Perpetual DEXs processed over $1 trillion in monthly volume for the first time in late 2025. Tens of thousands of traders have moved their derivatives activity on-chain. And yet the question that every serious trader asks before depositing a single dollar remains the same: is perp DEX safe actually?

The answer is not a simple yes or no. It depends on what you mean by "safe," which risks you're most exposed to, and critically, how the platform you're using is built. This guide cuts through the noise. We'll cover the real risks of trading on a perp DEX, where perp DEXs are genuinely safer than centralized alternatives, and the specific architecture choices that separate high-trust platforms from high-risk ones.

First, Some Context: Why Traders Are Moving On-Chain

Before answering whether a perp DEX is safe, it helps to understand why traders moved on-chain in the first place. The FTX collapse in November 2022 wiped out billions in customer funds. $8 billion in deposits had been secretly transferred to FTX's affiliated trading firm and lost. The Bybit hack in February 2025 stole $1.4 billion from the world's second-largest derivatives exchange through a compromised multi-signature wallet interface. Both were custodial failures, risks that don't exist on a self-custodial perp DEX where your collateral never leaves a smart contract you can verify.

That doesn't mean perp DEXs are risk-free. It means the risks are different and more transparent.

The 5 Real Risks of Trading on a Perp DEX

1. Smart Contract Exploits

Every perp DEX runs on smart contracts, self-executing code that manages your collateral, leverage, liquidations, and payouts. If that code has a flaw, an attacker can exploit it to drain funds. This is the most fundamental risk in on-chain trading.

It happened to GMX in July 2025, when a reentrancy vulnerability in its order book contract allowed an attacker to withdraw approximately $42 million. It happened to KiloEx in April 2025, when a multi-chain attack drained nearly $7 million across BNB, Base, and Taiko networks. Smart contract exploits don't require hacking a server or stealing credentials. They exploit the logic of the code itself.

The most common smart contract vulnerabilities include reentrancy bugs, math and rounding errors in leverage calculations, and unprotected admin functions, flaws that are often invisible until exploited. This is why audit depth matters more than audit count.

What to look for: Platforms with multiple independent audits from reputable firms (Trail of Bits, Certik, Hacken, Quantstamp), active bug bounty programs, and a track record of clean security reviews. Audits don't guarantee safety, but their absence is a serious red flag.

Grvt has undergone multiple independent smart contract audits. Reports are publicly accessible, and all critical findings have been remediated prior to mainnet launch.

If you want to trade on a secure, audited perp DEX that feels immediately familiar, explore Grvt to to experience its clean order entry, full depth visibility, and institutional-grade execution, all in a self-custody environment.

2. Oracle Manipulation

Perp DEXs rely on price oracles, external data feeds that tell the protocol what an asset is worth. Oracles power everything: mark prices, funding rates, liquidation triggers. If an oracle is manipulated, the consequences cascade instantly across every open position.

An attacker who briefly distorts the price of an asset can trigger mass liquidations, drain the insurance fund, and extract value from the protocol before the price corrects. This is especially dangerous on perp platforms because leverage amplifies the effect of even small price deviations. Flags including using of single-source price feeds and on-chain manipulation via flash loans, which are two most exploited oracle weaknesses in perp DEX protocols.

What to look for: Platforms using multiple independent oracle providers (Chainlink, Pyth, Redstone) rather than a single source, with circuit breakers that pause liquidations during abnormal price movements.

3. Front-End Attacks

A front-end attack doesn't touch the smart contract at all. Instead, an attacker compromises the website or user interface to redirect fund approvals to a malicious address. The user signs what appears to be a normal transaction, and sends their funds to an attacker.

This attack vector is growing. A recent $1.5 billion crypto theft was attributed in part to front-end manipulation. It's particularly dangerous because it bypasses all smart contract security entirely.

What to look for: Always verify the contract address you're approving before signing. Use bookmarked URLs rather than clicking links. Platforms with open-source frontends and reproducible builds give users a way to verify what they're interacting with.

4. MEV and Front-Running

In most transparent-mempool blockchains, your transaction is publicly visible before it's confirmed. Sophisticated actors such as MEV bots and searchers scan the mempool for large trades, liquidation events, and position openings, then insert their own transactions ahead of yours to profit at your expense. This is called Maximal Extractable Value (MEV), and it costs perp traders real money on every trade.

Front-running is particularly damaging in perp markets: a bot that sees a large liquidation before it executes can position ahead of it, worsening the price impact and effectively extracting value from the liquidated trader.

What to look for: Platforms that use private mempools, encrypted order submission, or zero-knowledge proof architecture to prevent transaction visibility before confirmation. These are rarer but represent the highest standard of execution fairness. Grvt's ZK-proof architecture means no trade is ever broadcast to a public mempool. Front-running and MEV extraction are structurally impossible, not just mitigated.

Read more about Grvt’s Security Stack

5. Liquidation and Auto-Deleveraging Risk

Leverage is the defining feature of perp trading and the defining source of additional risk. When the market moves against a leveraged position and margin falls below the maintenance threshold, the platform liquidates the position to protect the protocol's solvency.

In extreme market conditions, liquidations can cascade. The October 2025 market crash triggered over $5 billion in liquidations in a single session, overwhelming insurance funds on multiple platforms. Some platforms responded with Auto-Deleveraging (ADL), forcibly closing profitable positions to offset losses from the other side. Traders who had winning short positions saw them closed involuntarily.

What to look for: A well-capitalized insurance fund with publicly visible reserves, transparent ADL policies, and a liquidation engine designed to handle market stress without socializing losses onto profitable traders. Grvt processes over $41 billion in monthly perp volume (averaging $1.5 billion per day) backed by institutional market makers including Flow Traders, Amber Group, and IMC, providing the order book depth that keeps liquidation cascades contained even under extreme volatility.

Volume data is publicly verifiable on DeFiLlama.

Is Perp DEX Safer Than CEX

The risks above are real. But it would be misleading to present them without acknowledging the structural ways perp DEXs are genuinely safer than their centralized counterparts.

Self-custody eliminates custodial risk. On a perp DEX, your collateral is held in a smart contract, not on an exchange's balance sheet. The exchange cannot lose your funds through mismanagement, fraud, or operational failure. The $1.4 billion Bybit hack and the $8 billion FTX collapse were both custodial failures. Neither could happen on a self-custodial perp DEX.

On-chain transparency enables independent verification. Every trade, liquidation, funding payment, and insurance fund movement is recorded on a public blockchain. You don't have to trust the platform's published reports. You can verify the state of the protocol yourself at any time. CEXs offer no equivalent transparency.

No single point of operational failure. CEX infrastructure, servers, APIs, custody systems, creates concentrated targets. A single compromised server can halt withdrawals, freeze accounts, or expose sensitive data. Smart contract-based platforms have no equivalent central system to compromise.

What Separates a Safe Perp DEX from a Risky One

Not all perp DEXs are built equally. Architecture choices made at the protocol level determine your real exposure. Here's what to evaluate before trading.

Custody Model

Does the platform hold your funds, or do they stay in a smart contract you control? Self-custody is non-negotiable for serious traders. If the platform requires you to deposit into a centralized wallet, not a smart contract, you are reintroducing CEX-style custodial risk.

Settlement Architecture

Where and how does trade settlement happen? On-chain settlement, verifiable by anyone, is the gold standard. Some hybrid platforms execute orders off-chain for speed but settle on-chain. This is acceptable if the on-chain settlement is the source of truth for fund movements. What matters is that no trade outcome can be altered or reversed without an on-chain record.

Oracle Design

Look for platforms using multiple independent oracle providers rather than a single source, with circuit breakers that pause liquidations during abnormal price movements, and a track record of oracle stability during high-volatility market events.

Audit History

How many audits has the platform completed, and by whom? Are the audit reports publicly accessible? Have all critical and high-severity findings been remediated? An audit from a single firm, completed once at launch and never updated, provides limited assurance for a live, evolving protocol.

Insurance Fund

How large is the insurance fund relative to open interest? Is it publicly visible on-chain? Has it been depleted or strained in past market events? A healthy, transparent insurance fund is your first line of protection against socialized losses.

Upgrade Mechanism

Can the protocol's smart contracts be upgraded? By whom, and with what governance process? Upgradeable contracts can be patched for security but they also mean the protocol can change in ways that affect your funds. Understand who holds upgrade keys and what time-locks or governance votes are required.

The ZK Advantage: A New Standard for Perp DEX Security

For traders asking whether a perp DEX is safe, ZK architecture is the most compelling answer the industry has produced so far. Platforms built on ZK-rollup infrastructure like Grvt, which settles every trade on Ethereum L2 via ZK-proofs. This approach offers a security model that addresses several risks simultaneously.

Every trade is cryptographically verifiable. ZK-proof settlement means the correctness of every trade execution, margin update, and fund movement can be mathematically proven, not just trusted. You don't need to trust that Grvt processed your trade correctly because the proof is on-chain, independently verifiable by anyone.

No public mempool exposure. Grvt's ZK architecture processes transactions without broadcasting them to a public mempool before confirmation, eliminating the MEV and front-running vectors that affect transparent-chain perp DEXs entirely.

Self-custody throughout. On Grvt, your collateral never leaves a smart contract you control, not during deposits, not during active leveraged trading, not during withdrawal. There is no internal Grvt wallet holding your funds. This is what makes the platform structurally immune to the custodial failures that brought down FTX and cost Bybit $1.4 billion.

Read more about How Grvt’s Self-custodial Trading Works.

On-chain finality with off-chain speed. Grvt's hybrid CLOB model processes order matching off-chain at CEX-level speeds with over 600,000 transactions per second with millisecond latency, while settling every outcome on Ethereum L2 with ZK-proof verification. Speed and security are not traded off against each other.

A Practical Checklist Before You Trade on Any Perp DEX

Use this before depositing on any new platform. It covers the key questions that determine whether a perp DEX is safe to trade on:

• [ ] Audit status: Are there multiple independent audits? Are reports publicly accessible? Have critical findings been fixed?
• [ ] Custody model: Do your funds stay in a smart contract, or does the platform take custody?
• [ ] Settlement: Is settlement on-chain and verifiable? Is there a public record of all fund movements?
• [ ] Oracle design: Are multiple independent oracle providers used? Are there circuit breakers?
• [ ] Insurance fund: Is the fund balance publicly visible on-chain? What is its size relative to open interest?
• [ ] Bug bounty: Is there an active, well-funded bug bounty program (e.g., on Immunefi)?
• [ ] Team transparency: Is the team publicly identified? Is there a track record of incident response?
• [ ] Upgrade controls: Are contract upgrades time-locked and governance-gated? Who holds admin keys?
• [ ] Frontend verification: Can you verify the contract addresses you're approving before signing?
• [ ] Chain reliability: Has the underlying blockchain experienced significant outages? (dYdX v4's chain halt during a mass liquidation event in October 2025 is a notable example of chain-level risk)

The Bottom Line

Is perp DEX safe? Safer than a CEX for custodial risk — definitively. Safe from all risk — no.

The risks of perp DEX trading are real: smart contract exploits, oracle manipulation, MEV, cascading liquidations. But they are architecturally different from CEX risks, more transparent, and in many cases more manageable. The collapse of FTX and the Bybit hack were failures of custody and trust at the centre of the system. Smart contract exploits target individual protocols. It is damaging, but contained to the platform affected rather than wiping out an entire ecosystem in a single event.

The industry today aim to reach a consensus that “security is not a feature, it's architecture." The right question isn't "is perp DEX safe?" It's "which perp DEX is built to be as safe as possible?" The answer comes down to audits, custody architecture, oracle design, settlement verifiability, and the engineering choices made before a single trade is placed.

Those are the things worth checking before you deposit. This guide gives you the framework to do exactly that. And if you want a platform that's built to answer every item on it, Grvt is a good place to start.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I lose all my funds on a perp DEX? Yes. Through leverage, liquidation, or a smart contract exploit. Using appropriate leverage, setting stop-losses, and choosing audited platforms with transparent insurance funds significantly reduces this risk. Never trade with funds you cannot afford to lose.

Are perp DEXs safer than CEXs? For custodial risk, yes. Your funds never leave your control on a self-custodial perp DEX. For smart contract risk, perp DEXs introduce risks that CEXs don't have. The trade-off is transparency and self-custody against protocol-level risk.

