the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), he not only demonstrated a passion for physics but also developed a profound interest in mathematics, earning bachelor’s degrees in both disciplines. His academic talents were internationally recognized, and he won a bronze medal in the International Physics Olympiad in 2003. However, his interests extended beyond traditional physics. During his university years, he also delved into quantum computing and cryptography.

Egorov wasn’t satisfied with just that. He decided to further his studies and pursue a Ph.D. 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 currently the CEO of Curve Finance, a Swiss company he founded in June 2020. Prior to that, he served as the Chief Technology Officer of NuCypher, a big data encryption layer that enhances data security using proxy re-encryption. Michael founded NuCypher in March 2015 and served as the CTO until June 2020. He also worked as a physics postdoctoral researcher at Monash University from 2011 to 2014, during which he built a new Rb-K BEC machine. Michael has worked as a software engineer at companies such as 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.

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Transition to Cryptocurrency

Despite his success in academia, Egorov’s interest in cryptocurrencies continued to grow. In 2013, while working as a physics postdoctoral researcher, he bought some Bitcoin. Shortly after, he went to the United States to work in the high-tech industry, specifically at LinkedIn. By this time, Egorov had learned a great deal about cryptocurrencies and founded a company called Zero DB, now known as Nucipher, which currently operates in the cryptocurrency field.

Since the end of 2018, Egorov has been an active DeFi user, with Maker DAO entering the stablecoin market at that time. He had always had trouble swapping stablecoins because doing so on Coinbase was not efficient. At the same time, Egorov was also working on some trading bots, which sparked his idea of how to efficiently swap stablecoins. This is 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 is the continuation of that.

The Rise of Curve

Curve has quickly become a leader in stablecoin trading. Unlike other exchanges, Curve allows users to trade directly with smart contracts, greatly improving the efficiency of transactions. Egorov’s innovative thinking and deep understanding of technology have led to tremendous success for Curve in the cryptocurrency field.

So, what sets Curve apart from other DEXs like Uniswap? Basically, many AMM mechanisms have one thing in common, which is liquidity in all 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 decays exponentially. When you get close to 1.0, you have the highest depth of liquidity. It is this mechanism of high liquidity concentration around 1.0 that makes it particularly suitable for stablecoins, and therefore, upon its launch, it immediately became the infrastructure for DeFi yields.

However, success is not always easy. Egorov faces many challenges, including technical challenges and market competition. We later learned about the Curve War, the concentrated liquidity of Uniswap V3, the vulnerability attack on Vyper, and even the liquidation crisis caused by his own excessive collateral borrowing. Will there be other crises? In this dark forest of DeFi, we do not know.

Author: @hicaptainz

Original article: https://captainz.xlog.app/Michael-Egorov-cong-wu-li-xue-jia-dao-jia-mi-huo-bi-de-xian-qu

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