On January 19, 2026, at 24:00 (UTC+8), the perpetual contract DEX project Trove Markets announced the abandonment of its original plan to launch on Hyperliquid, opting instead to "rebuild" on Solana. This decision quickly ignited community sentiment. Prior to this, the project had raised approximately $11.5 million through an ICO (according to dual sources), with the white paper narrative centered around "deploying on Hyperliquid, leveraging its liquidity and infrastructure." The current adjustment in direction has created a significant gap between early expectations and reality, becoming the core of the controversy. Additionally, according to dual sources, liquidity partners withdrew about 500,000 HYPE positions amid the turmoil, and the token generation event (TGE) has been postponed to January 19 at 24:00 (UTC+8) (this specific time is still pending verification). The strategic pivot after fundraising, the withdrawal of liquidity, and the disordered TGE rhythm together constitute a typical case of a trust crisis in Web3: the project team, partners, and investors are on the same narrative chain but provide entirely different interpretations of "risk" and "commitment."
The Cost of a Sudden Turn After Fundraising
In Trove's early narrative, Hyperliquid was the cornerstone of the entire product roadmap: the white paper and market promotion revolved around "building a differentiated perpetual contract experience based on the Hyperliquid ecosystem, leveraging its matching and liquidity network," and the imaginative space during fundraising was established on this premise. Now, the project has officially chosen to abandon the launch on Hyperliquid and instead announced a reconstruction on the Solana chain, which is not only a migration of the tech stack but also a substantial rewriting of the original commitments after fundraising. The project team's explanation for this shift focuses on the logic that "the growth of Solana's TVL makes it a more reasonable choice" (according to dual sources quoting the official statement), extending reasons to include the continuous rise in total locked value in the Solana ecosystem, improved on-chain performance, increased developer and user activity, and richer derivative narrative opportunities. While these macro indicators are not without reason from a market perspective, whether they can retrospectively "reassess" the Hyperliquid route during fundraising clearly lacks consensus within the community.
The information regarding the postponement of the TGE to January 19 at 24:00 (UTC+8) is still pending verification, but the project team's explanation linking the time adjustment to "technical reconstruction" and "route migration" logically establishes a causal chain: only after completing the migration to Solana or the underlying construction can token liquidity be opened. The issue is whether this causal relationship is a post-narrative or pre-planning, which is difficult for outsiders to judge. In the Web3 context, project "transformation" itself is not uncommon; with fierce ecological competition and rapid changes in technological paradigms, projects adjusting their routes based on new environments are seen as a necessary part of risk investment within a reasonable range. However, when the transformation touches on the core selling points and white paper commitments during fundraising—such as shifting from "relying on a specific infrastructure" to "completely changing to another public chain"—the boundaries begin to blur: on one end is a "reasonable turn" for survival and seeking greater opportunities, while on the other end, it may be seen as a deviation from the foundational narrative of fundraising. Trove's sudden turn from Hyperliquid to Solana is precisely caught on this gray boundary line.
Community Outrage and Governance Vacuum
Before the announcement of the route adjustment, the mainstream expectation within the Trove community still revolved around "when to launch on Hyperliquid and how to connect with the existing liquidity network." Many investors and participants in the ICO directly tied the project's valuation and potential returns to the ecological momentum of Hyperliquid. When the project team suddenly announced the decision to "shift to Solana for reconstruction," emotions quickly flipped from anticipation to resentment, with some in the community even stating, "this is a typical precursor to a rug pull" (this quote is pending verification and only represents individual emotional voices). Regardless of the accuracy of the wording, such intense language itself reflects a collective dissatisfaction with the lack of participation in the decision-making process.
From publicly available information, Trove's approach to this critical route choice has been a typical "post-fact disclosure" path: first making internal decisions, then disclosing everything at once through announcements and social media, rather than providing a clear discussion window, governance proposal, or voting procedure before the decision. This disclosure rhythm, in an environment lacking strong regulatory oversight for Perp DEX, directly amplifies distrust—investors are already bearing systemic risks from high volatility and high leverage, and once they discover that the project's core route can be quietly rewritten in a "black box," they naturally project their unease as speculation about the possibility of "running away."
It is important to emphasize that, to date, there is no verifiable on-chain or legal evidence proving that the Trove project team has subjective malicious intent to defraud or plans to "abscond with funds." The so-called "strategic adjustment" and "subjective fraud" exist in a vast gray area: the same fact can be interpreted from the project team's perspective as "adapting to market changes and seeking a better ecosystem," while some investors may understand it as "overturning original commitments after receiving funds." Due to the lack of a mandatory disclosure system and a mature community governance structure, how to define this interval often becomes the result of community public relations and opinion battles.