What is the biggest risk on a perp DEX? Smart contract exploits are the most commonly cited risk, but oracle manipulation and cascading liquidations have historically caused larger aggregate losses. Platform architecture, how oracles are designed and how the insurance fund is managed, matters more than any single audit.

What is a ZK perp DEX? A perp DEX that uses zero-knowledge proofs to verify and settle trades on-chain. ZK settlement provides cryptographic proof of every trade outcome, eliminates public mempool exposure (reducing MEV risk), and combines off-chain execution speed with on-chain security guarantees.

How do I verify a perp DEX's smart contract audits? Most reputable audit firms (Trail of Bits, Certik, Hacken, Quantstamp) publish full reports on their websites. The platform should link directly to these reports. Look for: scope of the audit, severity of findings, remediation status of all critical and high issues, and the date of the most recent review.

What is auto-deleveraging (ADL) and should I be concerned? ADL is a mechanism that forcibly closes profitable positions to offset losses from liquidated traders when the insurance fund is depleted. It protects protocol solvency but can close your winning positions involuntarily during extreme market events. Understand the ADL policy of any platform before opening large positions.

We've built Grvt Agent Skills: a set of open-source capabilities that let users and AI agents interact with our exchange entirely through natural language. Whether you're automating a trading workflow, building an AI-powered bot, or simply want to check your portfolio without touching a UI, Agent Skills make it possible.

This guide covers everything you need to know: what Grvt Agent Skills are, how to install them, and how to start using them with any compatible AI agent.

What Are Grvt Agent Skills?

Grvt Agent Skills are a collection of structured AI instructions, called skills, that tell any compatible AI agent how to interact with our exchange infrastructure. They are built on the open skills ecosystem and work seamlessly with agents like Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, GitHub Copilot, Windsurf, Gemini CLI, and more.

Once installed, you can type commands in plain language and your AI agent will translate them into authenticated API calls to Grvt, handling everything from order signing to session management behind the scenes.

Think of it as giving your AI agent a trading desk on Grvt.

What You Can Do with Grvt Agent Skills

With Grvt Agent Skills, AI agents can:

• Query real-time market data: prices, orderbooks, funding rates, candlesticks
• Manage your account: balances, open positions, unrealized PnL, trade history
• Execute perpetual trades: place limit/market orders, set TP/SL, cancel orders
• Configure positions: set leverage, switch between cross and isolated margin

We're continuing to expand these skills with referral and investment features coming soon and much more based on your feedback.

Prerequisites

Before getting started, make sure you have the following:

• Python 3.8+ installed on your machine
• An AI agent that supports the open skills ecosystem (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Gemini CLI, etc.)
• A Grvt account with API keys generated
  • Production: exchange.grvt.io/exchange/account/api-keys
  • Testnet: exchange.testnet.grvt.io/exchange/account/api-keys

We use two types of API keys:

Installation

Step 1 — Install the skills

Install all three Grvt skills at once:

npx skills add gravity-technologies/grvt-skills

Or install them individually:

npx skills add gravity-technologies/grvt-skills/skills/perpetual-trading
npx skills add gravity-technologies/grvt-skills/skills/market-data
npx skills add gravity-technologies/grvt-skills/skills/account-management

Step 2 — Install the Python SDK

Grvt Agent Skills rely on grvt-pysdk to communicate with the exchange:

pip install grvt-pysdk

Step 3 — Configure your credentials

Create a .env file in your project root with your API keys:

# Trading API Key — for orders, positions, and trading account operations
GRVT_TRADING_API_KEY=<your Trading API Key>
GRVT_TRADING_PRIVATE_KEY=<private key for Trading API Key>

# Funding API Key — optional, for funding account transfers
GRVT_FUNDING_API_KEY=<your Funding API Key>
GRVT_FUNDING_PRIVATE_KEY=<private key for Funding API Key>

GRVT_ENV=testnet  # Switch to "prod" when ready for live trading

Step 4 — Enable auto-run (recommended)

For the smoothest natural language experience, where your agent executes commands directly without prompting you for code review, enable auto-run in your AI tool:

What can Grvt Agent Skills Do

1. Market Data

Fetch prices, orderbooks, candlesticks, and funding rates. No API key required for public data.

The Market Data skill gives your agent access to our full suite of real-time market information. All market data endpoints are public, making this skill ideal for market analysis, research bots, or price alerting.

What it covers:

• Current prices (mark, index, last, bid/ask)
• Full ticker stats (24h volume, open interest, long/short ratio)
• Orderbook depth (up to 500 levels)
• Recent trades
• OHLCV candlestick data across 16 timeframes (1m to 4w)
• Funding rate history
• Instrument discovery

2. Account Management

Check balances, positions, PnL, and trade history. Requires your Trading API Key.

The Account Management skill gives your agent full visibility into your Grvt trading account. Use it to monitor portfolio health, track funding payments, or pull fill history for analysis.

What it covers:

• USDT balance (total, free, used)
• Sub-account and aggregated account summaries
• Open positions with entry price, mark price, unrealized PnL, ROI, leverage
• Position margin management (add margin, check limits)
• Trade and fill history
• Funding payment history
• Full account history (deposits, withdrawals, transfers)

3. Perpetual Trading

Place, cancel, and manage perpetual futures orders. Requires your Trading API Key.

The Perpetual Trading skill is the core execution layer. It handles EIP-712 order signing, session authentication, and all order types on our perpetual markets.

What it covers:

• Market and limit orders
• Advanced order parameters (GTC, IOC, FOK, AON, post-only, reduce-only)
• Trigger orders (take-profit and stop-loss)
• Order cancellation (by ID, by client ID, or cancel all)
• Open order queries and order history
• Leverage and margin type configuration (cross vs. isolated)

Example Natural Language Commands

Once your agent is set up, just ask it in plain language:

Important Notes

• All orders require EIP-712 signing. The SDK handles this automatically using your GRVT_TRADING_PRIVATE_KEY. You never need to sign manually.
• Always test on testnet first. Set GRVT_ENV=testnet and use exchange.testnet.grvt.io before going live.
• Minimum order size. The minimum notional value per order is 100 USDT (price × amount ≥ 100).
• Market data is public. The Market Data skill works without any API key, making it easy to build read-only bots or dashboards.
• The SDK auto-manages sessions. Authentication cookies are refreshed automatically before expiry; you don't need to re-login.
• order_id from create_order is a placeholder. Use metadata.client_order_id to track and cancel orders after placement.

Additional Resources

• Grvt Exchange
• Grvt API Documentation
• grvt-pysdk on GitHub
• Grvt Skills Repository
• Open Skills Ecosystem
• Learn More About AI Crypto Trading Bots

Have feedback or run into issues? We're actively iterating, join the Grvt community and share your experience and help shape what gets built next.

• Grvt Dicord
• Grvt Telegram (Global)
• Grvt Telegram (Chinese)
• Grvt Telegram (Korea)
• Grvt Telegram (Japanese)

ETFs changed investing. One ticker, a basket of assets, minimal fees. The model has been proved to be so powerful and it now holds over $15 trillion globally. When the SEC approved spot Bitcoin ETFs in January 2024, that wrapper extended to crypto: over $57 billion in inflows followed within the first year, and $880 billion in trading volume through 2025. The question in TradFi shifted from whether to get crypto exposure to how.

Tokenized ETFs are the next move, but in reverse. Instead of bringing crypto into TradFi, they bring TradFi assets on-chain. So why tokenization?

The Problem With Traditional ETFs

The ETF model is near-perfect, except for one thing: it still closes at 4pm on major exchanges like NYSE/Nasdaq.

A Bank of Japan rate decision lands at midnight. Samsung announces an earnings miss at 6am Tokyo time. A US-Japan trade deal breaks over the weekend. South Korean chip export controls hit the newswires at 2am EST. Traditional ETF holders are locked out, waiting for the market to open, watching the price gap against them.

For anyone operating in global markets, trading hours are not an inconvenience. They are a structural disadvantage. The world doesn't pause for the NYSE.

Tokenization fixes this. Understanding how to trade tokenized ETFs starts here. When an ETF is represented as an on-chain token, it inherits the properties of the blockchain it lives on, and the constraints of the traditional market fall away: 24/7 trading, global access.

Your position lives in your wallet, not on a broker's balance sheet. And on-chain finality replaces the T+2 settlement window.

The opportunity is significant. For the first time, anyone with a wallet can access global equity markets at any hour. And crypto-native traders get a direct line to real-world assets.

This guide covers how tokenized ETFs work, how to trade them on-chain, what to look for in a platform, and where early listings like EWY and EWJ are already showing what's possible.

What Is a Tokenized ETF?

A tokenized ETF is a blockchain-based token that tracks the price of a traditional exchange-traded fund. It mirrors the same underlying assets and market price, but instead of sitting in a brokerage account, it lives on-chain in a self-custody wallet.

Think of it as the ETF you already know but available around the clock. So automated strategies, AI agents, and algorithmic systems can act on market moves the moment they happen, not when an exchange decides to open.

Tokenized ETFs don't replace the underlying fund. They are on-chain representations that track its price. This means they give you exposure to the same market movements without requiring you to open a brokerage account, deal with FX conversion, or wait for a market to open.

Tokenized ETF vs. Traditional ETF: The Full Comparison

Before trading, it is worth understanding exactly where tokenized ETFs differ from their traditional counterparts and being honest about the tradeoffs.

Where tokenized ETFs win:

• 24/7 access. No market hours. No gaps. Trade when news breaks, not when exchanges allow.
• Self-custody. Your position lives in your wallet, not on a broker's balance sheet. No counterparty risk from the custodian.
• Global accessibility. No need for a global or local brokerage account, or currency conversion. Only a wallet is required to get started.
• Fractional trading. No minimum share size. Trade any amount.

What to keep in mind:

• No dividend distribution. Tokenized ETFs on Grvt currently track price only. They do not automatically pass through the dividends paid by the underlying fund.
• Spreads during off-hours. Liquidity is deepest during traditional market hours. Weekend or late-night trading may carry wider spreads than daytime sessions.
• Some crypto trading platforms also require KYC. Permissionless perp DEXs like Grvt typically have no such requirements.

The Tokenized ETF Landscape Today

Before diving into how to trade tokenized ETFs on-chain, it's worth understanding the two formats available, spot and perpetual, as they suit very different types of traders.

The market for tokenized ETFs and equities is young but moving fast. As of 2026, tokenized public equities represent roughly $683 million in on-chain value and over $1.7 billion in monthly transfer volume held across more than 129,000 wallets. The infrastructure buildout is accelerating: platforms like Robinhood, Coinbase, Kraken, Ondo, and BingX have all entered the space, and institutional names like BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and JPMorgan have launched tokenized fund products of their own.

Each platform takes a different approach to what it list. Some focus on individual US equities, others on indices like the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100, commodities like gold, or country-level ETFs like EWY and EWJ, both listed on Grvt. But before choosing where or what to trade, there's one structural distinction worth understanding: spot vs. perpetual.

Spot Tokenized ETFs

A spot tokenized ETF is a direct on-chain representation of the underlying fund, typically backed 1:1 by the actual asset held in custody. You buy it, you hold exposure to the price. There is no expiry, no funding rate, and no leverage involved by default. It behaves like owning the ETF itself, just on-chain, in your wallet, tradeable around the clock. Spot tokenized ETFs are best suited for investors who want straightforward, custody-controlled exposure to an asset without the complexity of derivatives.

Perpetual Tokenized ETFs

A perpetual (or "perp") is a derivative contract that tracks the price of the underlying asset without ever expiring. Unlike spot, you don't hold the asset but you hold a position. Perps allow leverage, enable short selling, and are settled in stablecoins like USDC. They carry a funding rate: a periodic payment between long and short traders to keep the contract price anchored to the underlying. Platforms like Binance, Kraken, and Grvt have begun listing tokenized ETF perps, giving traders leveraged, 24/7 exposure to these assets with the same mechanics as crypto perpetuals.

Asia Tokenized ETFs in the Spotlight: EWY & EWJ

Grvt's first tokenized ETF listings are two of the most widely traded Asia-focused funds in the world: EWY and EWJ, both issued by BlackRock's iShares. They represent two distinct but equally compelling investment stories: South Korean semiconductors and Japanese equities. Together they make Grvt one of the most interesting places to express Asia macro views on-chain.

