In 2025, the DeFi lending market underwent a profound governance revolution, with Gearbox Protocol undoubtedly standing out as the most eye-catching innovator in this transformation. As a protocol focused on on-chain leveraged trading and credit accounts, Gearbox achieved an astonishing 213% TVL growth within just six months, soaring from $105 million to $329 million, with its dedicated Lido pool becoming the largest ETH curation pool in the DeFi ecosystem. Even more noteworthy, in August 2025, Gearbox passed the GIP-264 proposal, becoming the first mainstream protocol to fully transition to a permissionless curator model, opening up a brand-new exploration direction for DeFi governance models.

Gearbox’s Core Innovation: Credit Accounts and Composable Leverage

Since its launch in 2021, Gearbox Protocol has been dedicated to providing composable leveraged trading infrastructure for DeFi users. Its core innovation lies in its unique “credit account” mechanism—users do not need to borrow assets directly to their wallets but instead conduct leveraged operations within protocol-controlled smart contract accounts. These accounts can interact seamlessly with major DeFi protocols like Uniswap, Curve, and Lido, while assets remain under protocol supervision, with real-time collateral ratio monitoring and automatic liquidation mechanisms effectively controlling risk.

This design allows liquidity providers to safely earn lending interest, while traders can use up to 10x leverage for strategic operations, achieving a perfect balance of security and flexibility. From a technical architecture perspective, Gearbox adopts a modular design, supporting interactions with various DeFi protocols through an adapter system, offering strong scalability. When support for a new DeFi protocol is needed, only the corresponding adapter needs to be developed, without modifying the core contracts, laying a solid foundation for rapid protocol iteration.

Permissionless Model: A Successful Efficiency Revolution

In March 2025, Gearbox launched its revolutionary permissionless model, delegating market creation and risk management authority from the DAO to professional curators. This innovation significantly improved market response speed while maintaining protocol-level security. Curators can independently decide which asset pairs to create, set risk parameters, and choose which chains to deploy on, while taking on first-loss responsibility through staking mechanisms to ensure aligned interests. All operations are transparently on-chain, achieving an organic combination of efficiency and security.

The results of this model were immediate. In just three months, Gearbox launched 42 new markets across 5 networks, compared to 41 markets launched in all of 2024. The average market launch cycle shortened from the traditional 3 weeks to just 5 days, demonstrating astonishing execution efficiency. Even more importantly, the permissionless model successfully attracted top institutional curators like Maven11 Capital, Invariant Group, and Re7. These five curators manage assets totaling over $1.5 billion, with four ranking among the top 15 DeFi curators, fully showcasing institutional-level professionalism and market recognition.

Explosive Growth: Market Validation Behind the Numbers

Gearbox’s market performance fully validates the success of the permissionless model. From March to August 2025, the protocol’s TVL grew by 213%, far outpacing mainstream protocols during the same period. The dedicated Lido pool was particularly outstanding, growing from $72 million to $296 million, becoming the largest ETH curation pool in the entire DeFi ecosystem. This pool allows users to use stETH as collateral for leveraged operations, earning Lido’s staking rewards while amplifying returns through leverage, precisely meeting the strong market demand for yield-enhancing tools.

The multi-chain expansion strategy also delivered remarkable results. Gearbox activated deployment capabilities on 28 EVM chains and operated on 9 major chains, successfully capturing early liquidity opportunities on emerging Layer 2s. On the Plasma chain, the pool curated by Invariant Group attracted over $80 million in TVL, making it one of the largest lending protocols on that chain. On the Etherlink chain, the pool curated by Re7 accumulated more than $17 million in funds. This ability to rapidly respond to emerging markets has allowed Gearbox to gain a favorable position in fierce competition, capturing over $100 million in incremental TVL through multi-chain deployments.

Full Transition: GIP-264 Proposal Opens a New Chapter

The GIP-264 proposal, passed in August 2025, marked a major milestone in Gearbox’s development. This proposal decided to fully transition to the permissionless model, making Gearbox the first mainstream DeFi protocol to comprehensively adopt curator governance. This decision was based on robust market validation—the permissionless pools accounted for over 70% of total TVL and grew much faster than traditional DAO-governed pools. To ensure a smooth transition, the protocol introduced two new institutional-grade curators, Maven11 and KPK, further strengthening the professionalism and diversity of the curator ecosystem.

This “decentralized protocol, professionalized market” layered governance model retains the openness and security of the protocol layer while handing specific market operational decisions to more professional and agile teams. Core protocol parameters such as liquidation thresholds, oracle selection, and security module design remain under DAO control, ensuring the decentralized nature of the infrastructure. Meanwhile, curators at the market layer can rapidly respond to market needs, providing a variety of risk-return options to meet the needs of both conservative institutions and aggressive traders. This innovative model offers entirely new possibilities for DeFi governance and lays a solid foundation for the protocol’s long-term development.

Through technological innovation, governance reform, and rapid execution, Gearbox Protocol is redefining what’s possible for DeFi leveraged lending. From the credit account mechanism to the permissionless curator model, from 213% TVL growth in six months to becoming the first mainstream protocol to fully transition, every step of Gearbox’s exploration is providing valuable experience and inspiration for the entire industry. As the curator ecosystem continues to mature and multi-chain deployment deepens, Gearbox is becoming an unignorable force of innovation in the DeFi lending sector.