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Leading options · 5 ranked from 8 screened

Liquid Lockers

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
No provider can pay for a position in this table. The code that computes this order cannot read which links earn us a commission, and every build proves it. Every score below rebuilds from the published criteria.Ranking 2026.08 · 4 criteria · 5 products · same inputs, same order
Personal comparison

Liquid Lockers ranked comparison

No comparable price is published; ranking still uses verified product evidence.

RankProviderBest fitScore
1
Convex Finance (cvxCRV)Convex Finance (cvxCRV)The category's dominant wrapper — 418.5...Top ranked
Contract control and dated incident record of the wrapper itself — 8/10Trade-off: The buyer should decide on one number and one structural fact. The number: 53.02%. Th...
79score
Check availability for your countryVisit Convex Finance (cvxCRV) · convexfinance.com

Commission: This provider pays ChainChoice nothing for this link. Disclosure

Crypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.

2
Yearn yCRVYearn yCRVYearn's veCRV liquid locker: CRV is min...
Contract control and dated incident record of the wrapper itself — 8/10Trade-off: The single most consequential fact is one Yearn does not put on its product page: at...
78score
Check availability for your countryVisit Yearn yCRV · ycrv.yearn.fi

Commission: This provider pays ChainChoice nothing for this link. Disclosure

Crypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.

3
Pirex (pxCVX, Redacted)The wrapper whose sponsor dissolved but...
The exit that does not exist: measured discount and any contractual redemption — 6/10Trade-off: Read this as an orphaned instrument that still works, and hold three things at once....
77score
Check availability for your countryVisit Pirex (pxCVX, Redacted) · llama.airforce

Commission: This provider pays ChainChoice nothing for this link. Disclosure

Crypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.

4
Stake DAO (sdCRV Liquid Locker)Stake DAO (sdCRV Liquid Locker)The second-largest veCRV wrapper (118,8...
Who controls the votes and the bribes, and what reaches the depositor — 7/10Trade-off: Four things this scoring cannot soften. First, the deposit is permanent and the price...
75score
Check availability for your countryVisit Stake DAO (sdCRV Liquid Locker) · docs.stakedao.org

Commission: This provider pays ChainChoice nothing for this link. Disclosure

Crypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.

5
CLever (clevCVX, AladdinDAO)CLever locks depositors' CVX into vlCVX...
Contract control and dated incident record of the wrapper itself — 6/10Trade-off: clevCVX is only marginally in this category, and scoring it as a liquid locker flatte...
68score
Check availability for your countryVisit CLever (clevCVX, AladdinDAO) · clever.aladdin.club

Commission: This provider pays ChainChoice nothing for this link. Disclosure

Crypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.

Ranking blindCommercial terms excludedDated primary sourcesCrypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.

Ranked on 4 published criteria weighted 35/25/20/20, which set goal alignment — 30 of the 86 points. The rest: regional access 20, evidence depth 18, ease of use 10, institutional trust 8. Profile match is shown in breakdowns but carries no weight.

Audit
Infrastructure
Methodology
2026.09.15
published 2026-09-16
Providers tracked
980+
across 119 categories
Last verified
2026-08-13
newest dated pricing or sentiment read
Named on the roster
2 people
managing directors · 6 automated processes
Decision guide

What matters most before choosing in this category

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.

What matters most before choosing in this category

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.

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?
Current editor lead

Expert review and scoring weights

Convex Finance (cvxCRV)
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.

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 forContract control and dated incident record of the wrapper itself — 8/10
Main tradeoffThe 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 signupRe-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).
Methodology

How this category is reviewed

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.

The order on this page is the published ranking for this category. Every criterion, weight and source behind it is on the methodology page.
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.
REVIEWEDAugust 21, 2026METHOD4 criteriaCATEGORYliquid_lockers
Not financial advice · For informational purposes only · Always do your own research
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