EWY — iShares MSCI South Korea ETF

Issued by BlackRock, EWY is the most liquid ETF for Korean equity exposure globally. It is a concentrated, tech-heavy fund: Samsung Electronics (~22.9%) and SK Hynix (~20.75%) alone make up over 40% of the portfolio, with the top 10 holdings representing 58% of the fund. Trading EWY is effectively a direct bet on the Korean semiconductor supply chain powering the global AI buildout.

The numbers back this up: EWY has seen over $6 billion in three-month net inflows, one of the strongest momentum stories in Asian equities heading into 2026. Korean chip news, however, breaks around the clock. US export controls, Nvidia earnings, TSMC guidance, these move EWY outside NYSE hours. Tokenized EWY on Grvt means you don't have to wait for New York to open.

EWJ — iShares MSCI Japan ETF

Launched in 1996, EWJ is the oldest and most popular ETF for Japanese equity exposure. Unlike EWY's chip concentration, it holds hundreds of stocks across industrials (~25%), consumer discretionary, financials, and technology, names like Toyota, Sony, Mitsubishi UFJ, and Tokyo Electron. It trades like a macro instrument on Japan's economy, the yen, and foreign investor appetite.

Japan's equity market has re-entered the global spotlight: EWJ hit record highs after the 2025 US-Japan trade deal and has pulled in over $3 billion in three-month net inflows. It also carries a trailing dividend yield of ~3.95%, above the category average, adding an income angle beyond price trading. Bank of Japan rate decisions, yen moves, and earnings catalysts regularly break outside NYSE hours, making tokenized EWJ on Grvt the only on-chain way to act on them in real time.

How to Trade Tokenized ETFs on Grvt: Step by Step

Step 1: Create and Verify Your Grvt Account

Go to grvt.io and sign up. Onboarding requires KYC verification through ComplyCube — document verification and a biometric check. This takes a few minutes and is a one-time process. KYC is the compliance layer that makes it possible for Grvt to list regulated assets like tokenized ETFs in the first place.

Step 2: Fund Your Account

Deposit USDT or other supported stablecoins directly to your Grvt wallet. If you're coming from another chain, BNB, SOL, Kaia or others, Grvt also enables smooth cross-chain transfers without manually wrapping or swapping assets first.

Step 3: Find EWY or EWJ in the ETF Tab

Navigate to the RWA section of the platform. EWY and EWJ are listed under “ETF” tab. The order book interface will be immediately familiar to anyone with TradFi trading experience. Grvt uses a Central Limit Order Book (CLOB) model, the same structure used by traditional exchanges, rather than an AMM.

Step 4: Place Your Trade

Choose between a market order (execute immediately at current price) or a limit order (set your target price and wait for a fill). Both are available. Because EWJ and EWY trade 24/7, you can set limit orders to trigger on overnight moves without needing to be present.

Step 5: Manage Your Position

Your position is visible in the Grvt portfolio dashboard. Take-profit and stop-loss (TPSL) functionality are live. It allows fully automated position management without manual monitoring.

All trades are settled via ZK-proofs on Ethereum. Every margin update, trade execution, and fund movement is verifiable on-chain.

Who Is Tokenized ETF Trading For?

Crypto-native traders with macro views. For example, if you have a view on Korean semiconductors or Japanese equities, you no longer need to leave your on-chain environment to express it. EWY and EWJ on Grvt give you that exposure directly.

TradFi investors frustrated by access friction. No US brokerage account? Outside of NYSE hours? Dealing with FX conversion? Tokenized ETFs remove every one of those barriers.

Asian retail and diaspora investors. South Korean and Japanese equities are home-market stories. Tokenized access removes the geographic and institutional barriers that have historically kept global retail investors from these markets.

Volatility traders. Asia macro catalysts, BOJ decisions, KOSPI gaps, chip export news, break outside market hours. Tokenized ETFs let you trade the move, not the aftermath.

What's Coming Next

EWY and EWJ sit alongside an already growing lineup, tokenized gold, silver, and a range of US stocks perps are live on Grvt today. The roadmap continues to expand based on what the community wants to trade next, with spot trading also on the horizon. The direction is clear: a single on-chain platform where traditional and digital assets trade side by side, under a unified margin account, where your capital works across positions, and your equity earns yield even while you trade.

For traders who've long wanted to combine crypto-native infrastructure with access to global equities, that future is already starting.

Start Trading Tokenized ETFs On-Chain

Grvt is the first on-chain platform to list EWY and EWJ as ETFs perps, 24/7-tradeable assets. Whether you're expressing a view on Korean semiconductors, Japan's equity market, or simply want to hold major ETFs without a broker, you can do it here, on your terms, around the clock.

Crypto markets never sleep. They run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, across hundreds of exchanges, and they move fast. For any trader trying to keep up manually, that's an impossible game.

That's where AI crypto trading bots come in.

An AI crypto trading bot is software that automatically analyzes market data, identifies trading opportunities, and executes trades on your behalf, all without you needing to watch a screen. What used to be the exclusive domain of hedge funds and proprietary trading desks is now accessible to anyone with an internet connection.

But not all bots are created equal. And not all platforms are built to support them.

In this guide, you'll learn exactly how AI crypto trading bots work, what separates a good bot from a bad one, how to get started, and why the infrastructure underneath your bot matters just as much as the algorithm itself.

1. What Is an AI Crypto Trading Bot?

A crypto trading bot is an automated software program that connects to a crypto exchange via API and executes trades on your behalf based on a predefined set of rules. Instead of a human watching charts and clicking buy or sell, the bot monitors the market continuously and acts the moment its conditions are met, whether that's a price crossing a moving average, a funding rate hitting a threshold, or a spread appearing between two exchanges.

Early trading bots were purely rule-based: simple "if-then" logic with no ability to learn or adapt. They worked until the market changed and the rules stopped working with it.

AI-powered trading bots are a step further. Rather than following a fixed script, they use machine learning models trained on historical and real-time market data to make decisions. An AI crypto trading bot can:

• Learn from historical price data
• Adapt to changing market conditions
• Identify non-obvious patterns across multiple assets
• Execute complex strategies across perpetual futures, spot, and options markets

Think of it as having a quantitative analyst working for you around the clock, one that never gets tired, never panics, and never lets emotions drive decisions.

2. How Do AI Crypto Trading Bots Work?

At their core, AI crypto trading bots follow a continuous loop:

Step 1 — Data Collection
The bot ingests real-time and historical market data: price feeds, order book depth, trading volume, funding rates, on-chain data, and sometimes even sentiment signals from social media.

Step 2 — Signal Generation
The AI model processes this data to generate trading signals. Depending on the model type, this could involve statistical analysis, machine learning pattern recognition, or reinforcement learning.

Step 3 — Decision Making
Based on the signal, the bot decides whether to open, close, or adjust a position, including setting entry price, position size, leverage, stop loss, and take profit.

Step 4 — Trade Execution
The bot sends an order to the exchange via API. Speed matters here, especially in perpetuals markets where prices move in milliseconds.

Step 5 — Risk Management
The bot monitors open positions continuously, adjusting or closing them based on predefined risk parameters.

Step 6 — Learning & Optimization
Advanced AI bots feed performance data back into the model, gradually improving their strategy over time.

This loop runs continuously, whether markets are moving in Tokyo at 3am or New York at market open.

3. Types of AI Crypto Trading Bots

Not every bot uses the same approach. Here are the main categories you'll encounter:

Trend-Following Bots

These bots identify momentum in one direction and ride it. They work well in strong bull or bear markets but can underperform in choppy, sideways conditions.

Market-Making Bots

Market makers continuously post buy and sell orders on both sides of the order book, profiting from the bid-ask spread. These bots require low-latency execution and deep liquidity, which is why exchange infrastructure matters enormously here.

Arbitrage Bots

Arbitrage bots exploit price discrepancies between exchanges or between spot and perp markets. A common variant is funding rate arbitrage, going long spot and short the perp simultaneously to collect funding payments with zero net market exposure. Grvt publishes a live funding rate tracker across major exchanges, a useful reference for spotting rate differentials before deploying a strategy. These strategies live and die by execution speed, which is why low-latency infrastructure like Grvt's is critical.

Mean Reversion Bots

These bots assume that prices will revert to their historical average. When an asset deviates significantly from its mean, the bot takes the opposite position expecting a correction.

AI Vaults (Managed Strategy Bots)

A newer and increasingly popular category. AI vaults are pre-built, professionally managed algorithmic strategies that users can deposit into, essentially delegating the trading entirely to an AI system. Grvt's own flagship GLP Vault, managed by a team of veteran quantitative strategists, currently targets 19% APY with AI continuously leveraged to refine and improve the underlying strategy over time.

Beyond its signature vault, Grvt's ecosystem is growing: more independent AI-driven vaults are joining the platform, each bringing their own strategies and risk profiles. This gives users a menu of institutional-grade options previously reserved for hedge fund investors.

Reinforcement Learning Bots

The most sophisticated category. These bots learn optimal trading behavior through trial and error in simulated environments, developing strategies that no human explicitly programmed.

4. Benefits of Using an AI Trading Bot for Crypto

24/7 Market Coverage

Crypto markets don't close. A bot trades while you sleep, capturing opportunities across every timezone.

Emotion-Free Execution

Fear and greed are the two biggest enemies of profitable trading. Bots don't feel either. They execute the strategy exactly as designed, no hesitation, no revenge trading, no panic selling.

Speed

Algorithmic execution happens in milliseconds. For strategies like arbitrage or market making, this speed advantage is the entire edge.

Backtesting

Before deploying real capital, AI bots can be tested against years of historical data to validate a strategy's performance and risk profile.

Diversification

A single bot can simultaneously run multiple strategies across multiple assets, something no human trader can practically replicate.

Consistency

Humans have good days and bad days. A well-designed bot performs the same way every single day.

5. Risks and Limitations You Need to Know

No guide would be complete without an honest look at the downsides.

Overfitting

A bot that performs perfectly in backtesting may fail in live markets because it was optimized too specifically for historical data. This is one of the most common and costly mistakes in algorithmic trading.

Market Regime Changes

A strategy built for trending markets can lose money in a ranging market. AI models that can't adapt to regime changes will underperform or blow up.

Technical Failures

API outages, network issues, exchange downtime, any break in the connection between your bot and the market can result in unmanaged open positions.

Security Risks

API keys with trading permissions are a major attack surface. Always use IP whitelisting, restrict permissions to trading only (never withdrawals), and use exchanges with robust security infrastructure.

Over-Leverage

Bots can trade perpetuals with leverage. Without strict risk management parameters, a single bad trade can wipe out an account quickly.

Platform Risk

The quality of the exchange your bot runs on directly impacts performance. High latency, poor liquidity, or unreliable APIs will degrade any strategy, no matter how good the algorithm.

6. What to Look for in an AI Crypto Trading Bot

With hundreds of bots and platforms available, here's a framework for evaluation:

7. AI Trading Vaults vs. Custom Bots: Which Is Right for You?

This is one of the most common questions for people getting started with automated crypto trading.

Custom Bots Are Best For:

• Developers and quants who want full control
• Traders with a specific strategy they want to implement
• Those willing to invest time in building, testing, and optimizing

AI Trading Vaults Are Best For:

• Traders who want algorithmic exposure without building from scratch
• Those who want access to professionally designed quant strategies
• Users who prefer a deposit-and-earn model over active management

Grvt's AI trading vaults represent the vault model at its most refined. These are curated strategies built by quantitative professionals, running on an exchange purpose-built for high-frequency algorithmic activity. For most users, vaults offer the best risk-adjusted path to AI-driven returns without the engineering overhead.

The right answer depends on your time, technical skill, and how much control you want. Many sophisticated traders use both, custom bots for their own strategies and vaults for passive allocation.

8. Why Infrastructure Matters: Trading Bots on a Perpdex

Here's something most bot guides don't talk about: the exchange matters as much as the algorithm.

A great strategy on a slow, illiquid exchange will underperform the same strategy on a purpose-built platform. Here's why:

Latency

In perpetuals trading, prices move in milliseconds. If your bot's order takes 200ms to reach the exchange, you're already behind. Exchanges built for algorithmic trading prioritize low-latency execution at the infrastructure level.

