Grvt

Summary: six findings

• Product. A hybrid exchange built as a ZKsync Validium chain, perpetuals first. Mainnet alpha launched on 20 Dec 2024 (L2BEAT).
• Backers. $19M Series A in Sep 2025, co-led by ZKsync and Further Ventures, with EigenCloud and 500 Global. About $14.3M was raised earlier, plus a $2.2M private token sale in March 2024 (The Block).
• Token. GRVT launched on 30 Jul 2026 with a fixed supply of 1B. 61.1% is community, 19.9% private investors, 19.0% team and core contributors. Investors and team have a 12-month cliff and 36-month linear vesting (tokenomics.com).
• On-chain. Ethereum: verified, non-proxy contract with no mint or owner function, max total supply 1,000,000,000 GRVT, 1,271 holders. BNB Chain: a wrapped copy with 14,272,512.67 GRVT and 29,498 holders. Its owner is the Wormhole token bridge, which holds 14,272,513.70 GRVT locked on Ethereum (Etherscan, BscScan, 16 Oct).
• Market. About $0.219 per token (16 Oct), fully diluted value about $219M. Circulating market cap is $25.0M (114.31M tokens). Counting all unlocked tokens (178.2M) it is $39.0M. Fully diluted value is 8.7× the first and 5.6× the second (tokenomics.com, CoinMarketCap).
• Custody. L2BEAT’s assessment lists external data availability as critical, a single operator, and no way to force an exit. Withdrawals can be censored by the operator (L2BEAT).

We found no sign of wrongdoing. What we have is structural risk and missing checks. The verdict is provisional until Grvt’s own documents confirm the token addresses.

In favour, and of concern

Both lists use only facts that appear in this review, with the section where each is shown.

In favour

• Named backers: a $19M Series A co-led by ZKsync and Further Ventures (Summary, Team and backers).
• The Ethereum token contract is verified and not upgradeable, has no mint or owner function, and its supply equals the stated 1B cap (On-chain).
• The BNB Chain copy is backed by locked tokens: 14,272,513.70 GRVT locked on Ethereum against 14,272,512.67 issued (On-chain).
• A published vesting schedule: investors and team have a 12-month cliff and 36-month linear vesting, so their unlocks begin around Jul 2027 (Token).
• Of 8 logged promises, 3 were met and none was missed; the other 5 cannot be checked from public sources (Promises).
• The token trades on at least six exchanges (Required checks), and we found no sign of wrongdoing.

Of concern

• Custody: L2BEAT lists external data availability as critical, a single operator and no way to force an exit. Rated high (Custody).
• No legal entity is named, and licence claims conflict with the company’s own disclaimer. Rated high (Risk register).
• We found no audit report for Grvt’s contracts in the sources we read (Entry checks).
• Only 11.4% of supply circulates, and fully diluted value is 8.7 times the circulating market cap (Token and market).
• The top five Ethereum addresses hold 88.09% of supply, and we have not read the code behind the investor and team holdings (Risk register).
• The BNB Chain token depends on the Wormhole bridge and on the tokens locked on Ethereum (Risk register).
• Grvt’s own documents have not yet been matched with the token addresses, and the project did not reply to our nine questions (Questions).

Where we stand: provisional. A project must pass all four required checks to go to a NOTR vote; Grvt has passed 3 and 1 is partial, so it cannot go to a vote yet. The list above shows what would move it either way.

What would change our view

• Towards “passed”: Grvt’s own documents list both token addresses, the vesting contracts behind the 199M and 190M holders cannot be changed by one key, a published audit, and a named legal entity.
• Towards “did not pass”: the addresses in Grvt’s documents differ from these, the vesting contracts can be changed by one key, or the locked amount on Ethereum falls below the BNB Chain supply.

Business and product

Grvt describes itself as a self-custodial trading and investment platform. Perpetual futures came first; spot and options were announced as additions. Strategies (vaults) are run by third-party providers, according to the company’s own press release.

These figures grew during a points programme (Season 2, closed 30 Jun 2026). We cannot separate real use from activity driven by incentives.

Team, backers and legal status

Token and market

Aggregator pages

Screenshots taken on 16 Oct 2026. They explain why two sources gave different supply figures.

What the explorers show

Screenshots taken on 16 Oct 2026 from the public explorers. Each can be re-checked through the link in its caption. Red outlines mark the figures we use. Swipe a screenshot sideways to see all of it.

