Curve Finance's active loans climbed 68% during the third quarter of 2026, rising from $42.18 million on June 30 to $70.9 million on September 30, according to the protocol's quarterly update. The increase moved Curve above its 2025 closing balance of roughly $69 million, even as broader decentralized finance lending remained below last year's benchmark.
Curve's team attributed about 84% of the net lending-debt increase to LlamaLend v2, which reached Optimism in June and Ethereum mainnet in July. August delivered the strongest growth, led by markets involving yield-bearing stablecoins such as sreUSD, sfrxUSD, and syrupUSDC. "DeFi lending is recovering unevenly. Capital is moving toward places where assets can continue earning yield while being used as collateral," the Curve Finance team said.
Sector-wide active loans ended September at $32.8 billion, roughly 13% below the $37.5 billion recorded at the end of 2025. Within Curve, the updated LlamaLend v2 design no longer requires crvUSD as either collateral or borrowed asset, allowing issuers to build markets around other supported assets and participate in fee revenue.
Looking ahead, Curve said a proposed market accepting a reUSD/sfrxUSD liquidity provider token as collateral is awaiting a Curve DAO vote. Holders could borrow against their LP tokens without first withdrawing from the underlying pool, and borrowers could receive incentives paid in CRV. Curve also said borrowers select leverage and the width of a liquidation range, so a sudden price drop does not necessarily require an entire loan to close immediately.
Curve's assessment of Ethereum's Glamsterdam upgrade noted that a leveraged borrowing transaction consumed about 1.84 million gas, compared with 125,000 for a direct stablecoin swap. Additional capacity could help borrowers, liquidators, and oracle updates enter blocks during sharp market moves. Curve DAO also assigned a twelve-month risk-management mandate to yRisk, covering collateral reviews, liquidity, oracle design, concentration, and governance risks; yRisk will receive 125,000 frxUSD and 568,181 CRV through revocable one-year vesting streams.
In the broader DeFi lending landscape, Solend — rebranded as Save in July 2024 — remains one of Solana's earliest lending protocols. It uses algorithmic interest rate models and over-collateralized positions, but its history includes a June 2022 governance crisis when a single whale held roughly $170 million in SOL collateral. Solana's total lending market reached $4.8 billion in early 2025. Save reported roughly $313 million supplied and $80 million borrowed in Q1 2025, while Aave's total value locked reached approximately $44.8 billion in October 2025. Save now faces competition from Kamino, Drift, and Jupiter Lend, and both protocols carry smart contract, oracle, and liquidation risks despite audits.