Liquidity

Poor liquidity means high slippage, the difference between the price you expected and the price you got. For bots running high-frequency strategies, slippage compounds rapidly and can erase an edge entirely.

API Reliability

Bots live and die by their API connection. An exchange with unreliable APIs will cause missed trades, stuck positions, and unpredictable behavior.

Perpetuals-First Design

Perpetual futures (perps) are the most liquid, most traded instruments in crypto, and increasingly, the preferred market for AI trading bots. Running AI trading bots for perps demands more from an exchange than spot trading ever does: tighter spreads, faster execution, and APIs that don't buckle under high-frequency load. An exchange designed from the ground up around perps (a perpdex) offers a fundamentally better environment for bot trading than a spot exchange that added perps as an afterthought.

Grvt was built as a perpdex with algorithmic traders as a critical user type. Low latency execution, deep liquidity, and robust APIs on Grvt aren't features. They're the foundation. This is why both independent bot developers and institutional market makers choose Grvt as their venue of choice.

9. How to Get Started with AI Crypto Trading

Whether you want to deploy a custom bot or deposit into an AI vault, here's a practical path forward:

Path A: Start with an AI Vault (Recommended for Most)

1. Create an account on Grvt.
2. Browse available vaults, review strategy type, historical performance, risk level, and fees.
3. Deposit your chosen allocation.
4. Monitor. Check in periodically but let the strategy run.
5. Adjust. Rebalance between vaults as your risk appetite evolves.

Path B: Build Your Own Bot

1. Learn the fundamentals. Understand market microstructure, order types, and risk management before writing a line of code.
2. Choose your stack. Python is the standard language for quant strategies; libraries like CCXT handle exchange connectivity.
3. Develop your strategy. Start simple; a clean mean-reversion or trend-following strategy beats a complex model you don't fully understand.
4. Backtest rigorously. Use at minimum 2 years of data; test across different market regimes
5. Paper trade first. Pun your bot live with simulated funds on testnet before risking real capital.
6. Deploy on Grvt. Connect via Grvt API to a venue built for algorithmic execution.
7. Monitor and iterate. No strategy works forever; build in regular review cycles

Path C: Learn to Build at a Quant Level

Grvt constantly organizes AI Quant Trading Camp together with our partners for traders who want to go deep, learning the skills that professional algorithmic traders use to build, test, and deploy real strategies. Graduates leave with hands-on experience building bots on institutional infrastructure, a cohort of like-minded traders, and a direct path to deploying on Grvt.

10. How Grvt Enables The Future of AI in Crypto Trading

AI's role in crypto markets is expanding rapidly, and at Grvt, that's not just an observation, it's a roadmap. From AI trading vaults and algorithmic infrastructure to the development of Grvt's own agents, Grvt is building toward a future where AI is embedded at every layer of the trading experience.

Zooming out, several broader trends are shaping where the industry is headed:

Large Language Models (LLMs) in Trading

LLMs are increasingly being used to process unstructured data, news, social media, governance proposals, and generate trading signals. The ability to read and react to narrative-driven price moves is a genuinely new capability.

On-Chain AI Agents

Autonomous AI agents that can interact with smart contracts, manage DeFi positions, and execute cross-chain strategies represent a new frontier. The infrastructure for these agents is still maturing, but early versions are already live.

Democratization of Quant Strategies

Historically, the best quantitative strategies were locked inside hedge funds. AI vaults and permissionless trading infrastructure are making institutional-grade algorithms accessible to retail traders for the first time.

Hypercompetitive Edge Erosion

As more participants use AI, simple strategies will be arbitraged away faster. The winners will be those with better data, better infrastructure, and deeper domain expertise, which is why education (like quant training camps) and purpose-built venues (like Grvt) matter more with each passing year.

11. Frequently Asked Questions

Are AI crypto trading bots profitable?
They could be, but profitability depends heavily on the quality of the strategy, the market conditions, and the infrastructure it runs on. There's no bot that makes money in every market condition, and anyone claiming otherwise is selling something. The bots with the best long-term track records are built on sound statistical edges, robust risk management, and maintained by people who understand markets deeply.

Is AI crypto trading legal?
Yes, algorithmic and AI-driven trading is legal in crypto markets. Unlike traditional financial markets, crypto has no restrictions on automated trading for retail participants.

How much capital do I need to start?
It depends on the approach. AI vaults on Grvt have accessible minimums, making them available to traders without large starting capital. For custom bot development, the strategy itself often determines the minimum viable capital to generate meaningful returns after fees.

Do I need to know how to code?
For AI vaults, no. The strategy is managed for you. For custom bots, yes, a working knowledge of Python and API integration is the baseline.

What's the difference between a crypto trading bot and an AI trading vault?
A trading bot is software you run and manage yourself. An AI vault is a managed strategy you deposit into. Both use algorithmic trading. The difference is who's doing the management.

Can AI bots trade perpetual futures?
Yes, and perps are actually the most common instrument for bot trading due to their liquidity, leverage options, and the absence of expiry dates. Exchanges like Grvt built specifically as a perpdex, are designed to support algorithmic trading of perpetual futures at scale.

Conclusion

AI crypto trading bots have fundamentally changed what's possible for individual traders. The technology that once required a team of quants and a Bloomberg terminal is now accessible to anyone willing to learn or to anyone who wants to simply deposit into a vault and let professional algorithms do the work.

But technology is only part of the equation. The exchange infrastructure you trade on, the quality of the strategies you deploy, and the depth of your own market knowledge all determine whether AI trading works for you or against you.

Grvt was built at the intersection of all three: a perpdex designed for algorithmic execution, AI trading vaults built by quantitative professionals, and an education community designed to develop the next generation of crypto traders.

Ready to get started?
→ Explore Grvt's AI Trading Vaults
→ Read Grvt's API Documentation
→ Join Grvt Community to Learn More about the Next Quant Training Camp

Forty years ago, a technological revolution changed the world of financial trading forever.

Trading in those days was a physical act. Then computer terminals began replacing the shouting on trading floors. In 1981, a trader named Michael Bloomberg was let go from Salomon Brothers. With $10 million in severance, he started a company with a single mission: make financial data transparent and instant. He succeeded.

The Bloomberg Terminal gave traders something they had never had, the ability to sit at a desk and watch market prices scroll in real time. Finance began its transformation from the privilege of the few into a standardized flow of information.

By the 1990s, the rise of the internet pushed this revolution to its peak, and the cost of serving customers fell off a cliff. Companies like E*Trade and Charles Schwab handed ordinary people the ability to place stock orders from their own homes, with commissions dropping from tens of dollars per trade to single digits. The barriers to finance had been fundamentally dismantled.

Now, forty years on, those same technological pioneers have themselves become the establishment. And a new disruptor is making its way from the crypto world into the mainstream, one that aims to change something even more fundamental than how we trade: capital efficiency.

The Trillion-Dollar Casino's Dilemma

In 2025, global crypto derivatives trading volume reached $85.7 trillion. The perpetual DEX market alone generated $7.9 trillion in volume. Of all the revenue produced by the entire crypto market that year, 15% came from this fast-spinning roulette wheel. Perpetual contracts are one of the most profitable businesses in the industry.

Grvt clawed its way out of this casino. Launched in January 2025, it accumulated $177 billion in total trading volume within just a few months, consistently ranking fifth to tenth globally among perpetual DEX platforms. Monthly trading volume growth hit 352% at its peak, with open interest growth reaching a staggering 1,601%.

At the capital table, it secured $34 million from top-tier investors including Hack VC, Delphi Ventures, Further Ventures, ZKSync, and EigenLayer.

But the casino itself is facing a crisis.

As everyone knows, the house usually wins. On-chain data shows that 86% of traders on Hyperliquid are losing money. A small group of winners devours the principal of the majority, and that is not a sustainable dynamic.

A product that reliably bleeds most of its users dry will inevitably bleed out its user base too. The casino needs a new story. Beyond speculation, there must be a genuine value anchor.

So all eyes turned to the tokenization of real-world assets, moving U.S. Treasuries, equities, commodities, and other tangible assets onto the blockchain, transforming them into 24/7 tradeable digital instruments. Wall Street's trillion-dollar giants like BlackRock and Franklin Templeton have already rushed in. By the end of 2025, the total value of on-chain RWAs had surpassed $35 billion, with Boston Consulting Group projecting that figure to reach $16 trillion by 2030.

This migration is also rewriting the rules of perpetual contracts.

Hyperliquid launched its HIP-3 standard in October 2025, allowing anyone to deploy perpetual markets for any asset on its platform, gold, oil, equities, even geopolitical indices. Theoretically, anything can become a tradeable instrument.

In February 2026, Ondo Finance announced Ondo Perps, giving non-U.S. users direct access to perpetual contracts on stocks like Apple, Nvidia, and Tesla. That same month, Kraken announced the world's first regulated tokenized stock perpetual contracts.

The direction is clear: perpetual contracts are evolving from a "crypto casino" into a genuine global asset allocation tool.

But there is a contradiction almost everyone is avoiding.

Existing perpetual contract platforms have a fatal flaw in capital efficiency: they only accept stablecoins as collateral. This means that if you hold tokenized Apple stock and want to hedge your risk or add leverage, you still need to set aside a separate pool of stablecoins as margin.

So who will build the underlying account infrastructure that can tie all these assets together?

From Goldman to On-Chain: The Answer from a Band of Rebels

Grvt's founder and CEO, Hong Yea, is someone who defected from the old world.

Before founding Grvt, he spent over a decade as an Executive Director at Goldman Sachs and traded at Credit Suisse. Someone with that background knows exactly where traditional finance is most vulnerable. Around him, he assembled a team with similarly unconventional pedigrees: CTO Aaron Ong, formerly of Meta, where he architected data privacy frameworks; and COO Matthew Quek, who came from Singapore's DBS Bank and government technology sector, with years of deep experience in blockchain and payment systems.

This group didn't come together to build another Binance or Coinbase. What they wanted was to bring something that has existed on Wall Street for decades into the crypto world, the total logistics operation for maximum capital productivity.. 

Think about how the biggest hedge funds operate. Elite investment banks like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley provide their biggest clients such as Bridgewater, Renaissance Technologies with a full suite of services: trade execution, financing and lending, securities clearing, risk management. A hedge fund needs just one account to go long, go short, and apply leverage across global markets, switching between them seamlessly. Every dollar works as hard as possible.

That model, one account, every asset, maximum efficiency, doesn't exist in crypto yet.

Your Bitcoin is on Exchange A. Your Ethereum is in Wallet B. Your stablecoins are earning yield in Protocol C. If you want to use your Bitcoin as collateral to trade an Ethereum perpetual contract while still capturing stablecoin yield, sorry, you can't. You're forced to shuffle between three platforms, and every shuffle costs you: in fees, in time, and in returns you can see but can't reach.

Grvt calls this friction "capital drag." It is the core problem they are built to solve.

To put it plainly: Charles Schwab used the internet to tear down Wall Street's information barriers and let ordinary people buy stocks themselves. Robinhood used zero commissions to tear down trading barriers and let retail investors play with options. Grvt's ambition is to take that same principle and rebuild it from scratch for the on-chain world: capital should never sit idle. This is something no one has truly pulled off before.

Their solution, distilled to a single phrase, is called Unified Margin.

It's a concept that sounds simple but is extraordinarily difficult to execute. The idea is this: every asset you deposit into Grvt, Bitcoin, stablecoins, and eventually tokenized Treasuries and equities, lives in a single, unified balance. That balance does several things at once. It serves as trading collateral, letting you go long or short on perpetual contracts. Through integration with DeFi lending protocols, it automatically generates up to 11% annualized yield. And if the Bitcoin you've pledged as collateral appreciates, you still capture that upside.

Your money, finally, has learned to multitask.

Grvt is trying to compress trading, yield generation, and investing, actions that have always been fragmented across different platforms, into a single account, a single balance, a single interface. But there is an inherent tension here, because Grvt isn't just building a better exchange. Its ambition is a full-stack financial platform for users, which means it needs to simultaneously satisfy institutional-level risk management and compliance and deliver a frictionless user experience. Those two things, on the surface, seem to pull in opposite directions.

Grvt's answer is to embed "institutional-grade" into the foundational architecture of the product, rather than making it a separate barrier to entry. Its risk management system runs on dual tracks: a real-time risk engine off-chain, and automated liquidation mechanisms via smart contracts on-chain. Its strategy marketplace features a flagship strategy with a Sharpe ratio of 11.97, a number that most traditional hedge funds would struggle to match.

