Author: Huma, Crypto KOL

Translation: Felix, PANews

DWF Labs has recently been in hot controversy. During the Web3 Connect forum held at Token 2049, DWF Labs, GSR, Wintermute, and OKX, four market makers, discussed together. In the event photo shared by market maker GSR, the photo of DWF Labs co-founder Andrei Grachev was removed.

The GSR account related to the incident on X platform stated that DWF Labs absolutely had no qualifications to join the group discussion, and coexisting with DWF Labs was an insult to GSR, Wintermute, and OKX. Wintermute CEO Evgeny Gaevoy liked the post.

In response, DWF Labs co-founder Andrei Grachev stated, "I never thought you would be so afraid of us. Yes, we are stronger than you in technology, trading, and business expansion. You actually started cooperating with competitors and complained like a child, defaming us. Well, our market-making service is excellent, and we will devour your market share like eating a cake, while you are powerless. You will soon see your resume in my inbox."

This is not the first time DWF Labs has "stirred up trouble." Previously, The Block revealed that DWF Labs' multimillion-dollar investment in crypto startups should not be called "investment" and is more suitable to be considered as over-the-counter trading. DWF Labs' composite operation mode of "investment + market-making" has sparked heated discussions in the crypto community. DWF believes that Wintermute instructed The Block to smear them, as Wintermute's founder and CEO, Evgeny Gaevoy, is a board member and shareholder of The Block.

Recently, crypto KOL Huma reviewed the history of DWF Labs and Andrei Grachev, seemingly unveiling a "veil of shame."

Unveiling DWF Labs

DWF Labs, unknown in the crypto field a year ago, is now at the center of the crypto stage. They describe themselves as a market-making and investment company. Where did DWF Labs come from? Who are the founder Andrei Grachev and the team members? In the following text, we hope to present all the information collected objectively.

Andrei Grachev's Background

Andrei Grachev appeared in the Russian crypto community around 2017. Before that, he worked in the logistics industry far from the tech field. He was the founder of several logistics companies, all of which have now closed. In the crypto community, he introduced himself as a successful trader and partner of Crypsis Blockchain Holding.

Additionally, Grachev served as the Vice President of RACIB around 2018. RACIB is a non-profit organization closely related to a state-owned bank called VEB (Vnesheconombank), and their main goal is to promote crypto regulation in Russia. In 2019, Grachev became the head of Huobi Russia. His partner at RACIB was Vladimir Demin, who later became the head of Huobi Russia after Grachev. Vladimir Demin is also a senior manager at VEB Ventures, a risk fund of a major state-owned bank in Russia. Demin and Grachev later co-founded VRM.trade (the predecessor of DWF Labs).

Grachev also led a project called Export.online, which had suspicious aspects. The project was originally intended to launch 1C0 but had to be abandoned due to the bear market in 2018. Some project investors reported that Grachev misappropriated approximately $157,000 in investments. According to LinkedIn, Andrei Grachev was the CEO of the organization, and Vladimir Perov was the CTO. Vladimir Perov now also works at DWF Labs.

Additionally, according to the aforementioned forklog article, the owner of a company called DAS Index accused Grachev of not repaying his $10,000 debt in 2019, by which time Grachev had already become the head of Huobi Russia's branch.

VRM.trade

Demin and Grachev jointly created a high-frequency trading company called VRM.trade. It is currently unclear what they are doing and how large their scale is. They claim to have a daily trading volume of $10-20 billion. Here is Grachev's AMA about VRM and their self-report at the time here.

VRM's team members (source same as above):

Zac Zou now also works at DWF Labs. Additionally, Zac Zou is the founder of HTR Trade. VRM and LD Capital jointly invested in HTR Trade. The VRM team also created their own OTC platform called Black Ocean.

Below is the list of VRM's partners, including LD Capital, YGG, and AKG Ventures, three Chinese-backed investment institutions.

FLY (Franklin Token)

FLY is the native token of the Black Ocean exchange. The whitepaper can be found here. According to CoinGecko data, the price of FLY has been declining from the beginning and now has a market value of $350,000.

Interestingly, their Twitter and Medium accounts still seem to be "active":

DWF Labs

So, where did DWF Labs suddenly come from? DWF is a rebranding of VRM. The last tweet from VRM Trade was on May 31, 2022, and the DWF Labs domain was registered on May 30, 2022. Is there a specific reason for the rebranding? Still unknown.

On March 20, 2023, DWF Labs sent $7.5 million USDT to a wallet, which then transferred $163,000 to a wallet labeled "AyeletNoff" on OpenSea. Ayelet Noff is the founder and CEO of the PR agency SlicedBrand: Was this money intended to garner more media attention for DWF, or to help market the projects DWF has invested in? This is still up for debate.

Conclusion

The investigation into the history of DWF Labs ends here. The author does not form any opinions on these matters, and only aims to objectively provide this information.

Related reading: Exclusive Interview with DWF Labs: We are not "market makers," but liquidity providers

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