In 2025, the DeFi lending market underwent a profound governance transformation, and Gearbox Protocol was undoubtedly the most notable innovator in this wave of change. As a protocol focused on on-chain leveraged trading and credit accounts, Gearbox achieved a staggering 213% TVL growth in just six months, soaring from $105 million to $329 million. Its dedicated Lido pool even became the largest ETH curation pool in the DeFi ecosystem. Even more noteworthy, in August 2025, Gearbox became the first mainstream protocol to fully transition to a permissionless curator model through the GIP-264 proposal, opening up an entirely new direction for DeFi governance models.