So is this beautiful vision technically feasible? And how does it address the trust problem that hangs over every centralized exchange?

Making Trust Computable

Grvt's answer is a hybrid model powered by zero-knowledge proofs.

Think of it as a bank with a blazing fast front counter and an absolutely impregnable vault. Trade orders are matched off-chain, on Grvt's own servers. There's no blockchain congestion, no exorbitant gas fees, and execution runs at sub-millisecond speeds, no different from placing an order on the NYSE. This is the CEX experience.

But every step involving asset movement and settlement must return to the chain, and it's completed inside a zero-knowledge proof system called Validium, a secure vault built on ZKSync technology. Through a mathematical method called zero-knowledge proof, Grvt can demonstrate to the entire world that every settlement is accurate and correct, without revealing any of your trading details. Your funds remain in your own wallet at all times. No one can touch them.

This combination of institutional-grade execution and on-chain self-custody is extraordinarily rare across the entire perpetual DEX landscape. Most DEXs choose one or the other: pure on-chain for decentralization, at the cost of compliance; or CEX-style for performance, at the cost of self-custody. Grvt chose the harder road, but also the wider one.

On the compliance front, it holds itself to regulatory-grade standards, undergoes continuous professional audits, and actively monitors compliance developments across major global jurisdictions, positioning itself for whatever regulatory landscape lies ahead.

Let the Flywheel Spin: The Aave Partnership and the 2026 Roadmap

In late February 2026, Grvt announced a partnership with Aave, the largest lending protocol in DeFi, with net deposits exceeding $40 billion and roughly 60% of the DeFi lending market. The core of this collaboration is embedding Aave's lending yields directly into Grvt users' trading collateral.

Stablecoins sitting in Grvt while waiting for trading opportunities are automatically routed to Aave to earn up to 11% annualized yield. When a user needs to open a position, the funds are instantly recalled from Aave and converted back into margin. The entire process is invisible to the user, no manual steps required.

Aave founder Stani Kulechov put it succinctly in the announcement: "Stablecoins that aren't earning yield represent an opportunity cost for traders." This partnership is designed to reduce that opportunity cost to zero.

This is the first critical gear in Grvt's 2026 roadmap, a four-layer compounding flywheel:

Layer One: Earn. The foundation is Unified Margin and prime brokerage lending. Grvt acts as a bridge between capital providers and traders, allowing traders to control positions with 20% of their own capital while borrowing the remaining 80% from the platform. The trader's own funds serve as a loss buffer,  and their capital is depleted first if losses occur. This mechanism creates a positive feedback loop between Earn and Trade: more traders generate more borrowing demand, which delivers higher yields to depositors.

Layer Two: Trade. Grvt will expand its perpetual contract offerings beyond crypto to include global equities, forex, and commodities. A spot market is also on the way, with professional market makers providing deep liquidity in the first phase, followed by a community-driven listing mechanism where anyone can stake capital to propose new trading pairs, with community votes determining which get listed.

Layer Three: Invest. Grvt will expand its strategy marketplace, allowing institutional fund managers, professional traders, and even AI algorithms to act as investment advisors within the platform. Users can allocate funds to these strategies and earn returns passively.

Layer Four: Pay. Connecting P2P payments and fiat on/off ramps so that users' crypto assets become as effortless to use as money in a regular bank account.

These four layers form an interlocking system. As Grvt describes its own logic: Unified Margin makes borrowing more efficient. More efficient borrowing makes deposits more productive. More productive deposits attract more capital. More capital deepens liquidity. Deeper liquidity improves execution quality. Better execution attracts more traders. More traders generate more borrowing demand. And the cycle begins again.

On March 12, 2026, Grvt disclosed the key details of its tokenomics, including the distribution, utility, and mechanisms of the $GRVT token. Holders of $GRVT will enjoy reduced fees across perpetual contracts, spot markets, and the payments layer, enhanced DeFi yield multipliers, a share of platform revenue, and priority access to new markets.

Closing

Forty years ago, a technological revolution shattered the information silos of Wall Street and rewrote the rules of finance. Forty years later, Grvt wants to use Unified Margin and a One Balance model to shatter the silos of capital itself.

The entry point is perpetual contracts, the highest-frequency, most unforgiving battlefield in crypto. The weapon is Unified Margin, targeting the chronic inefficiency of the fragmented capital. The foundation of trust is zero-knowledge proofs and self-custody. And the ultimate reach extends toward equities, forex, and commodities, the vast terrain of real-world assets.

This is no longer a story about trading coins. It's a story about assets. The future of finance doesn't belong to those who build more islands. It belongs to those who can connect all the islands into a continent.

Original Article (Chinese) Publish on BlockBeats

Earn on Equity has been one of Grvt's differentiating and most loved features. The ability to earn real yield on your trading collateral without giving up custody, and without moving funds off the exchange is something most platforms simply don't offer and cannot offer.

The new updated version of the program keeps everything you love about it: the 11% APY ceiling stays. Your funds stay in your trading account.

What changes is what tasks you need to complete to achieve maximum yield, and this change is the reason this program can exist for the long term.

Our Philosophy

At Grvt, we believe every action you take on the platform should work in your favour. When you trade, you contribute to a more liquid, more vibrant exchange. When you refer a friend, you grow a community that benefits everyone. When you hold positions and stay active, you deepen the platform's ecosystem.

That principle runs through everything we build, our points system, our membership tiers, and now Earn on Equity. The more you participate, the more you benefit. Yield shouldn't be different.

The updated Earn on Equity is the expression of that philosophy applied to rewards: a program where your yield grows alongside the platform, backed by real, sustainable income sources that compound over time.

A Program Built to Scale

The core insight behind the new system is simple: the more people trade on Grvt, the healthier the platform, and the more yield we can sustain and grow for everyone.

Instead of one flat rate, Earn on Equity splits the yield into three layers. Each layer is designed to expand as the platform grows:

Layer 1 — Base Yield: 3.5% APY
Your deposits don't sit idle. Grvt deploys them into battle-tested DeFi yield protocols, starting with Aave V3, with more sources coming, and passes that income back to you as a guaranteed base rate. As Grvt evaluates and adds more yield protocols over time, this base rate has room to grow.

Layer 2 — Referral Bonus: +1% APY
Bring a genuine new trader to Grvt and both of you earn a bonus for the cycle. This layer is sized as a healthy, sustainable acquisition incentive, not an uncapped multiplier.

Layer 3 — Volume Boost: up to +6.5% APY
This is the layer that makes the program built for scale. The more active the Grvt trading community becomes, the more the platform can reward its most engaged traders. Your boost is tied to your own rolling 4-week trading volume, the more you trade, the higher your APY. A growing, active exchange means bigger boosts become sustainable for more users over time.

The three layers add up to a maximum of 11% APY, same ceiling as before.

What This Means for You

With the new system, your yield is a direct function of how much you participate in the platform, not a flat reward for simply being here.

The base rate (3.5% APY) is yours just for trading. It's backed by your deposits being put to work across a growing set of DeFi yield protocols, not drawn from a fixed budget. As Grvt adds more yield sources over time, this floor has room to rise.

Everything above 3.5% is earned through activity. Trade more and the volume boost scales your APY up to 11%. Refer a genuine new trader and both of you get a bonus for the cycle. The more engaged you are, the more you earn, and the ceiling stays at 11% either way.

The previous program paid everyone the same rate regardless of contribution. Now Earn on Equity ties your upside to your participation in the platform's growth. That makes it sustainable to run at scale, and gives Grvt the foundation to deploy funds into more diversified yield sources over the long term, rather than relying on a single subsidy to keep the program alive.

The Road Ahead

Earn on Equity was built to give Grvt traders something most exchanges don't offer: real, meaningful yield on the capital you're already deploying to trade. 

This is just the beginning. As the program and the platform mature, we'll be expanding the base yield layer to include tokenized real-world asset (RWA) yields, bringing institutional-grade income sources on-chain and directly into your trading account. And as we connect to more yield protocols and liquidity networks, the range of sources powering your base rate will only broaden.

Every step is in the same direction: more yield, more resilience, more ways for your capital to work for you, all without leaving Grvt.

Real-world asset perpetual contracts (RWA perps) are the fastest-growing product category in crypto derivatives. They let you trade synthetic exposure to commodities, forex pairs, equities, and even Treasuries using perpetual futures, all from a crypto wallet. No brokerage account, no market hours, no custody of the underlying asset.

By early 2026, perpetual DEX volumes alone surpassed $1.2 trillion per month, with RWA perps capturing an increasingly large share. Coinbase Ventures, Delphi Digital, and other major players have flagged RWA perps as a defining theme for 2026. If you trade crypto derivatives and haven't looked at RWA perps yet, you're leaving optionality on the table.

If you want to know how to trade RWA perps, this guide walks you through everything you need to know, from the basics to a step-by-step trading workflow, key risks, and a platform comparison.

What Are RWA Perps?

RWA perps combine two concepts:

• Real-world assets (RWAs) : traditional financial instruments like gold, crude oil, S&P 500 stocks like Tesla (TSLA), forex pairs (EUR/USD, GBP/JPY), and U.S. Treasuries, represented as tokenized or synthetic assets on-chain.
• Perpetual contracts: derivative contracts with no expiration date that track the price of an underlying asset. Unlike traditional futures, you never need to roll positions.

Put them together: RWA perps are perpetual futures contracts that give you leveraged, synthetic exposure to real-world assets. It is settled entirely in crypto (typically USDC or USDT), tradeable 24/7, and accessible from any crypto wallet.

How They Differ From Traditional Tokenized RWAs

Tokenized RWAs (like tokenized Treasury bonds or on-chain gold) require actual custody of the underlying asset by an issuer. RWA perps skip this entirely. They use price oracles to track the real-world price and settle profits and losses in stablecoins. This means faster listing of new assets, no custody overhead, and the ability to go both long and short with leverage.

Funding Rates Keep Prices Anchored

Like any perpetual contract, RWA perps use a funding rate mechanism to keep the contract price aligned with the oracle price of the underlying asset. When the perp trades above the oracle price, longs pay shorts. When it trades below, shorts pay longs. This creates a continuous arbitrage incentive that keeps prices tight.

Why Trade RWA Perps?

RWA perps aren't just a novelty. They solve real problems for crypto-native traders who want broader market exposure.

1. Access Traditional Markets From a Crypto Wallet

Want to short EUR/USD or go long crude oil? Traditionally, that requires a forex broker or commodities account with KYC, minimum deposits, and platform lock-in. RWA perps let you access these markets directly from your existing crypto wallet and margin. One account, one collateral pool, every market.

2. Trade 24/7 — Even When Traditional Markets Are Closed

U.S. equity markets close at 4 PM ET. Forex has weekend gaps. Commodities have session breaks. RWA perps trade around the clock, 365 days a year. If news breaks on a Sunday night, you can act on it immediately instead of waiting for Monday's open.

3. Go Long or Short With Leverage

Most tokenized RWA products only let you go long. You can only buy and hold. RWA perps give you the full derivatives toolkit: long, short, leverage (typically 5x–50x depending on the asset), stop-losses, take-profits, and limit orders. You can hedge, speculate, or run delta-neutral strategies across both crypto and traditional asset classes.

4. Capital Efficiency

Because RWA perps are synthetic, no one needs to custody barrels of oil or stock certificates. They're extremely capital efficient. You can deploy the same USDC collateral across crypto perps, commodity perps, and forex perps within a single platform. On exchanges with portfolio margin, your positions offset each other, reducing total margin requirements.

5. Portfolio Diversification

Crypto markets are highly correlated. When BTC drops, most altcoins follow. RWA perps let you diversify into uncorrelated assets, gold, oil, bonds, forex, without leaving the crypto ecosystem. This is particularly powerful for hedging: go long gold perps as a hedge against a risk-off move in crypto, for example.

How to Trade RWA Perps: Step-by-Step

Here is a practical step-by-step walkthrough on how to trade RWA perps for beginners and experienced crypto traders alike.

