Trove Shocks Investors: $9.4M ICO Funds Retained, Token Crashes 95% After Solana Pivot

Trove Markets has come under intense scrutiny after confirming it will retain roughly $9.4 million from a token sale that was originally marketed around a planned integration with Hyperliquid, despite pivoting its perps DEX to Solana just days before its token launch.

This led its newly launched TROVE token to collapse by more than 95% minutes after trading began.

TROVE launched with an expected market capitalization of about $20 million, but within ten minutes of going live, the token plunged to around $0.0008, cutting its valuation to under $2 million, as shown by DEXScreener data.

At the time of writing, TROVE is trading near $0.000703, with a market cap of roughly $703,000.

The sudden drop followed growing frustration from contributors who said the project had changed direction too late in the fundraising process.

Liquidity Exit Triggers Trove’s Shift From Hyperliquid to Solana

Trove had raised more than $11.5 million through a public token sale tied to building a perpetual decentralized exchange using Hyperliquid’s infrastructure.

Just days before the token generation event, however, the team announced it would pivot to Solana instead.

That shift immediately raised questions about whether funds collected for the Hyperliquid build should be returned.

Instead, Trove said it would retain $9,397,403 to continue development on Solana, describing the move as the only viable way to keep the product alive.

One of Trove’s builders, known as Unwise, attributed the abrupt pivot to the withdrawal of a key liquidity partner, who had previously supported the Hyperliquid path with a position of roughly 500,000 HYPE tokens.

With that support gone, the team said it no longer made sense to continue building on Hyperliquid rails and opted to rebuild the perps exchange on Solana from scratch.

Trove said the decision fundamentally changed its constraints and forced a reset rather than pushing forward with what it described as an uncertain setup.

Trove acknowledged on X that its handling of the ICO and subsequent decisions caused confusion, frustration, and a breakdown of trust.

Trove said it had already refunded about $2.44 million as part of cleaning up participation and protecting distribution integrity, with an additional $100,000 slated to be refunded automatically to ICO participants.

The remaining funds, it said, have been spent or earmarked for developer salaries, frontend and backend infrastructure, a chief technology officer, advisory services, marketing, and operating costs.

Trove Under Pressure as Community Questions Fundraising Conduct

Despite those explanations, critics have continued to question the handling of the raise.

On X, some users accused the project of breaking fundraising expectations, arguing that money raised to build on Hyperliquid should not be repurposed after a last-minute pivot.

Others went further, calling for refunds, threatening legal action, or alleging the situation could result in lawsuits.

Additional on-chain analysis added to the controversy with data shared by Bubblemap showed that a single entity appeared to control about 12% of the TROVE supply, spread across dozens of fresh wallets funded through the same exchange and clustered in tight time windows.

Bubblemap said it had found no evidence directly linking those wallets to the Trove team but noted that the pattern raised open questions about presale behavior.

The turmoil follows an already chaotic ICO process earlier in January.

Trove initially announced the sale had crossed $11.5 million, far above its $2.5 million target, and promised pro-rata refunds. It then briefly announced a five-day extension, only to reverse that decision hours later, citing a mistake.