The opening price is expected to drop by 75%, perhaps the first project to be rug pulled this year.

By: blockbeats|2026/01/19 11:00:01
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Trove once had a perfect narrative.

As a Perp DEX focused on collectibles and RWAs, Trove claimed to be able to transform illiquid "cultural assets," such as Pokémon cards, CSGO skins, and luxury watches, into tradable financial assets, providing collectors with a hedging venue.

However, in just ten days, the Trove team staged a farce through a series of jaw-dropping maneuvers. Along the way, they also emptied the pockets of onlookers.

Bait

In late October last year, Trove founder @unwisecap extolled the virtues of "Perp All Things" in several articles and announced that Trove would be built on HIP-3, teasing the community.

Over the following month, Trove successively announced partnerships with Kalshi and CARDS (Collector_Crypt), receiving official endorsement replies from both well-known projects (P.S. As of the time of writing, Kalshi has already completed a "severance" and deleted the reply under Trove's official tweet)

The opening price is expected to drop by 75%, perhaps the first project to be rug pulled this year.

In mid-December, Trove announced a $20+ million acquisition of 500,000 HYPE tokens to meet HIP-3 integration requirements. This was followed by the launch of a testnet incentive plan, with platform trading volume surpassing $1 million within two weeks, everything was progressing as expected. Until...

Insider Trading Playbook

On January 6, Trove suddenly announced a $20 million FDV ICO, with the public sale adopting an "oversubscribed" model, offering priority allocation to token holders. Alongside a group of KOLs wearing the Trove badge engaging in concentrated promotion, Trove successfully raised $11.5 million, 4.6 times oversubscribed.

With less than two hours left until the ICO deadline, the Polymarket market on "Trove ICO Total Raise> $20M" had almost zero probability.

The climax then began. The team suddenly broke the rules, announcing a 5-day extension of the ICO to ensure fair distribution. The "YES" option on Polymarket instantly skyrocketed from the bottom to nearly 60%. Insider funds clearly acted swiftly; on-chain data showed that specific wallets precociously placed bets before the announcement and swiftly exited after the price surge.

Perhaps thinking that the liquidity of the prediction market was not enough to satisfy their appetite, amid community skepticism, the Trove team, in a surprising turn of events, staged a drama akin to "The Empty City Strategy": announcing a withdrawal of the extension decision and ending the ICO as originally planned.

Along with this announcement, the corresponding market immediately went to zero and settled. Polymarket data shows that some related wallets placed accurate bets before the news was made public and continued to profit in the subsequent reversal.

The Great Retreat

On January 17, Trove suddenly announced abandoning Hyperliquid and instead issuing tokens on Solana. For a project that had been fundraising under the banner of the Hyperliquid ecosystem, this was nothing short of a bolt from the blue.

At the same time, on-chain sleuths detected Trove's team utilizing a timed sell-off function, attempting to sell off half of their HYPE token holdings in 40 minutes.

Choosing to sell millions of dollars worth of tokens in 40 minutes during the weekend with the lowest liquidity, the Trove team was undeniably in a hurry.

Faced with questioning, the Trove team's explanation seemed feeble: "Investors were feeling nervous and decided to exit." However, on-chain transaction records show that these sell-off actions were carried out while the team was publicly denying "we are selling coins."

This stark inconsistency between words and actions completely shattered the community's trust threshold. As trust crumbled, more dark secrets were revealed.

Well-known on-chain detective ZachXBT revealed that the Trove team paid a marketing fee of up to $45,000 to @TJRTrades, directly deposited into this KOL's gambling website recharge address.

KOL @hrithikk stated that the Trove team not only provided generous marketing fees to KOLs but also privately offered ICO allocations with valuations as low as $8.5 million, at a discount of up to 60%, along with substantial airdrop rewards. Currently, Trove is still selling shares at a low price and has approached him over 5 times asking if he would invest in Trove.

Trove will conduct the TGE at 1:00 AM on January 20 Beijing time. Polymarket's market data shows that, based on the presale valuation, there is a 90% probability that the TROVE token will break the peg.

The good news is that this farce may not end with a simple "Soft Rug." Trove had previously claimed on its website to comply with the EU's MiCA regulation. Now, faced with false advertising and potential fraud allegations, outraged investors would be entirely justified in pursuing civil litigation under MiCA provisions.

The bad news is that chat screenshots disclosed by a KOL show that team members appear to be from Iran.

The Hyperliquid ecosystem is known for its strong community cohesion, but the atmosphere of trust has also provided fertile ground for scammers.

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