Step 1: Choose a Platform

Select a platform that supports RWA perpetual contracts. Key factors to evaluate:

• Asset coverage. Does it list the RWA markets you want (forex, commodities, equities, indices)?
• Liquidity and spreads. Thin order books mean higher slippage, especially on less popular RWA pairs.
• Leverage options. Typical range is 5x–50x for RWA perps, lower than crypto perps due to underlying asset volatility profiles.
• Custody model. CEX, DEX, or hybrid? Self-custody matters if you're managing significant capital.
• Fee structure. Maker/taker fees, funding rate spreads, and withdrawal fees all eat into returns.

We compare the major platforms in detail below.

Step 2: Fund Your Account

Most RWA perp platforms accept USDC or USDT as collateral. The typical flow:

1. Connect your wallet (MetaMask, Rabby, or WalletConnect-compatible wallet) or create an account on a centralized platform.
2. Deposit stablecoins. On DEX platforms, this usually means bridging USDC to the relevant L2 (Arbitrum, zkSync, etc.).
3. Your deposited stablecoins become your available margin for opening positions.

Step 3: Select Your Market

Navigate to the trading interface and select an RWA perp market. Common categories include:

• Commodities. Gold (XAU/USD), Silver (XAG/USD), Crude Oil (WTI), Natural Gas
• Forex. EUR/USD, GBP/USD, USD/JPY, AUD/USD
• Equities. AAPL, TSLA, NVDA, SPY (S&P 500 index)
• Fixed Income. U.S. Treasury yields, bond indices

Step 4: Set Your Position Parameters

Before executing a trade, configure:

• Direction. Long (betting price goes up) or Short (betting price goes down).
• Position size. The notional value of your trade. Start small while learning a new asset class.
• Leverage. Higher leverage amplifies both gains and losses. For RWA perps, 5x–10x is a sensible starting range.
• Order type. Market order (execute immediately at best available price), Limit order (execute at your specified price or better), or Stop order (trigger at a specified price level).

Step 5: Manage Risk

This is where most traders either succeed or blow up. Before clicking "confirm":

• Set a stop-loss. Decide your maximum acceptable loss before entering the trade. Place a stop-loss order at that level. Non-negotiable.
• Set a take-profit. Know your target. Greed without a plan is how winners become losers.
• Size appropriately. A common rule: risk no more than 1–2% of your total account on a single trade.
• Monitor funding rates. If you're paying funding, your position has a carrying cost. A 0.05% funding rate paid every 8 hours compounds to ~6.7% per month. Factor this in. (Learn more about Grvt Funding Rate Mechanism.)

Step 6: Monitor and Close

Once your position is open:

• Watch your unrealized P&L and margin ratio.
• Adjust stop-loss and take-profit levels as the trade develops.
• Be aware of upcoming events that affect your underlying, FOMC meetings for forex/bonds, OPEC decisions for oil, earnings for equities.
• Close manually or let your TP/SL orders execute automatically.

Key Risks of Trading RWA Perps

RWA perps are powerful instruments, but they come with risks that are distinct from standard crypto perps.

1. Oracle Risk

RWA perps rely on price oracles to determine the value of the underlying asset. If an oracle is delayed, manipulated, or provides stale data, especially during volatile traditional market sessions, you can get liquidated on a price that doesn't reflect reality. Different platforms handle this differently: some use a median of multiple oracle feeds, others use order book-derived mark prices as a safeguard.

2. Off-Market Hours Gaps

While RWA perps trade 24/7, the underlying assets don't. U.S. stocks close every night. Forex is closed on weekends. When the underlying market reopens, accumulated price pressure is released instantaneously, creating a "gap" that can blow through stop-losses or trigger mass liquidations. Some platforms use synthetic pricing (exponential moving averages) during off-hours, but this introduces its own manipulation surface.

3. Liquidity Risk

RWA perps are newer and generally less liquid than major crypto perps like BTC or ETH. Wider spreads, thinner order books, and higher slippage are common, especially on smaller platforms or less popular asset pairs. Always check order book depth before sizing into a position.

4. Regulatory Uncertainty

Synthetic exposure to stocks and commodities sits in a legal gray area in many jurisdictions. Platforms offering equity perps may face regulatory action, which could result in sudden market closures, forced position liquidations, or restricted access for users in certain countries. Stay informed about your jurisdiction's stance.

5. Smart Contract Risk

On decentralized platforms, your funds interact with smart contracts. Bugs, exploits, or governance attacks can result in loss of funds. Use platforms that have undergone rigorous audits, have bug bounty programs, and have been battle-tested with meaningful TVL over time.

6. Funding Rate Drag

Holding a position long-term means paying or receiving funding rates every 8 hours. In trending markets, funding can consistently work against you, longs pay in bullish markets, shorts pay in bearish markets. If you're holding a position for days or weeks, model your funding costs before entering.

RWA Perps Platforms Compared: Where to Trade in 2026

Here's how the major platforms stack up for RWA perp trading.

Hyperliquid

Hyperliquid is the dominant perpetual DEX by volume ($739B+ monthly by early 2026). Its HIP-3 upgrade introduced permissionless perp listings, enabling anyone to deploy RWA perp markets.

• Strengths: deep liquidity on major pairs, fast execution, established ecosystem.
• Weaknesses: newer RWA pairs may have thin liquidity, fully on-chain architecture means all trades are public.

Ostium

Ostium is purpose-built for RWA perps, offering commodities, forex, and equity index perpetuals on Arbitrum. It uses a liquidity pool model with oracle-based pricing.

• Strengths: focused RWA coverage, clean UX, gasless smart wallet onboarding.
• Weaknesses: oracle-dependent pricing model, newer platform with less battle-testing.

dYdX

dYdX runs its own appchain with a traditional order book model. It has expanded into RWA perps with select forex and commodity pairs.

• Strengths: mature platform, strong decentralization, familiar order book interface.
• Weaknesses: smaller RWA asset selection compared to specialized platforms.

Centralized Exchanges (Bitget, Bybit, OKX)

Major CEXs are launching RWA index perpetuals and individual asset perps. Bitget, for example, launched the first RWA index perpetual with 10x leverage.

• Strengths: deep liquidity, institutional infrastructure, fiat on-ramps.
• Weaknesses: custodial (not your keys), potential for regulatory-driven market restrictions.

Grvt

Grvt takes a hybrid approach, combining the self-custody guarantees of a DEX with the speed and UX of a centralized exchange. Built on ZKSync with ZK-powered settlement, Grvt 2026 roadmap includes expanding perpetual contracts for global stocks, forex, and commodities as part of a unified trading layer.

Currently, Grvt already supports a wide range of live RWA perp markets, including commodities like Gold (XAU) and Silver (XAG), high-demand equities like Amazon, Tesla, and Robinhood, and recently added index ETF perps such as EWJ (iShares MSCI Japan) and EWY (iShares MSCI South Korea).

What sets it apart is a single programmable balance that simultaneously serves as margin, earns yield, and maintains spot exposure. This means your collateral works harder across every market. For traders who want institutional-grade infrastructure without giving up custody of their funds, Grvt is already live and expanding.

Start trading RWA perps on Grvt →

Getting Started: Your First RWA Perp Trade

If you've traded crypto perps before, RWA perps will feel familiar. If you haven't, here's how to trade RWA perps on Grvt:

1. Create your Grvt account. Sign up at grvt.io — the onboarding is wallet-based, so no lengthy KYC process. Connect your wallet and you're in.
2. Start with a familiar asset. Gold (XAU/USD) or EUR/USD are good first RWA perps because they're liquid, have tight spreads, and you probably already follow their price action.
3. Use low leverage. 3x–5x max while you learn how the asset behaves on the platform.
4. Trade during overlapping market hours. When both the underlying traditional market and the crypto market are active, you get the best liquidity and tightest oracle pricing.
5. Watch the funding rate. Before entering, check the current funding rate and its recent history. If funding is heavily negative or positive, that tells you about market positioning and your carrying cost.
6. Keep position sizes small. Until you understand the liquidity profile and slippage characteristics of each RWA pair, trade conservatively.

RWA perps represent a genuine expansion of what's possible in crypto trading — synthetic, leveraged access to the world's largest asset classes, all from a single wallet. The infrastructure is still maturing, but for traders who understand derivatives mechanics and manage risk deliberately, this is a category worth learning now.

Start trading RWA perps on Grvt →

If you've ever held Bitcoin on one exchange, stablecoins in a DeFi protocol, and tokenized stocks somewhere else entirely, you already understand the problem that unified margin is designed to solve. Your capital is working in fragments. Unified margin puts it back together.

The Problem: Fragmented Capital

Traditional crypto exchanges operate on isolated margin systems. Each market, perpetual contracts, spot, options, requires its own dedicated collateral pool. If you want to trade a Bitcoin perpetual while your stablecoins sit idle in a yield protocol, those are two separate positions, two separate accounts, and two separate pools of capital that cannot talk to each other.

This fragmentation has a real cost. Every dollar sitting as unused margin in one account is a dollar that isn't earning yield somewhere else. Every asset transfer between platforms costs fees and time. And every missed opportunity represents a return you could see but couldn't reach. A trade you couldn't take because your capital was locked in the wrong place

The industry has a name for this: capital drag.

What Unified Margin Actually Means

Unified margin is a single, shared collateral pool that covers all of a trader's positions across all markets on a platform. Instead of siloing assets by product or market, every asset a trader deposits, Bitcoin, Ethereum, stablecoins, and increasingly tokenized real-world assets like Treasuries or equities, lives in one unified balance.

That balance does several things simultaneously. It backs open trading positions across multiple markets. It can generate yield passively through integration with lending protocols. And it updates in real time as asset prices move, meaning a trader's collateral value is always current, not frozen at the moment of deposit.

The result is that capital stops being a static resource that gets allocated once and forgotten. It becomes dynamic, always deployed, always productive.

Unified Margin vs. Cross Margin vs. Isolated Margin

These three terms are often confused. Here is the practical difference:

Isolated margin assigns a fixed amount of collateral to a single position. If that position is liquidated, only that collateral is at risk. It is the most conservative model, but also the least capital efficient.

Cross margin shares collateral across multiple positions within the same product type, for example, across several perpetual contract positions. It is more efficient than isolated, but still limited to one asset type or one market category.

Unified margin goes further. It shares collateral across all products, all markets, and multiple asset types at once. A trader's Bitcoin, stablecoins, and tokenized stocks all count toward the same margin pool, regardless of what they are trading or where on the platform.

Why It Has Taken So Long to Build

Unified margin is technically harder than it sounds. The risk engine underpinning it must continuously price a portfolio of heterogeneous assets, model the correlations between them, stress-test the combined position against adverse market scenarios, and trigger liquidations accurately and instantly when thresholds are breached. On isolated systems, this is a simple calculation. On a unified system, it is a continuously running, real-time model.

Most exchanges have not built that infrastructure. The ones moving in this direction tend to be platforms with deep institutional trading backgrounds, where portfolio margining, the TradFi equivalent of unified margin, has been standard practice for decades.

The Infrastructure Breakthrough: ZKSync Atlas

For most of crypto's history, unified margin has been an idea that outpaced the infrastructure available to support it. Executing it properly requires a system that can process complex, real-time portfolio calculations at high speed while settling every transaction with the security guarantees of a blockchain. Until recently, those two requirements existed in tension. You could have speed, or you could have on-chain trust, but not both at scale.

ZKSync Atlas changes that equation. By advancing the capabilities of zero-knowledge proof technology, Atlas makes it possible to run the kind of sophisticated, cross-asset risk engine that unified margin demands without sacrificing settlement security or forcing users to give up custody of their funds. It is the infrastructure layer that makes on-chain unified margin viable as a production system rather than a theoretical one. For the first time, the technical constraints that kept unified margin confined to centralized exchanges are beginning to fall away.

How Grvt Enables Unified Margin

Grvt, the private first perpDEX built by former Goldman Sachs and Meta engineers and operating on ZKSync, is among the first platforms to put unified margin into practice .It goes one step further than simply pooling collateral. Grvt's approach is built on a straightforward but powerful idea: margin should never sit idle.

The starting point is what Grvt calls Earn on Equity. When traders deposit assets into their unified balance, those funds don’t sit idle. Stablecoins are automatically deployed into DeFi lending protocols, starting with Aave, generating up to 11% annualized yield. When margin is needed, funds are instantly recalled and activated. Capital earns until the exact moment it’s used.

