# Curve voting escrow ## **Overview** [Curve](https://docs.tally.xyz/education/index-of-daos/daos-not-on-tally/curve-crv) uses an escrow and vesting mechanism to apportion voting power to token holders. Theoretically, users who commit to owning a token for a longer time period have more at stake on their investment, and could be expected to make more responsible governance decisions. Unlocked tokens have no voting power. To gain governance power, token holders must lock their tokens for a fixed period of up to 4 years. Voting power is proportional to token holdings multiplied by time locked, and decreases linearly over time as tokens get closer to unlocking. Locked tokens can be granted additional utility features beyond voting, depending on the underlying protocol. In Curve's case, locked tokens also increase rewards earned from liquidity mining. Participating in Curve DAO governance requires an account to have a balance of vote-escrowed CRV (veCRV). veCRV is a non-standard ERC20 implementation used within the Aragon DAO to determine each account's voting power. It is represented by the VotingEscrow contract deployed to the Ethereum mainnet. veCRV cannot be transferred and can only be obtained by locking CRV. The maximum lock time is four years, and a user's veCRV balance decays linearly as the remaining time until the CRV unlock decreases. *** ## **Resources** * Curve vote locking FAQ: * Curve vote locking guide: --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://docs.tally.xyz/user-guides/governance-frameworks/curve-voting-escrow.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.