Curve Finance has switched on its StableSwap exchange across the Stellar mainnet, the automated market maker's first native deployment outside the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) ecosystem since the protocol was founded in 2020. A Beta web interface at stellar.curve.finance is already operational, giving users access to the newly live exchange.

A First Deployment Beyond the EVM

Decentralized finance protocols that originate on Ethereum most often expand by redeploying to other EVM-compatible networks, where existing smart contract code can be reused with minimal changes. Curve's own growth has largely followed that route, with its exchange available on EVM-based networks such as Arbitrum, Optimism, and Polygon. Stellar does not run on the EVM, so Curve's arrival on the network represents a native build rather than a port of its Ethereum codebase, with contracts written for Stellar's Soroban environment rather than reused. It is the first time the protocol has gone live on a chain outside the EVM ecosystem since its launch in 2020 — a marker of how non-EVM smart contract platforms are beginning to host designs that originated on Ethereum.

Curve and StableSwap

Curve Finance, created by Michael Egorov and launched on Ethereum in early 2020, is a decentralized exchange built around its StableSwap automated market maker design. The mechanism pools assets that are intended to trade close to the same value — most prominently stablecoins — and prices swaps algorithmically, enabling exchanges with low fees and minimal slippage relative to conventional constant-product AMMs. That stablecoin focus is what ties this deployment to Stellar's remit: Curve's design is tuned for like-valued assets, and moving value cheaply — stablecoins included — is the use case a payments chain is built around. The protocol's native token, CRV, functions as its governance asset.

Stellar's Smart Contract Push

Stellar is a payments-focused blockchain supported by the non-profit Stellar Development Foundation, with the lumen (XLM) as its native asset. The network's Soroban smart contract platform went live on mainnet in February 2024, opening Stellar to general-purpose decentralized applications — a young foundation relative to Ethereum's DeFi stack, which has had years to accumulate liquidity and tooling. Stellar's asset-issuance model also means stablecoins, including Circle's USD Coin (USDC), already circulate on the network — the same class of assets Curve's swap design is built to trade. Curve's StableSwap deployment lands on that foundation, bringing its stablecoin-focused exchange design to a non-EVM environment. With the web interface still carrying a Beta label, the rollout is at an early stage, and how the deployment develops from here is the immediate item to watch.

Source

This article is based on reporting first published on COINOTAG: Curve Finance Launches StableSwap on Stellar Mainnet in First Non-EVM Deployment.