Best liquid lockers in 2026

Liquid Lockers evaluated across the exit that does not exist: measured discount and any contractual redemption, who controls the votes and the bribes, and what reaches the depositor, what happens if the base protocol changes or dies, and whether the wrapper can unwind at all, and contract control and dated incident record of the wrapper itself.

Convex Finance (cvxCRV)

#1 of 5 · published ranking

Convex Finance (cvxCRV)

79ChainChoice Score

Why it leads

1 point ahead of Yearn yCRV: +1.2 pts base protocol unwind

Cost

Not priced · No comparable price is published

5 compared Ranking-blind · 392 modules checked 2026-09-18Evidence read 2026-08-21Scored under methodology v2026.09.15 (2026-09-16)20 receipts quoted

Filter liquid lockers5 in the published ranking

Filters change eligibility, not methodology. A requirement can rule a provider out; nothing here changes the order the published criteria produce.

Your setup

Your location

Pick a country to see which liquid lockers serve it. Nothing is hidden — any that does not is listed with that reason.

Trust & control

Exit realisability

No requirement — nothing is ruled out on this.

Vote and bribe pass through

No requirement — nothing is ruled out on this.

Contract control incidents

No requirement — nothing is ruled out on this.

Base protocol unwind

No requirement — nothing is ruled out on this.

Whatever misses a requirement is listed under Excluded with the reason — nothing is hidden.

5 results

5liquid lockers · sorted by chainchoice score

ranked before any payout data is seen

#1 overallcomputed before any payout data is seenOverall

Convex Finance (cvxCRV)

Wins the weighted total without leading any single criterion

79ChainChoice Score · first of 5

Catalog strengths

Contract control and dated incident record of the wrapper itselfWho controls the votes and the bribes, and what reaches the depositor

Why it leads

1 point ahead of Yearn yCRV: +1.2 pts base protocol unwind
Provider states broad availability
Contract control incidents 8/10 (weight 20%)

Evidence

4/4

criteria scored · 4 receipts quoted

Margin

+1

over Yearn yCRV, ranked #02

Rank stability

One-point

a ±1 reread of "The exit that does not exist: measured discount and any contractual redemption" would crown Yearn yCRV

Tradeoff

−2

The exit that does not exist: measured discount and any contractual redemption — behind this pool's best

Jurisdiction

Global

no restricted market on record

Score breakdowntick = pool best

Exit realisability4/10

Vote and bribe pass through6/10

Base protocol unwind6/10

Contract control incidents8/10

Ranking-blind · a guided run tailors this to your size, custody & jurisdiction

#ProviderScoreEvidenceKey strengths

2−1

Yearn yCRV

Contract control and dated incident record of the wrapper itselfWho controls the votes and the bribes, and what reaches the depositor

3−1

Pirex (pxCVX, Redacted)

The exit that does not exist: measured discount and any contractual redemptionContract control and dated incident record of the wrapper itself

4−2

Stake DAO (sdCRV Liquid Locker)

Who controls the votes and the bribes, and what reaches the depositorWhat happens if the base protocol changes or dies, and whether the wrapper can unwind at all

5−7

CLever (clevCVX, AladdinDAO)

Contract control and dated incident record of the wrapper itselfWhat happens if the base protocol changes or dies, and whether the wrapper can unwind at all

Ranking-blind — order computed before any payout data is joined

Below the table

How this ranking works

Everything the table draws on continues here: how firm the #1 is, the per-criterion arithmetic behind each score, who pays ChainChoice, and the full guide to choosing.

Direct answer

What is the best liquid lockers in 2026?

Convex Finance (cvxCRV) ranks #1 overall for liquid lockers on ChainChoice. The category's dominant wrapper — 418.5m veCRV, 53.63% of all voting escrow — issuing a receipt that has no redemption at any price and cleared 53.02% below the underlying on a $100k exit at block 25,738,905. It holds that rank under an affiliate-blind methodology scored across 4 published, weighted criteria — the code that ranks providers physically cannot read affiliate payouts (CI-enforced), so a payout can't move a rank. The verdict re-computes on every fee change, incident, or regulatory action; full reasoning and the audit receipt are below.

Best picks

Best liquid lockers in 2026

You are being asked to convert a governance token into a receipt, permanently. Convex states it in its own documentation: "cvxCRV conversion is 1-way". So the only money you can actually get back is whatever the secondary market will pay, and on 2026-08-12 that market was pricing these receipts 39% to 54% below the asset they represent — 52.96% for cvxCRV, 53.72% for sdCRV, 50.59% for yCRV and 72.07% for clevCVX, all measured at a $100,000-equivalent exit. That size qualifier is not pedantry: one receipt shows 4.53% at $10,000 and 72.15% at $100,000, a sixteen-fold difference in the same asset on the same day, which is why every discount here is quoted at two sizes and why any single-number quote for these instruments is close to meaningless. A contract-enforced redemption at net asset value therefore outranks any market price, because a bid can vanish and an obligation cannot. Then ask what the lock actually earns you: the receipt you hold and the token that votes are frequently different tokens held by different people, so read the published fee split to the decimal rather than the marketing about maximised yield.

