Narrative collapse, trust reset, Trove kicks off this year's crypto rights protection campaign

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Trove once had a perfect narrative.

As a Perp DEX focused on collectibles and RWA, Trove claimed to be able to convert “cultural assets” with no liquidity, such as Pokémon cards, CSGO skins, and luxury watches, into tradable financial assets, providing collectors with a hedging venue.

However, within just ten days, the Trove team staged a farce through a series of jaw-dropping operations. Meanwhile, they drained the pockets of onlookers.

Bait

At the end of October last year, Trove founder @unwisecap boasted in several articles about “everything can be Perp,” and announced that Trove would be built based on HIP-3, teasing the community.

In the following month, Trove announced collaborations with Kalshi and CARDS (Collector_Crypt), and received official endorsements (“backing”) from these well-known projects’ official accounts. (P.S. As of the time of writing, Kalshi had already “cut ties” and deleted the reply under Trove’s official tweet.)

In mid-December, Trove announced it had spent over $20 million to acquire 500,000 HYPE tokens to meet HIP-3 integration requirements. Soon after, a testnet points program was launched, and platform trading volume exceeded $1 million within two weeks. Everything was progressing as expected. Until…

Insider Trading Textbook

On January 6, Trove suddenly announced an ICO with a $20 million FDV, using an “over-raising” model for the public sale, offering priority allocation to token holders. Along with a wave of KOLs wearing Trove badges promoting the project, Trove successfully raised $11.5 million, oversubscribed by 4.6 times.

Less than two hours before the ICO ended, the prediction market on Polymarket for “Trove ICO total fundraising amount exceeds $20 million” showed the probability approaching zero.

The show then began. The team suddenly broke the rules, announcing that to ensure fair distribution, the ICO period would be extended by 5 days. The “YES” option on Polymarket instantly soared from the bottom to nearly 60%. Insider funds clearly moved ahead, as on-chain data showed specific wallets placed precise bets before the announcement and quickly exited after the price surged.

Perhaps believing that the liquidity of the prediction market was insufficient to satisfy their appetite, amid community doubts, the Trove team took a step back and staged a “fire to the states” drama: announcing the withdrawal of the extension and ending the ICO as originally planned.

Following this announcement, the corresponding market was directly reset to zero and settled. Polymarket data showed that certain wallets had placed precise bets before the news was announced and continued to profit from the subsequent reversal.

Big Exit

On January 17, Trove suddenly announced abandoning Hyperliquid and shifting to issuing tokens on Solana. For a project that had been raising funds under the banner of the Hyperliquid ecosystem, this was equivalent to pulling the rug from under itself.

Meanwhile, on-chain detective MLM caught Trove’s team using timed sell-off features, attempting to sell half of their HYPE tokens within 40 minutes.

Choosing to sell tokens worth millions over a weekend with the worst liquidity in just 40 minutes, the Trove team was truly panicked.

In response to doubts, Trove’s explanation seemed weak: “Investors felt nervous and decided to withdraw.” But on-chain transaction records showed these sell-offs occurred while the team publicly denied “we are selling tokens.”

This inconsistency completely shattered the community’s trust. As trust collapsed, more dark secrets were uncovered.

Renowned on-chain detective ZachXBT revealed that the Trove team paid @TJRTrades up to $45,000 in marketing fees, directly transferred to the KOL’s gambling site deposit address.

KOL @hrithikk stated that the Trove team not only provided generous marketing fees to the KOL but also privately offered an ICO quota valued at as low as $8.5 million, with discounts of up to 60%, along with huge airdrop rewards. Currently, Trove is still selling shares at low prices and has asked him more than five times whether he could invest in Trove.

Trove will have its TGE at 1:00 AM Beijing time on January 20. Polymarket’s market data indicates that, based on pre-sale valuation, there is a 90% chance that the TROVE token will fail to maintain its peg.

The good news is that this farce may not end with a simple “Soft Rug.” Trove once claimed on its official website to follow EU MiCA regulations. Now, facing false advertising and potential fraud accusations, angry investors have every reason to initiate civil litigation under MiCA provisions.

The bad news is that chat screenshots leaked by KOLs show that team members seem to be from Iran.

Hyperliquid’s ecosystem is known for its strong community cohesion, but the widespread loss of trust has also provided fertile ground for scammers.