In this vacuum environment, participants in Perp DEX increasingly rely on on-chain data, public wallet behavior, and social network information to construct a kind of "civil audit" mechanism: who reduced their positions when, whether market-making funds are continuously in place, and whether there are abnormal transfers in the project treasury are all scrutinized under a magnifying glass. In the Trove incident, various on-chain traces regarding large HYPE fluctuations and adjustments in partner positions were quickly pieced together into the narrative of "trust judgment" by the community. For such projects, the absence of regulation does not mean a lack of oversight; rather, it means that any information asymmetry is more likely to translate into market punishment.
The Signal of 500,000 HYPE Withdrawal
According to dual sources, liquidity partners collaborating with Trove withdrew about 500,000 HYPE positions during the turmoil, an action that occurred within the same narrative cycle as the route adjustment and TGE postponement. Although the exact timing and specific operational path are not fully detailed in public materials, the fact that "partners chose to reduce their exposure" has been viewed by the community as a direct vote on project risk. Such liquidity collaborations are often packaged in the early stages as a confidence signal "tied to professional market makers," and once they shift to withdrawal, the psychological impact often far exceeds that of equivalent retail sell-offs.
From the perspective of market microstructure, the withdrawal of 500,000 HYPE will have a substantial impact on the order book depth, slippage levels, and price volatility on the first day of TGE: reduced available liquidity means that buy and sell orders of the same scale will trigger larger price movements, and price differences are more easily amplified by emotions, making the trading range on the first day more prone to violent fluctuations. For a Perp DEX that relies on the first day of "price discovery" and "liquidity demonstration" to prove project health, such withdrawals are particularly glaring in symbolic terms.
It is important to distinguish that "partners actively cutting losses" and "project team maliciously crashing the price" are fundamentally different in nature. So far, there is no conclusive on-chain evidence in public information proving that the Trove team or its confirmed associated wallets directly sold off large amounts of HYPE; claims regarding suspected associated wallets selling approximately $10 million worth of HYPE are still pending verification and cannot be included in the factual portion. A more reasonable interpretation is that professional liquidity providers, based on their own risk assessments—including the uncertainty of route changes, the time cost brought by the TGE delay, and public pressure—chose to reduce or exit their exposure. This action does not necessarily point to malicious intent from the project team, but within the market discourse, it is often seen as a more honest "attitude statement" than the white paper or announcements: in the on-chain derivatives track, real market-making and capital flow often provide directional judgments ahead of official narratives.
The Temptation and Reality of the Solana Track
Trove describes Solana as "a more reasonable choice," citing its rising TVL and ecological expansion as key evidence, which has a certain logical basis at the macro level. In the past cycle, Solana has regained attention in the public chain competition, with total locked value continuously rising, on-chain transaction throughput and fee advantages repeatedly validated, and the DeFi and derivatives ecosystem built around it exhibiting high-frequency innovation. For Perp DEX seeking high-performance, low-cost execution environments, Solana indeed offers greater imaginative space: shorter confirmation times mean smoother liquidation and risk control, and a more active user base implies potentially higher trading depth and fee income.
In contrast, Hyperliquid itself leans more towards a specialized derivatives infrastructure and liquidity network, with its environment's level of closure, user structure, and capital composition showing significant differences from the general DeFi ecosystem on open public chains. Perp DEXs on Solana, relying on the composability of public chains, can connect with lending, spot DEXs, yield aggregators, and other modules, forming more complex capital utilization paths and leverage structures; while the Hyperliquid environment focuses more on matching and risk management itself. In terms of performance metrics, both pursue high-frequency low-latency, but the paths in user base and capital efficiency presentation are not consistent.
However, "the Solana track being hotter" does not automatically translate to "new projects being more likely to succeed." Competing for liquidity and users in the Solana perpetual contract track essentially involves a game of stock with a group of established protocols and players with accumulated brand recognition: leading projects occupy depth and market-making resources, and new entrants often need to pay higher incentive costs to attract the same pool of funds and traders. In an ecosystem where the narrative has already taken shape, Trove's attempt to reshape its product and trust through "reconstruction" requires not only re-adapting to the Solana VM, rewriting or auditing contracts, but also renegotiating market-making resources, rebuilding user acquisition channels, and re-engaging with the community after a trust crisis. This is almost equivalent to a "second startup": the technical side must prove that the new architecture can match Solana's rhythm in risk control and performance, the financial side must compensate for the risk premium caused by early route fluctuations, and the narrative side must build a new credible story on the label of "coming from Hyperliquid." Any misstep in any link will be magnified into a re-evaluation of the legitimacy of fundraising.