Best overall

Convex Finance (cvxCRV)

Data checked Aug 2026

The category's dominant wrapper — 418.5m veCRV, 53.63% of all voting escrow — issuing a receipt that has no redemption at any price and cleared 53.02% below the underlying on a $100k exit at block 25,738,905. Strongest on contract control and dated incident record of the wrapper itself (8/10): MINT PATH re-verified. cvxCRV 0x62B9c7356A2Dc64a1969e19C23e4f579F9810Aa7: EIP-1967 slot reads 0x0, code 3,762 bytes. cCrv.sol gates both mint and burn on the operator. operator() = CrvDepositor 0x8014595F2AB54cD7c604B00E9fb932176fDc86Ae (non-upgradeable), which exposes no setOperator call, so the mint right is… Weakest on the exit that does not exist: measured discount and any contractual redemption (4/10): RE-VERIFIED 2026-08-12. Character-exact in re-fetched llms-full.txt (83,850 bytes): "If a user deposits CRV into Convex, that CRV is locked forever on the platform as veCRV." and "cvxCRV conversion is 1-way. Liquidity pools may exist that allow users to swap cvxCRV for CRV tokens." CORRECTION: "Remember, this process… Published price: Re-fetched and re-verified 2026-08-12 as raw markdown from https://docs.convexfinance.com/convexfinance/faq/fees (HTTP 200, text/markdown, 3,127 bytes). Every quote below is character-exact.

Best for: Contract control and dated incident record of the wrapper itself — 8/10

Why this score4 published criteria · leads 1 of 4

Published criterionWtScore, and the best hereGap/10Pts

The exit that does not exist: measured discount and any contractual redemption8.4−244.5

Who controls the votes and the bribes, and what reaches the depositor6−164.8

What happens if the base protocol changes or dies, and whether the wrapper can unwind at all4.8−163.8

Contract control and dated incident record of the wrapper itself4.8·85.1

Σ methodology points18.2/32

Each bar is the score on that criterion’s own 0–10 scale, never rescaled to the pool. The dark line is the best any product here reached on that axis. Wt is the most the criterion can add to the 86-point weighted total. Pts is weight × score × 32; the sum is the methodology score, and each weighted point behind the leader costs 2.6 on the displayed score. how these are weighted

Why it ranks first

Why Convex Finance (cvxCRV) leads this category right now

Best for

Contract control and dated incident record of the wrapper itself — 8/10

Main tradeoff

The buyer should decide on one number and one structural fact. The number: 53.02%. That is what a $100,000-equivalent cvxCRV position actually converted to on 2026-08-12 at block 25,738,905, re-measured at 53.75% seven hours later — and there is no contractual alternative to it. cvxCRV cannot be redeemed: burn() is operator-gated, the operator is CrvDepositor, and CrvDepositor's source contains no burn call at all. The structural fact: Convex is not a wrapper of the Curve wars, it is the Curve wars. 418,519,824 veCRV, 53.63% of the 780,445,763 total, sits behind a receipt whose holders neither vote nor receive any vote incentive. That is a defensible trade at a 53% discount to NAV — the cash yield is real, 100% of the veCRV admin fee passes through untaxed, and the split is verifiable to the basis point from deployed getters. It is not defensible for anyone who may need principal back. Three cautions, two of them corrections to the prior draft. First, the discount is measured against a pool holding 2.70m CRV against 58.28m cvxCRV — a 21.5:1 imbalance in which the pool IS the market; at $500,000 the discount reaches 59.04%. Second, the governance stack is better audited than the draft claimed: a June 2026 audit of the on-chain voting contracts exists and is published in the docs, so the 'unaudited new stack' concern is void and the control score rises to 8. Third, and cutting the other way: Votium — the operator of the vote-incentive market whose revenue never reaches cvxCRV holders — holds one of the five keys on the 3-of-5 multisig that owns the Booster, the VoterProxy and the staking wrapper. Finally, the documentation ages faster than the contracts: the fee page footer still reads 'Last updated 2 years ago', and the Tokenomics page still advertises cvxPrisma rewards in mkUSD from a protocol whose every domain now fails to resolve. Verify fee parameters from the Booster, not the docs.

