CRV · the mint shrinks every August, and nothing buys it back.

The gauge emission is arithmetic written into the token contract in 2020: a per-second rate that steps down 15.91% every August and runs to 2049. It cut on Aug 12 2026 from 316,563 to 266,197 CRV a day, taking scheduled issuance under 100M a year for the first time. 27.62M was minted over 90 days, 101.01% of what the schedule released, because CRV is only created when a pool claims it and a 10.30M backlog still rides in front. The forward number uses the rate after the cut, not the blended one.

The 2020 pre-launch liquidity escrow finished vesting on paper in 2021, and every tracker lists CRV as fully unlocked — but the coins only move when someone claims them. The escrow balance fell from 11.23M to 10.30M across the window, so 0.93M actually reached the market. That realised outflow is what this row carries, not the calendar entitlement, which is zero. The investor and employee escrows read empty at both ends of the window and can never contribute again.

No public evidence of release in window — monitored. Two team-controlled pools are tracked: the community fund escrow, holding 845.1K and identical at both ends of the window, and the 10.30M still unclaimed behind the 2020 escrow. The DAO's own governance wallets hold no CRV at all. A proposal to hand 17.4M CRV to the core development company was voted down 54.46% in Aug 2026, so nothing was released.

Four-year vote-locks expire on their own schedule and hand principal back with no announcement and no calendar. The vote-escrow contract held 854.05M CRV at the start of the window and 850.12M at the end, so 3.93M came out of the lock and back into the tradable float. It is the only supply tap on this coin that no unlock tracker reports, and it is measured directly off the contract balance at both ends rather than inferred.

There is no buyback, and that is a deliberate design choice rather than an oversight. Curve's position is that vote-locking already does the job a buyback would do, so admin fees are collected and paid straight to lockers in a stablecoin. No revenue is ever converted back into CRV. The DAO could vote a buyback in at any time; it has not.

There is no burn path, checked from both sides this window. The dead address held the same 169.86 CRV at both ends, so nothing was sent to a sink; and total supply rose rather than fell, so nothing was destroyed by a supply-reducing call either. Neither surface moved, which makes this a measured zero rather than an assumed one.

No public evidence of release in window — monitored. The DAO's ownership, parameter and emergency wallets hold no CRV whatsoever, and there is no treasury programme that buys it. Protocol revenue is denominated in a stablecoin and stays that way.

Locking moved the wrong way this window. The vote-escrow balance fell 3.93M, and that single flow is already counted on the sell side, so booking it here as well would double it. New locks are still being made every day — just fewer of them than are expiring. The 850.12M sitting locked is capacity, not a flow, and it is not bookable as a buy.