Leading options · 5 ranked

Liquid Lockers

Liquid Lockers evaluated across the cost of exit; who controls the votes and the bribes, and what reaches the depositor; what happens if the base protocol changes or dies; and the wrapper's own contract control and incident record.

Ranked here: liquid lockers, protocols that lock your governance token into a vote-escrow contract on your behalf and give you a transferable receipt you cannot convert back. Not ranked here: protocols that do not lock a governance token into a vote-escrow contract on the depositor's behalf and mint a transferable receipt.

#1 of 5published ranking

Convex Finance (cvxCRV)

79ChainChoice Score

Why it leads

Convex Finance (cvxCRV) is 2 points ahead of Pirex (pxCVX, Redacted), mainly because it scores higher on its contract control incidents and its base protocol unwind.

Show the arithmetic

Ahead of Pirex (pxCVX, Redacted) on contract control incidents (+2.5 points) and base protocol unwind (+2.5 points)

Cost

Not priced · No comparable price is published

Reviewed 28 September 2026Next review by 12 November 2026Published 13 August 2026Methodology v2026.11.1

How this page is reviewed

Reviewed means every product ranked on this page was read against its sources on or after that date; every ranked category is re-read at least every 45 days. Models research, extract and parse. A deterministic engine ranks. Every quote passes an adversarial refute pass.

Accountable for this review: Mathias Siemonsmeier, Founder.

How we review · Review calendar · Corrections log · How we make money

No provider can pay for a position in this table. The code that computes this order cannot read which links carry a referral code, and every build proves it. Every score below rebuilds from the published criteria.Ranking v2026.11.1 · 4 criteria · 5 products · same inputs, same order

How we review · 5 ranked of 5 assessed · 4 criteria · 0 sponsor weight

How we review

5ranked

5assessed

4criteria

0sponsor weight

Recommendation first, comparison only if needed.

Reviewed and rechecked on the current cycle.

Commercial relationships disclosed before clickout.

Personal comparison

Liquid Lockers ranked comparison

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

RankProviderBest fitScore

Convex Finance (cvxCRV)The category's dominant wrapper — 421.5...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: 56.29%. Th...

79score

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Convex Finance (cvxCRV) · convexfinance.com. Provider links appear once we know which country you are browsing from: ChainChoice links to providers only where it serves in full.

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.

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

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Pirex (pxCVX, Redacted) · llama.airforce. Provider links appear once we know which country you are browsing from: ChainChoice links to providers only where it serves in full.

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.

Yearn 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...

76score

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Yearn yCRV · ycrv.yearn.fi. Provider links appear once we know which country you are browsing from: ChainChoice links to providers only where it serves in full.

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.

Stake DAO (sdCRV Liquid Locker)The second-largest veCRV wrapper (118,4...

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

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Stake DAO (sdCRV Liquid Locker) · docs.stakedao.org. Provider links appear once we know which country you are browsing from: ChainChoice links to providers only where it serves in full.

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.

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...

67score

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CLever (clevCVX, AladdinDAO) · clever.aladdin.club. Provider links appear once we know which country you are browsing from: ChainChoice links to providers only where it serves in full.

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 sources

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

How you can lose money here, and what the ranking scores

Contract failure: the code holding the funds is exploited.
Scored by What happens if the base protocol changes or dies, and whether the wrapper can unwind at all · 20% (Convex Finance (cvxCRV) 6/10, Pirex (pxCVX, Redacted) 4/10, Yearn yCRV 5/10)
Scored by Contract control and dated incident record of the wrapper itself · 20% (Convex Finance (cvxCRV) 8/10, Pirex (pxCVX, Redacted) 6/10, Yearn yCRV 8/10)
Control failure: a key or vote changes the rules, freezes or mints.
Scored by Who controls the votes and the bribes, and what reaches the depositor · 25% (Convex Finance (cvxCRV) 6/10, Pirex (pxCVX, Redacted) 5/10, Yearn yCRV 6/10)
Exit failure: you cannot get out at par, on time, or with what is yours.
Scored by The exit that does not exist: measured discount and any contractual redemption · 35% (Convex Finance (cvxCRV) 4/10, Pirex (pxCVX, Redacted) 6/10, Yearn yCRV 3/10)

Not assessed by this ranking: Regulatory failure, Execution failure. A high place says nothing about these; the Methodology tab says what each means.

Audit

Infrastructure

Methodology

2026.11.1

published 10 November 2026

Providers tracked

860+

across 121 categories

Last verified

28 September 2026

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.

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 engine lead

The #1 overall and the scoring weights

Convex Finance (cvxCRV)Data checked Sep 2026

The category's dominant wrapper — 421.5m veCRV, 54.13% of all voting escrow — issuing a receipt that has no redemption at any price and cleared 56.29% below the underlying on a $100k exit at Ethereum block 26,074,948 (28 September 2026). Strongest on contract control and dated incident record of the wrapper itself (8/10): cvxCRV is minted only through the non-upgradeable CrvDepositor. The Booster fee settings and the staking wrapper answer to a 3-of-5 Safe with no modules; Convex states that time-lock delays are not required, a capped fee-setter role sits with an EOA, and a June 2026 audit covers the voting contracts. Weakest on the exit that does not exist: measured discount and any contractual redemption (4/10): cvxCRV has no redemption; Convex calls the conversion 1-way. Its deepest venue, the Curve cvxCRV/CRV pool, returns 56.29% less than NAV on a $100,000 exit and 55.13% less on $10,000 at Ethereum block 26,074,948 (28 September 2026). Published price: Re-fetched 28 September 2026 from https://docs.convexfinance.com/convexfinance/faq/fees (HTTP 200; the same text is served as Markdown at /convexfinance/faq/fees.md).

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: 56.29%. That is what a $100,000-equivalent cvxCRV position converted to on 28 September 2026 at Ethereum block 26,074,948, against 53.02% at block 25,738,905 on 12 August 2026 — 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. 421,498,943 veCRV, 54.13% of the 778,719,436 total at block 26,074,948, sits behind a receipt whose holders neither vote nor receive any vote incentive. That is a defensible trade at a 56% 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 2.51m CRV against 58.80m cvxCRV on 28 September 2026 — a 23.4:1 imbalance in which the pool IS the market; at $500,000 the discount reached 61.20%. Second, the governance stack is audited: a June 2026 audit of the on-chain voting contracts is published in the docs, and the control score is 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 28 September 2026 from https://docs.convexfinance.com/convexfinance/faq/fees (HTTP 200; the same text is served as Markdown at /convexfinance/faq/fees.md). Curve: "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." with "10-15% for cvxCRV stakers rewards", "3-6% for CVX staker rewards" and "There is an absolute fee ceiling of 20%". The page lists no deposit or withdrawal fee. On-chain cross-check (eth_call, Booster 0xF403C135812408BFbE8713b5A23a04b3D48AAE31, Ethereum block 26,074,948, 2026-09-28T09:06:35Z): lockIncentive()=1000, stakerIncentive()=450, platformFee()=200, earmarkIncentive()=50, FEE_DENOMINATOR()=10000 — worked example: (1000+450+200+50)/10000 = 17.00%, the same getters as on 12 August 2026. The page footer still reads "Last updated 2 years ago".

Weighted criteria

The exit that does not exist: measured discount and any contractual redemption35%

Who controls the votes and the bribes, and what reaches the depositor25%

What happens if the base protocol changes or dies, and whether the wrapper can unwind at all20%

Contract control and dated incident record of the wrapper itself20%

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.

Reviewed28 September 2026Method4 criteriaCategoryliquid_lockers

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