• Ethereum. Max total supply is 1,000,000,000 GRVT, equal to the stated cap. 1,271 holders. The contract is GRVTToken: “Source Code Verified, Exact Match”, not a proxy, built on OpenZeppelin ERC-20 with burn and permit extensions. A comment in its source says it is an immutable ERC-20 with a hard-capped supply of 1,000,000,000 GRVT, minted once at deployment to a single recipient. The Write Contract tab lists only six functions: approve, burn, burnFrom, permit, transfer and transferFrom. There is no mint, owner, pause or upgrade function, so supply cannot be raised through this contract. The explorer shows a warning icon beside compiler v0.8.28, and the licence field reads “-NA-” while the code header says MIT.
• BNB Chain. A separate contract with max total supply 14,272,512.67 GRVT (1.43% of 1B) and 29,498 holders. The explorer shows no price for it. The contract’s native contract is the Ethereum GRVT token, so this is a wrapped copy. The Wormhole token bridge holds 14,272,513.7021 GRVT on Ethereum (holders tab), 1.03 GRVT more than the 14,272,512.6688 issued on BNB Chain, so the copy is backed. The two screenshots were taken minutes apart.
• BNB contract type. A proxy named BridgeToken. BscScan labels the source a “Similar Match”: the code matches the verified source of another contract (0x69fe6904…Bc522F22c), not a verification submitted for this address. The source carries a 2021 date, so it is an older generic template. The Write as Proxy tab lists approve, burn(account, amount), decreaseAllowance, increaseAllowance, initialize, mint(account, amount), permit, transfer, transferFrom and updateDetails. So the contract has mint, burn and metadata-update functions, and an owner. BscScan labels that owner address “Wormhole: Token Bridge” (a contract created by “Wormhole: Deployer 10” about five years ago), so mint and burn belong to the bridge, not to a Grvt key. We have not read who can upgrade the BNB Chain proxy.
• BNB holders. The top 5 wallets hold 83.92% of that contract’s supply, the top 10 hold 89.16%, the top 100 hold 97.27%. 24,914 of 29,498 holders (84.46%) together hold 0.03%. The explorer does not name the large wallets. They may be a bridge, an exchange or a treasury; this is not a finding about intent.
• Ethereum holders. The top five addresses hold 88.09% of supply: 261,000,000 (26.10%), 199,000,000 (19.90%), 190,000,000 (19.00%), 171,787,672 (17.18%) and 59,151,271 (5.92%). The 199M and 190M balances equal the private-investor (19.9%) and team (19.0%) allocations in the tokenomics. The explorer shows a contract icon beside them; we have not opened them. Rank 7 is “Wormhole: Token Bridge”; ranks 9 and 10 are labelled OKX exchange wallets.
• Market data on Etherscan. Price $0.218145; on-chain market cap $218.1M (total supply × price); circulating-supply market cap $24.9M (provider data).

Values read from the BNB Chain contract

Values copied as text from the Read as Proxy tab by NOTR’s author on 16 Oct 2026.

Not yet seen: Grvt’s own documents listing the token addresses, the vesting contracts behind the 199M and 190M holders, and who can upgrade the BNB Chain proxy.

Custody and technical risk

L2BEAT classifies Grvt as “Other”, not as a rollup, because it has no data availability bridge. Below is what its page lists. This is a preview build of the L2BEAT site; we will re-check the production page before publishing.

Source: L2BEAT (preview build). We did not independently verify these findings.

Promises and deadlines

Grvt keeps a better record than the project we reviewed first, but 5 of 8 entries cannot be checked from the sources we have. That reflects what we could access, not a finding about Grvt.

NOTR entry-gate checks

A project must pass all four required checks to go to a NOTR vote. So far: 3 passed, 1 partial. The partial check needs Grvt’s own documents, which we could not open from our environment.

Risk register

Data conflicts we found

Questions for the projectNo reply as of 20 Oct

• Which legal entity operates Grvt, and which licences does it hold today?
• Who can upgrade the BNB Chain GRVT proxy: Grvt or the Wormhole bridge?
• Where can BNB Chain holders trade the wrapped GRVT, and why does BscScan show no price for it?
• Who controls the five largest BNB Chain wallets, which hold 83.9% of that contract’s supply?
• Which contracts hold the 261M, 199M, 190M and 171.8M GRVT, who can change their unlock rules, and are they listed in Grvt’s documents?
• Why is there no data availability bridge, and when will users get a forced-exit path?
• Unlocked supply is 178.21M GRVT but circulating supply is 114.31M. Which wallets hold the roughly 64M unlocked tokens that are not circulating?
• Has an independent audit of the token and exchange contracts been published?
• What is the status of spot trading, the Aave integration and the fixed-yield product, with dates?

We are waiting for the project’s answers to these questions, sent by direct message on X on 16 Oct 2026. Reply deadline: 23 Oct 2026 (7 days). No reply as of 20 Oct 2026. The project’s X account, per its CoinMarketCap listing, is @grvt_io. Replies will be published next to this review, unedited.

Method, selection and limits

Why this project. It launched its token within the last three months, it is not a top asset, it made dated public promises we can track, and its token terms are documented. We did not pick it for any view on price.