Verify before signup

Re-fetched and re-verified 2026-08-12 as raw markdown from https://docs.convexfinance.com/convexfinance/faq/fees (HTTP 200, text/markdown, 3,127 bytes). Every quote below is character-exact. "There is a 17% total fee on all CRV revenue generated by Curve LP's on the platform." Breakdown: "10% goes to cvxCRV stakers. This is paid out as CRV." / "4.5% goes to CVX stakers. This is paid out as cvxCRV." / "2% goes to treasury, which goes to treasury as CRV." / "0.5% goes to the harvest caller. This is paid out as CRV." Carve-out: "Fees are taken only from CRV revenue; no fees are taken from tokens from incentivized Curve pools, nor from veCRV admin fees". Mutability: "Fees can be adjusted between hard-coded ranges." — "10-15% for cvxCRV stakers rewards", "3-6% for CVX staker rewards", "0-2% for \"treasury\" fees", "0.1 - 1.0% for \"caller\" fees", "There is an absolute fee ceiling of 20%". Independently reproduced from the deployed Booster 0xF403C135812408BFbE8713b5A23a04b3D48AAE31 at block 25,739,531: lockIncentive()=1000, stakerIncentive()=450, platformFee()=200, earmarkIncentive()=50, FEE_DENOMINATOR()=10000 — 1700bp = 17.00% exactly. The page footer still reads "Last updated 2 years ago" (confirmed in the served HTML).

Recommendation summary

What should decide this category

Can you redeem into the underlying by contract, or is a secondary-market bid the only exit that exists?

What is the discount at the size YOU would exit — not at the size the marketing quotes?

Does your receipt direct the underlying vote, and what share of fees and vote incentives actually reaches you?

If the base protocol changed its rules tomorrow, has this wrapper written down what happens?

Quick picks

Strong options in this category

Start with the lead choice first, then use the shortlist only if you still need a challenger or stronger fit for a specific setup.

Best overall

Convex Finance (cvxCRV)

Best for: Contract control and dated incident record of the wrapper itself — 8/10

The exit that does not exist: measured discount and any contractual redemption · 35%

4/10

Who controls the votes and the bribes, and what reaches the depositor · 25%

6/10

What happens if the base protocol changes or dies, and whether the wrapper can unwind at all · 20%

6/10

Contract control and dated incident record of the wrapper itself · 20%

8/10

Quick pick

Yearn yCRV

Yearn's veCRV liquid locker: CRV is minted 1:1 into yCRV and locked forever, the revenue split is enforced by a deployed on-chain splitter, and the only exit is a single Curve pool trading ~51% below the underlying at size. Strongest on contract control and dated incident record of the wrapper itself (8/10): Control read at block 25,741,189, 2026-08-12, not audit badges.

Best for: Contract control and dated incident record of the wrapper itself — 8/10

The exit that does not exist: measured discount and any contractual redemption · 35%

4/10

Who controls the votes and the bribes, and what reaches the depositor · 25%

6/10

What happens if the base protocol changes or dies, and whether the wrapper can unwind at all · 20%

5/10

Contract control and dated incident record of the wrapper itself · 20%

8/10

Quick pick

Pirex (pxCVX, Redacted)

The wrapper whose sponsor dissolved but whose contract did not: pxCVX still burns back to CVX at NAV, permissionless and exercised five times in the week I checked, at 4.76% seven days out falling to 1.23% at 112 — while its only quotable Curve venue prices a $100,000 exit 70.30% below NAV. Strongest on the exit that does not exist: measured discount and any contractual redemption (6/10): Re-measured 2026-08-12 at two blocks via publicnode/drpc: the draft's 25,740,376 (17:21:23Z) and my fresh 25,741,330 (20:32:35Z). NAV: pxCVX is 1:1, not yield-bearing. Backing = 1,683,918.8071 CVX in CvxLockerV2 (lockedBalances, 14 entries, unlockable 0) + 75,477.9827 loose = 1,759,396.7898; claims = totalSupply… Weakest on what happens if the base protocol changes or dies, and whether the wrapper can unwind at all (4/10): (i) The underlying lock is mechanically unwindable — uniquely in this category. pxCVX wraps vlCVX, not veCRV, and Convex locks expire. lockedBalances(PirexCvx) at block 25,740,376 returns 1,683,918.8071 across 14 entries, unlockable 0, earliest expiring 2026-08-20, latest 2026-12-03.

