TL;DR
- Trove Markets will retain $9,397,403 from an ICO designed for Hyperliquid after announcing a full technical pivot to the Solana network days before the TGE.
- The token debuted with an expected market capitalization of $20 million, fell more than 95% within minutes, and is now trading at $0.0007272.
- The ICO raised more than $11.5 million; Trove refunded $2,440,316, will return an additional $100,000, and will allocate the remaining funds to DEX development on Solana.
Trove Markets confirmed it will retain $9,397,403 of the funds raised in its ICO, despite changing the project’s technical direction days before the token launch. The public sale had been presented as a mechanism to finance the development of a decentralized perpetual futures exchange built on Hyperliquid’s infrastructure. However, shortly before the TGE, the team announced a complete pivot to Solana.
The TROVE token began trading with an expected market capitalization of around $20 million. Minutes after trading started, the price dropped by more than 95%, according to DEXScreener data, reducing the valuation to below $2 million. After that initial collapse, the token showed partial stabilization. At the time of this report, TROVE is trading at $0.0007272, up 4% over the past 24 hours. Trading volume followed the rebound and exceeds $2.5 million per day.
Total ICO proceeds surpassed $11.5 million, well above the initial $2.5 million target. Following the network switch, Trove said it had already refunded $2,440,316 as part of a participant cleanup process and will automatically refund another $100,000. The remaining funds were allocated to product development on Solana, including technical team salaries, frontend and backend infrastructure, operating costs, legal services, advisory fees, and marketing.
The decision to abandon Hyperliquid was linked to the exit of a key liquidity partner, which had supported that deployment through a position of roughly 500,000 HYPE tokens. Without that backing, the team chose to discard that architecture and rebuild the perpetual DEX from scratch on Solana, including trading systems, risk management, and integrations.
Bubblemap Flags Irregularities in Trove’s Distribution
The decision triggered immediate reactions among ICO participants. On social media, several users questioned the reuse of funds raised for a technical design different from the one originally announced. Some called for full refunds, while others mentioned potential legal action.
An on-chain analysis shared by Bubblemap added another dimension to the situation. The data shows that a single entity controls nearly 12% of the TROVE supply, spread across dozens of wallets recently funded from the same exchange and created within tightly clustered time windows. The firm stated it found no direct evidence linking those addresses to the project’s team.
The ICO process had already shown earlier inconsistencies, including contradictory announcements regarding fundraising extensions and subsequent adjustments to the sale terms. The TGE ultimately took place on Solana, with the FDV set at $20,000,000 and token distribution carried out through airdrops and manual claims