What we did:

• Read press coverage, aggregator pages and the L2BEAT assessment, and logged each promise with its date.
• Compared sources against each other and listed every conflict.
• Read the explorer pages for both token contracts: supply, holders, the contract tab on each chain, the Write Contract tab on Ethereum, the Read as Proxy and Write as Proxy tabs on BNB Chain, the owner address page and the Ethereum holders tab.
• Sent nine questions to the project and are waiting for its answers.

What we did not do:

• Read the vesting contracts that hold 199M and 190M GRVT, the upgrade authority of the BNB Chain proxy, or mint events.
• Read Grvt’s own website, docs or audit reports.
• Run a sell test.

Source grades: A is on-chain data read from a block explorer. B is independent media or a data site. C is a company release, aggregator, wiki or AI-generated page. Grade A so far covers only the explorer pages above; explorer pages change over time, so each figure is dated. Market data as of 15–16 Oct 2026.

Disclosure: the author holds no position in GRVT. The project did not pay NOTR and had no influence on the text.

Updates

• 16 Oct 2026: draft prepared from public sources.
• 16 Oct 2026: added explorer data for both token contracts (Etherscan token page; BscScan token page, holders and contract tab). Status stays provisional: contract roles are not read yet.
• 16 Oct 2026: added the Ethereum contract tab: verified, not a proxy, and its source describes a hard-capped 1B supply minted once. Status stays provisional until the mint and admin functions are read.
• 16 Oct 2026: added the Ethereum Write Contract tab (no mint, owner or upgrade function) and the first part of the BNB Chain Read as Proxy tab. Ethereum side is clean on the mint and admin check; BNB Chain is still open.
• 16 Oct 2026: added the BNB Chain Read as Proxy values and Write as Proxy tab. The BNB Chain contract is a wrapped copy of the Ethereum token with mint and burn functions and an owner that is not yet identified. Status stays provisional.
• 16 Oct 2026: identified the owner of the BNB Chain contract (BscScan label: Wormhole: Token Bridge) and confirmed that the bridge holds 14,272,513.70 GRVT on Ethereum against 14,272,512.67 issued on BNB Chain. The mint and admin check now passes. Status stays provisional until Grvt’s own documents confirm the addresses.
• 16 Oct 2026: added CoinMarketCap and tokenomics.com screenshots. The supply conflict is resolved: 114.31M is circulating and 178.21M is unlocked. The links check is now partial: the project’s CoinMarketCap links agree with Etherscan.
• 16 Oct 2026: nine questions sent to the project by direct message on X, with a public post from @notrscore tagging @grvt_io. We are waiting for the answers. Reply deadline: 23 Oct 2026 (7 days).
• 20 Oct 2026: published without the project’s answers. No reply 4 days after the questions. The window stays open until 23 Oct 2026; any answer will be added here, unedited, with its date. The status stays provisional until then.
• 23 Oct 2026: the reply window closed. We received no reply from the project. If it answers later, the answer will be added here, unedited, with its date. The status stays provisional because the addresses are not yet matched with Grvt’s own documents.
• 23 Oct 2026: added the “In favour, and of concern” lists and “Where we stand” to the summary. They restate facts already in this review; no new data was added.
• 23 Oct 2026: added an “In plain words” box and a glossary of terms. They explain the review in simpler language; no facts or findings changed.

Sources

• Etherscan: GRVT token page, contract, Write Contract and holders tabs, 16 Oct 2026 (A)
• BscScan: GRVT token page, holders, contract, Read as Proxy and Write as Proxy tabs, and the owner address page, 16 Oct 2026 (A)
• The Block: Grvt raises $19M Series A, 18 Sep 2025 (B)
• The Block: Grvt targets post-June token launch, 12 Mar 2026 (B)
• L2BEAT: Grvt risk assessment (preview build) (B)
• CoinDesk: GRVT price page, 15 Oct 2026 (B)
• tokenomics.com: GRVT allocation and unlocks, screenshot 16 Oct 2026 (C)
• CoinMarketCap: GRVT page, screenshot 16 Oct 2026 (C, aggregator)
• Interactive Crypto: GRVT falls 36% after TGE, 30 Jul 2026 (C)
• KuCoin News (Odaily): TGE details, airdrop claims (C)
• PR Newswire: Grvt press release, 19 Sep 2025 (C, company)
• El Dorado: Grvt regulated DEX launch (C, promotional)
• IQ.wiki: Hong Gyu Yea (C, wiki)
• crypto.jobs: Grvt and Aave, 27 Feb 2026 (C)
• MEXC News: Grvt Season 2 metrics (C)
• Invezz via TradingView: Grvt token launch timeline (B)
• CoinMarketCap AI: GRVT price analysis (C, AI-generated)