Best for: The exit that does not exist: measured discount and any contractual redemption — 6/10

The exit that does not exist: measured discount and any contractual redemption · 35%

6/10

Who controls the votes and the bribes, and what reaches the depositor · 25%

5/10

What happens if the base protocol changes or dies, and whether the wrapper can unwind at all · 20%

4/10

Contract control and dated incident record of the wrapper itself · 20%

6/10

Quick pick

Stake DAO (sdCRV Liquid Locker)

The second-largest veCRV wrapper (118,841,420 veCRV, 15.21% of supply, re-read at block 25,741,200 on 2026-08-12): the only major CRV wrapper whose receipt holders actually direct the underlying vote, and 85% of harvested Curve revenue reaches them per a deployed contract getter — but the deposit is permanent, the only exit is its own Curve pool at a 53.86-54.00% haircut on $100,000, and the getter that sets that 85% answers to a 3-of-5 multisig with no timelock. Strongest on who controls the votes and the bribes, and what reaches the depositor (7/10): AXIS (a), vote direction — the receipt holder directs it. All three quotes re-verified character-exact against docs.stakedao.org/sdvote, re-fetched 2026-08-12: "Stake DAO replicates each underlying protocol vote—both gauge allocations and protocol governance proposals—allowing sdToken holders to vote directly."; "When… Weakest on the exit that does not exist: measured discount and any contractual redemption (3/10): No redemption exists. docs.stakedao.org/liquidlockers (re-fetched 2026-08-12) says, character-exact: "The sdToken/token exchange rate fluctuates based on market demand.

Best for: Who controls the votes and the bribes, and what reaches the depositor — 7/10

The exit that does not exist: measured discount and any contractual redemption · 35%

3/10

Who controls the votes and the bribes, and what reaches the depositor · 25%

7/10

What happens if the base protocol changes or dies, and whether the wrapper can unwind at all · 20%

7/10

Contract control and dated incident record of the wrapper itself · 20%

4/10

Frequently asked

Questions people ask before choosing liquid lockers

Can I convert back to the underlying token?

On most of these, no — and the protocols say so plainly. Convex's documentation states that "cvxCRV conversion is 1-way", and the underlying veCRV lock has no early-withdraw path at all, which caps what any CRV wrapper can offer however well run it is. That leaves the secondary market as the only exit, and it is currently expensive: measured at a $100,000-equivalent size on 2026-08-12, the discounts to the underlying ran 52.96%, 53.72%, 50.59% and 72.07% across four of the receipts here. The exception is worth seeking out — a contract-enforced redemption at net asset value, even a capped and queued one, is a categorically different product from a Curve pool, because the queue is an obligation and the pool is a convenience that can empty.

Why is the discount quoted at two different sizes?

Because it changes the answer completely, and quoting one number would mislead. The same receipt on the same day showed a 4.53% discount at a $10,000 exit and 72.15% at $100,000 — a sixteen-fold difference driven entirely by pool depth. So every discount on this page names the pool, the chain, the block and the date, and reports both sizes. One provider makes the point starkly: its Curve pool held 0.52 CVX when read on 2026-08-12. There is no size at which that is a market, and it is scored as the absence of an exit rather than as an expensive one.

Does my receipt actually get the votes and the bribes?

Often not the votes, and the fee share varies by protocol. The receipt token and the voting token are frequently different tokens held by different people: Convex publishes its split to the decimal — a 17% total fee on CRV revenue, of which 10% goes to cvxCRV stakers, 4.5% to CVX stakers, 2% to treasury and 0.5% to the harvest caller — while gauge weights are directed by vlCVX holders, not by the cvxCRV holder who funded the lock. That is disclosure working exactly as it should, and it still means you bought a permanent governance position that somebody else spends. Elsewhere, documented vote replication does pass the governance right through to the receipt holder, which is the meaningful difference to look for.

What happens if the protocol underneath changes the rules?

This category has just watched it happen twice, so the question is not hypothetical. One major vote-escrow protocol stripped its lock token of fee rights and gauge direction and announced wind-down on 24 March 2026 after a roughly $110m exploit; the wrapper built on it now redeems holders at 90% of the underlying on 10 May 2027 — a documented ratio and a documented date, which is the good version of this outcome. A second protocol paused ALL new lock creation at 00:00 UTC on 29 January 2026, leaving its wrappers holding a claim on a lock that can no longer be made. Sixteen candidates were checked and rejected on dated evidence to assemble a pool of six. What separates the survivors is not whether their base protocol might change — it is whether a numbered, passed governance document says what happens when it does, and whether the wrapper spans more than one base protocol. Treat a wrapper of a wrapper as compounding exposure, not diversification.

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How this ranking is built

Reviewed on the exit that does not exist: measured discount and any contractual redemption, who controls the votes and the bribes, and what reaches the depositor, what happens if the base protocol changes or dies, and whether the wrapper can unwind at all, and contract control and dated incident record of the wrapper itself.

Data checked Aug 2026 · Independent rankings · We show our work

Not financial advice · For informational purposes only · Always do your own research