On Grvt’s roadmap, non-stablecoin assets like Bitcoin will become eligible as collateral while continuing to appreciate with market movement. Tokenized TradFi assets will follow the same model, serving as both investment and margin. Every asset is designed to remain productive.

This is where Grvt’s unified margin stands apart. It’s not just shared collateral. It’s continuously earning and compounding between trades. For TradFi users, it mirrors portfolio margining. For crypto-native traders, it introduces something new: a single balance where capital is always at work.

At Grvt, our vision is predicated on a simple but powerful principle: capital must remain continuously in motion to achieve maximum efficiency. Idle assets represent missed opportunities. Building on our recent announcement of the upcoming integration with Aave protocol, today we want to unpack the underlying mechanics of the infrastructure that makes this integration possible, also known as the Grvt Yield Layer. 

We engineered this system to solve a critical challenge: automating idle capital deployment for maximum yield without introducing friction. Crucially, the Yield Layer delivers this seamless user experience while maintaining rigorous security standards and preserving absolute, non-custodial asset sovereignty for our users.

How the Grvt Yield Layer works

To understand the Yield Layer, you have to look under the hood at how Grvt manages its architecture.

Our exchange operates across two layers: Ethereum (L1) as the settlement layer, and Grvt's validium private chain (L2) where your trades happen in real time.

Previously, the platform's TVL sat dormant inside ZKSync's native vault contract on L1. With the introduction of the Yield Layer, we will deploy a new smart contract: the Grvt DeFi Vault. 

This vault acts as an intelligent bridge. Instead of letting the L1 collateral gather dust, the smart contract automatically deploys them into trusted L1 DeFi protocols to earn yield.

With the Yield Layer, the architecture evolves as follows:

• Most TVL moves into the Grvt DeFi Vault, from where it is deployed into L1 protocols (e.g. Aave) to earn yield.
• The L2 trading contract retains an efficient operational balance, enough for day-to-day withdrawals.
• An automated DeFi Vault Manager Service continuously monitors balance levels across both layers and rebalances funds to keep things running smoothly.

What Happens When You Want to Withdraw?

Capital efficiency is great, but user access to funds is paramount. So, how does the Yield Layer affect withdrawals?

Most withdrawals now take place outside of Ethereum L1 on our supported chains (e.g. Arbitrum). For all these withdrawals, operations remain near-instant via our bridging partners.

For withdrawals to Ethereum L1, the vast majority of operations will remain near-instant. The L2 chain will have sufficient operational funds to cover the request, seamlessly transferring your assets from L2 to L1 and finalizing automatically.

In rare cases of high demand, a very large withdrawal request might temporarily exceed the L2 operational balance. If this happens, your withdrawal isn't rejected. It simply enters a short, automated queue:

1. Your withdrawal is accepted and confirmed immediately. Your funds are hard-reserved at that exact moment.
2. The request enters a First-In, First-Out (FIFO) queue with a strict 2 hours enforced deadline.
3. The automated system triggers a top-up from the L1 vault, moves the funds to L2, and clears the queue.

Your withdrawal is programmatically guaranteed. We’ve even implemented a fail-safe chain halt mechanism: the chain will literally pause to resolve the queue rather than miss a withdrawal deadline. You might notice a slightly longer processing time in these rare instances, but your finalization is absolute.

Uncompromising Security

Integrating with DeFi requires a cautious and security centric approach. We didn't just build a bridge to DeFi protocols; we’ve also built a fortress around it. The Yield Layer operates under three strict security pillars:

1. Strict Whitelisting: The Grvt Vault Administrator must explicitly approve any yield protocol before a single cent is deployed. There are no rogue, untested integrations.
2. Absolute Fund Isolation: The L1 DeFi Vault is hardcoded to only move funds between the L2 Exchange Contract and approved yield protocols. It is programmatically impossible for the vault to send user funds to an arbitrary external address.
3. Global Pause Mechanism: In the event of extreme market volatility or an anomaly, authorized administrators can instantly hit the brakes and stop all new capital allocations. Importantly, this pause never blocks our ability to pull funds back to safety.

Ethereum Alignment and Synergy

Hosting over $166B in DeFi TVL and a stablecoin supply exceeding $200B, Ethereum represents the deepest, most concentrated pool of on-chain liquidity in existence. Grvt Yield Layer architecture is perfectly aligned to synergize with this massive ecosystem.

Every blue-chip protocol, whether it's Aave, Morpho, Pendle, Ethena, or major stablecoin issuers, represents an accessible market surface that Grvt can tap into directly.

By building and maintaining risk-assessed integrations with these industry giants, the Yield Layer transforms Ethereum's fragmented yield opportunities into a single, cohesive experience. As these integrations compound, Grvt effectively becomes the ultimate utility layer, allowing our users to effortlessly tap into the highest DeFi liquidity available, all from one secure balance.

An Exchange architecture designed to pay you

The Grvt Yield Layer represents another step forward in building our exchange infrastructure to make sure it pays you. By safely putting idle capital to work do you, we are building a more robust, sustainable, and efficient platform for all our users, without compromising a single ounce of the speed and security you rely on.

Read the detailed FAQ here: https://help.grvt.io/en/articles/14107072-grvt-yield-layer

Grvt  is built on the premise that DeFi must deliver practical advantages for users to achieve mainstream adoption. These advantages should go beyond what traditional brokerages, fintechs, and exchanges can offer. They should also extend beyond the core properties of present-day DEXes; self-custody, transparency, and permissionless access. Grvt, the exchange designed to pay you, centers its value proposition on a one-balance system that maximizes capital productivity. The same capital can earn yield on Ethereum while simultaneously serving as trading and investing margin. 

Today, we are excited to give our community a major update on the next milestone in our journey: the launch of the $GRVT token. 

$GRVT will be the core coordination mechanism that routes benefits of this systemic capital efficiency directly back to our users. We are pioneering a radical new standard: an exchange designed to pay you.

The $GRVT Token

Supply

Grvt will have a fixed supply of 1,000,000,000 tokens (1 Billion $GRVT). There will be no inflation beyond this cap.

Allocation

The $GRVT token will serve as the membership key to the entire Grvt ecosystem. Holding the token drastically improves the user experience across all platform verticals:

• Trade: better trading fees, increased margin efficiency and pro trading features.
• Invest: higher allocation to GLP vault, early and priority access to new vaults.
• Earn: higher APY and allocation, lockup rewards, and principal insurance
• Pay: better FX and on/off ramp fees, cashback in $GRVT on payments with Grvt Card.

Users can secure these benefits through two equivalent pathways:

1. Fiat Subscription: A flat monthly fee paid in USD.
2. Token Staking: Staking $GRVT at a multiple of the annual subscription cost, which concurrently earns yield on the locked tokens.

The Economic Model: Lessons from Traditional Markets

To engineer a sustainable and high-retention membership program that creates lasting demand for $GRVT, we studied what actually works across industries. Some of the world's most valuable companies in retail, e-commerce, and fintech share a common playbook: they operate their core business at maximum efficiency, then pass the majority of that value back to their members through lower prices, better rates, and exclusive perks. What makes these programs so sticky is compounding utility, every time the platform expands into a new vertical, the membership becomes more valuable without costing the member anything extra. Modern fintech platforms apply the same logic, rewarding subscribers with superior rates and priority access as their product suite grows.

$GRVT applies this proven principle across its Trade, Invest, Earn, and Pay verticals, but with a crypto-native advantage: holding or staking $GRVT is the key to access the membership program. Token holders receive better trading fees, higher yields, increased AUM caps, and priority access to new products and as GRVT grows and adds new verticals, those benefits compound automatically. It's a membership that grows with the platform.

Value Accrual and Strategic Buybacks

The platform's tokenomics are explicitly structured so that 100% of the protocol's economic surplus ultimately accrues to $GRVT holders. Generated revenue is systematically routed into two primary channels:

• Ecosystem Reinvestment: Capital is deployed into R&D, market expansion, operational infrastructure, and the continuous enhancement of the Grvt platform. Major capital allocations and investments are determined in consultation with the community.
• Token Buybacks: The remaining economic surplus funds systematic $GRVT buybacks, executed through a strategic combination of regular Time-Weighted Average Price (TWAP) purchases and opportunistic market buys.

This dual-channel allocation closely mirrors traditional, high-growth enterprise capital allocation. By continually reinvesting in superior products and lower fees, the Grvt drives deeper user adoption and revenue growth.

The Foundational TAM of $GRVT

As the scope of Grvt extends across our trade, invest, earn and payments verticals, the Total Addressable Market (TAM) for $GRVT also expands beyond a Perp DEX. Grvt’s architecture, powered by the ZkSync stack, allows us to extend our TAM by tapping directly into the largest concentration of on-chain financial activity in existence: Ethereum L1.

Ethereum hosts $166B+ in DeFi TVL across 58+ protocols, stablecoin supply has crossed $200B. For Grvt, every one of these protocols and every one of these assets represents an accessible market surface. Blue-chip protocols such as Aave, Morpho, Pendle, Ethena and major stablecoin issuers can get direct integrations built and maintained by Grvt, making Ethereum's entire financial surface accessible from one balance on one platform.

As these integrations compound, Grvt will become the utility layer where Ethereum's fragmented markets are aggregated into a single venue across Trade, Invest, Earn, and Pay. 

$GRVT will be the token that captures the value flowing through it.

Updated TGE Timeline

As we execute our roadmap towards realizing Grvt’s ultimate vision, our top priority is making sure the $GRVT token launch is a defining moment for our community, one that rewards your support, deepens your engagement, and sets the stage for everything ahead. 

To ensure $GRVT immediately captures the full value of the platform and launches into a thriving, highly liquid ecosystem from day one, we have decided to move the target date for $GRVT TGE to the end of June 2026.

This updated timeline is a strategic alignment to ensure we hit the market with maximum impact. We are setting up for a successful token launch by focusing on three core pillars of readiness in the coming months:

Product

For $GRVT to thrive, it needs to power a fully realized platform that solves the user capital productivity problem. In the coming months we will focus on creating a comprehensive ecosystem that captures the complete capital flow from one unified balance:

• Earn: deployment of Grvt’s Yield Layer infrastructure, starting with our upcoming Aave integration.
• Pay: Frictionless fiat integration, Real-world utility through cards and payments.
• Trade: Spot markets going live by the end of April.

User Traction

The GRVT ecosystem has been steadily growing and our foot is still firmly on the gas. Our team is relentlessly focused on driving further expansion to ensure $GRVT launches at the absolute peak of its momentum.

Since the start of Season 2, we have laid a massive foundation, but we are far from done. Here are the milestones we've achieved so far

Token Demand

We are constructing the $GRVT supply and demand to ensure immediate and sustained buying pressure for $GRVT. Here is what we are planning to do to achieve sustainable demand from day one:

• Buyback Program: As mentioned above, we will implement a systematic approach to reinvesting ecosystem value and driving token utility.
• Staking Features: We will reward long-term conviction through comprehensive point and token staking.
• Institutional Backing: We will raise capital from institutional investors to secure Day 1 anchor buyers
• CEX Listings: we will work on multiple listings across tier 1 exchanges.

Season 2 Extension: A Larger Slice of the Pie

More time to build shouldn't mean diluted rewards or stretched patience for our community. Our core philosophy is that the exchange is designed to pay you, and this updated timeline must reflect that.

We are extending Season 2 to bridge the gap to TGE, and we are scaling the rewards proportionally to ensure your time and capital are continuously respected: Season 2 token allocation is increasing from 12% to 18% of the total supply.

All mechanics function identically to the current Season 2 setup:

• Grvt continues to emit points weekly based on trading volume.
• Ways to earn points remain the same: Trading Volume, Open Interest, Liquidations, Holding TVL, Referrals, and Providing Liquidity (maker trades).
• The weightage between these categories is unchanged.

We're building a product that has never existed before, an exchange truly designed to pay you. None of it would be possible without your trust, your feedback, and your conviction. Thank you for being on this journey with us. The best of Grvt is yet to come. 

Animoca Brands Research has published an in-depth report titled The Perp DEX Gold Rush: The Great Momentum of On-Chain Pivot, examining the structural forces reshaping on-chain derivatives trading. Among the next-generation platforms shaping this new era, Grvt is highlighted as a standout player, recognized for its institutional-grade architecture, yield-bearing margin system, and its vision of becoming a full-spectrum on-chain brokerage.