Sensitive Route Changes Amidst Liquidation Waves
The Trove incident did not occur in a static market environment. According to single-source data, recent liquidation amounts on Hyperliquid reached approximately $235 million, indicating that the entire derivatives market's leverage structure is in a highly fragile state, with extreme volatility capable of triggering large-scale liquidations in a short time. Meanwhile, according to high-confidence data from dual sources, major exchanges recorded a total net outflow of 25,932 bitcoins during the same period, which many analysts view as a signal of funds withdrawing from centralized trading venues, seeking refuge or high-elasticity opportunities on-chain and in new narratives.
In such a high-volatility, frequently liquidating macro context, Perp DEX projects face not just a single-dimensional pressure: on one hand, they need to continuously prove to users that their risk management framework can handle extreme market conditions, ensuring that liquidation mechanisms, insurance funds, oracles, and matching logic can maintain order during a crash; on the other hand, they need to eliminate the inherent stereotype of "on-chain being a high-risk casino" in their narratives about fund safety. Any news regarding route adjustments, contract migrations, or changes in liquidity structure will be overly sensitively interpreted under this tense atmosphere.
The timing of Trove's announcement to abandon Hyperliquid and shift to Solana coincides perfectly with this macro environment. For investors already suffering losses in the liquidation wave and highly sensitive to systemic risks, the information about the "route change" easily evokes associations with a series of historical risk events: from contract vulnerabilities to team dissolutions, from liquidity withdrawals to anonymous teams disappearing. Market experience makes them more willing to "err on the side of caution." Thus, what could have been seen as a "technical and business route optimization" initiative, after the contextual shift, turned into a "potential risk signal," echoing the aforementioned emotional labels like "precursor to a rug pull." The Trove case is therefore amplified into a symbol: in a leveraged system on the brink of collapse, with extremely high sensitivity to funds, any strategy adjustment lacking sufficient communication will be perceived as further stimulating the market's nerves.
The Trust Ledger Has Not Yet Aligned
From the narrative built around Hyperliquid during the fundraising phase, to the announcement of the shift to rebuilding on Solana, to liquidity partners withdrawing about 500,000 HYPE positions, and the TGE being postponed to January 19 at 24:00 (UTC+8, pending verification), Trove has experienced multiple layers of "trust fractures" in a short period. The foundational commitments made during fundraising have been shaken, key cooperative funds have chosen to exit early, and the relationship between the token release rhythm and technical reconstruction lacks transparency. These factors collectively shape the current public opinion and emotional landscape. In a derivatives track that is already high-risk and highly volatile, the originally fragile mutual trust between the project team and investors can easily collapse in such a chain of events.
For Trove, remedial paths do exist. The most direct options include: making the formation process of significant route decisions as public as possible, explaining the evaluation model and timeline for the shift from Hyperliquid to Solana; disclosing the specific use of ICO fundraising funds and the current balance to reduce suspicions arising from a "funds black box"; introducing more substantive community participation mechanisms at the governance level, such as on-chain voting or multi-signature authorization for key routes and fund usage; and considering the introduction of third-party auditing agencies to provide independent reports on contract security and fund custody. These measures may not immediately mend the fractures that have already formed, but they can serve as a starting point for "rebuilding the trust ledger," allowing the market an opportunity to correct old expectations with new facts.
For Perp DEX investors, the lessons provided by this event are equally straightforward: the heat of the track and short-term return expectations are far from sufficient to constitute a basis for decision-making. What truly needs to be continuously tracked is whether the core commitments made during fundraising are being fulfilled, whether the governance structure allows the community to voice concerns before significant changes, and whether the team has the capability and willingness to prioritize system security and user rights in extreme environments. In a space lacking mandatory regulation, the only "regulation" investors can rely on is their sensitivity to information and the depth of their scrutiny of the governance structure.
Moving forward, several key observation indicators surrounding Trove will determine whether this event is ultimately classified as a "difficult restart" or a slowly evolving incident. The on-chain flow of funds—especially the movements of the project treasury and core associated addresses—will reveal the team's true commitment to long-term construction; the progress of product delivery and the specific implementation of the Solana version will test the substance of the "reconstruction" narrative; whether other projects and liquidity providers in the Solana ecosystem are willing to collaborate with Trove will directly reflect its credit recovery level in the market. Only when these dimensions show sustained positive signals will the trust ledger, torn after the $11.5 million fundraising, have a chance to realign.
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