Below, we unpack the key findings from the report and what they mean for the future of decentralized derivatives, and for Grvt's place within it.

If you’re ready to experience this shift firsthand, start trading on Grvt and see how the model works in practice.

The Perp DEX Sector: From Experiment to Infrastructure

The report's central thesis is unambiguous: decentralized perpetual exchanges have crossed from the experimental periphery into the structural core of crypto markets. In 2025 alone, the top 10 Perp DEX protocols processed $7.9 trillion in trading volume, more than tripling the $1.5 trillion recorded in 2024. Simultaneously, the DEX-to-CEX perpetual trading ratio climbed from 2.7% to 11.7% within a single year. These are not speculative projections; they are the measured outcomes of a sector reaching institutional maturity.

Several macro forces are accelerating this momentum.

The trust deficit left by centralized exchange failures remains a primary driver. The collapse of FTX in 2022 fundamentally altered trader psychology. What began as a fear of insolvency has evolved into a principled rejection of regulatory capture. Users increasingly view centralized exchanges as extensions of state compliance infrastructure rather than neutral trading venues. The record fines levied against Binance ($4.3B) and OKX ($504M) reinforced this perception, pushing capital toward self-custodial, permissionless alternatives.

Regulatory pressure in major markets compounded this shift. The EU's MiCA framework forced Tier-1 CEXs to delist non-compliant stablecoins, most notably USDT, and restrict access to high-leverage derivative products for European traders. This "Compliance Squeeze" effectively evicted trillions in notional volume from centralized venues, creating a structural demand for permissionless alternatives. On-chain protocols responded by capturing the "long tail" of assets and products that compliance-bound platforms could no longer legally offer.

Demographic change is a quieter but equally significant catalyst. A new generation of traders, who are crypto-native, comfortable with self-custody, and skeptical of legacy intermediaries, treats on-chain interaction as the default mode of finance. Wallets like Phantom, Backpack, and Rabby are no longer passive asset viewers; they are active trading terminals, with platforms like Hyperliquid enabling wallet-native perp trading through builder codes that route orders and generate revenue directly within the wallet interface.

The Three Phases of Perp DEX Infrastructure

The report traces a clear evolutionary arc in trading infrastructure, organized into three distinct phases, each solving the limitations of the last.

Phase 1 (2021–2023): The Liquidity Pool Era. AMM-adapted designs like GMX and Drift prioritized accessibility but were constrained by passive liquidity, high latency (400ms–2s), and oracle arbitrage vulnerabilities, leaving professional market makers without meaningful participation mechanisms.

Phase 2 (Late 2023): The Hybrid Orderbook Era. dYdX v4 decoupled matching from settlement, housing the order book in validator RAM while committing only final outcomes on-chain. Throughput scaled to 1.5K–10K TPS and unified margin became possible, but off-chain matching remained a structural compromise.

Phase 3 (2025–Present): The Purpose-Built Blockchain Era.  Full vertical integration. Protocols like Hyperliquid and Grvt embed matching directly into purpose-built chains, delivering sub-second finality, throughputs of 200K–600K TPS, and CEX-parity execution, entirely on-chain, with no custodial trade-off.

Market Outlook: The Trajectory to Flippening

Animoca Brands Research projects the DEX/CEX perpetual trading ratio to continue its structural climb. Under a conservative linear scenario, the ratio is expected to exceed 20% by end-2026 and reach 40% by 2028. 

Under an optimistic, exponential scenario, DEX perp volume could surpass CEX volume entirely, reaching a 199% ratio by end-2028. Monthly protocol revenue across the sector, which scaled from negligible levels in late 2024 to approximately $190 million in November 2025, underscores that this is no longer a volume story alone; it is increasingly a sustainable fee-generation story.

The revenue model is becoming multi-layered: trade execution fees, liquidation penalties, leverage spreads, vault management fees, and for protocols operating sovereign app-chains gas fees and MEV capture.

Grvt: Redefining Capital Productivity in On-Chain Finance

Within this landscape, the report identifies Grvt as a platform building the next frontier of on-chain brokerage not by replicating what centralized finance already offers, but by reimagining what a financial platform can do when capital is always productive, markets are always open, and custody is never compromised.

One Platform. Every Market.

Perpetual derivatives are Grvt's starting point, not its destination. The roadmap extends into spot, FX, commodities, and equities, all on the same margin logic, consolidating what today's platforms force traders to fragment across multiple venues. Distribution scales through Grvt Builder Codes, enabling third-party integrators to route order flow through Grvt's infrastructure, extending reach without fragmenting liquidity.

Capital That Never Sits Idle

On most derivatives platforms, collateral sits dormant, an invisible drag on capital efficiency. Grvt's Unified Margin system eliminates that. A single balance backs active positions and generates yield simultaneously, starting with Aave lending protocol integrated as external yield source. Capital that is always working is the foundation of Grvt's thesis.

Infrastructure Built for Performance and Trust

Grvt operates as the first appchain on the ZKsync Stack, combining an off-chain CLOB with on-chain ZK-rollup settlement to deliver sub-millisecond latency, 600,000 TPS, and full non-custodial security. ZKsync's Validium layer adds Privacy-by-Default, shielding order flow from MEV risk and information leakage. The result is a platform that matches the performance of a centralized exchange without asking traders to surrender control of their assets.

For readers curious to explore further, Grvt is where this model is already live.

The Bigger Picture

The Animoca Brands Research report paints a picture of a sector undergoing genuine structural maturation, moving from hype-driven volume cycles toward sustainable, fee-generating ecosystems that challenge centralized exchanges on every meaningful performance dimension. 

Regulatory pressure, trust deficits, technological convergence, and generational shifts in trader behavior are not temporary tailwinds; they are durable structural forces.

Grvt's positioning within this landscape reflects a clear and deliberate thesis: that the next frontier of on-chain finance is not simply about where trading happens, but about how efficiently capital works while it does. Every design decision, from Unified Margin to composable yield integrations to a full-spectrum product roadmap, is oriented toward the same outcome: a platform where no dollar of capital is ever idle, and no market is ever out of reach.

Read the full report here.

This post references findings from Animoca Brands Research's report, "The Perp DEX Gold Rush: The Great Momentum of On-Chain Pivot." The report is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.

Run market making strategies on Grvt thanks to the integration with Arbitral. You can now run market making trades 24/7, capture ecosystem incentives, and manage inventory risk. All at once, all on autopilot.

Institutional Market Making. For Everyone.

Arbital lets you deploy systematic market making strategies without writing a single line of code. Arbitral configurable trade engine makes it simple to define your execution mode, directional bias, inventory limits, and loss thresholds.

You set the logic, and Arbital handles the execution around the clock. Your capital competes in the order book while earning boosted points and reduced fees through Arbital integration with Grvt.

What this unlocks for you

• Fee-Aware Execution: Arbital optimizes your net execution after fees through maker-only order placement, volume-aware routing, and intelligent spread management.
• Engine-Level Risk Management: Keep your capital protected with built-in inventory caps, directional bias controls, and realized-loss circuit breakers enforced directly at the engine level.
• Stay in control: Monitor your performance with a real-time dashboard that tracks your live PnL, volume generated, and budget usage.

Get started now

Deploy your market making strategy on Grvt today with Arbitral.

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Global financial markets are moving onto crypto-native rails as infrastructure, regulation, and institutional participation mature. Crypto rails make programmable proof of ownership possible, meaning one balance can work across services without custodial silos. Most platforms today ignore this, and focus only on expanding capital utility (more assets, markets, and instruments) without improving capital productivity. 

The result: your money does one job at a time, and every time you switch functions you pay in fees, delays, and lost yield. We call this capital drag.

Grvt is designed to eliminate that tradeoff by maximizing capital productivity. The same deposit can simultaneously earn yield, back a margin position, and even stay exposed to spot price appreciation. 

This is the natural outcome of a system where capital remains continuously productive, and that’s what we mean by “the exchange designed to pay you”. 

Before reading on, ask yourself one question: how much of my deposited capital is actually working right now? This roadmap is our plan to close that gap across every stage of your capital lifecycle.

The Capital Lifecycle

Today, users’ capital lives in different apps, different protocols, and different accounts across stages of the capital lifecycle. Crypto expanded access but it didn’t eliminate fragmentation.

Grvt aims to maximise capital efficiency by unifying the entire capital lifecycle around a single programmable balance. Instead of managing six apps for six stages, you manage one balance that moves fluidly across all of them, earning while posted as margin, staying productive while idle, remaining usable while in motion.

Here’s what we will build to make it real:

• A yield layer with Prime Brokerage Lending and L1 Yield integrations, so your deposits earn from the moment they land.
• An Investment layer with high-quality managed vaults and institutional-grade investment strategies.
• A multi-market trading venue covering spot and perps across both crypto and TradFi, all from the same account.
• A payments layer so capital can enter, exit, and move without interrupting productivity

Each layer is underpinned by a unified margin system that lets the same asset earn yield, back trades, and hold spot exposure, simultaneously.The roadmap below walks you through how we will build each one.

The Roadmap

Earn: Turning Deposits into Working Capital

Unified Margin: Ending the Earn vs. Trade Tradeoff

Historically, “earn” and “trade” compete for the same asset. USDT in lending cannot serve as margin. USDT posted as margin earns nothing. 

Unified Margin dissolves that boundary. BTC, ETH, stablecoins, and tokenized RWAs can simultaneously:

• Serve as trading collateral across perps and spot
• Generate yield through integrated lending infrastructure
• Remain exposed to spot price appreciation

And as tokenized RWAs mature, treasuries, equities, commodities, they plug directly into Unified Margin. Yield-bearing, margin-eligible, all within one balance. The range of what counts as productive capital keeps expanding.

Prime Brokerage Lending: Yield Tied to Real Trading Demand

A Grvt-native, under-collateralized lending marketplace built on smart contracts, Prime Brokerage Lending connects deposits directly to trading demand inside the venue.

Here’s how it will work: Grvt provides 80% of the loan, the trader puts up 20% equity. The trader’s own capital is the first-loss tranche, it absorbs losses before depositor funds are exposed. If the trader's maintenance margin falls below the required threshold, the position is liquidated automatically by Grvt's controlled liquidation engine.

Yield becomes structurally tied to real market activity inside the same system. “Earn” becomes the fuel for “trade”.

L1 Liquidity Expansion: Broader Yield Reach

To maximize the yield on users’ trading balances, we will expand connectivity across Layer 1 protocols through ZKsync Atlas. We are starting with Aave in March and we will be integrating with more DeFi liquidity sources, giving deposited capital gains access to yield opportunities beyond what’s available inside Grvt alone.

Your capital stays in one place whilst its productive reach extends across protocols. Grvt becomes a trustless yield aggregation layer that you can reuse for margin. 

Trade: One Venue. Every Market

TradFi Perpetuals: Global Equities, FX, and Commodities

We will extend perpetual trading beyond crypto into: 

• Global equities
• Foreign exchange pairs
• Commodities.

Spot Markets

Phase One: Majors with Professional Liquidity

We will launch spots on major crypto pairs, backed by professional market makers ensuring deep, reliable liquidity, tight spreads, and predictable execution from day one. From this foundation we will expand into crypto alts and tokenized real-world assets at a later stage.

Phase Two: Community-Driven Expansion

Beyond curated listings, the process opens to the community. Members stake capital to propose new pairs, staked assets seed initial liquidity, and the community votes to launch markets. Listings become decentralized coordination events, not gatekept approvals.

Invest: From Productive Capital to Autonomous Growth

Inevest is built for capital that wants to work harder without requiring constant attention. We will extend our investment offering by:

• Expanding access to Grvt’s GLP flagship strategy.
• Enriching strategy offerings spanning institutional managers, professional traders, and retail strategists. 
• Enabling AI agents and algorithmic strategies to participate as investment managers within the same framework. 

Pay: Close the Loop

The Capital Lifecycle isn’t complete until capital can enter and exit seamlessly. Beyond earning and trading, Grvt will extend into the most fundamental functions of money: receive it, move it, spend it, without breaking the balance.

We’re building this platform layer in phases:

• P2P Payments: instant, private, QR or link-based payments between Grvt users.
• On/Off Ramps: frictionless on-ramp and off-ramp services via cards and banks.

$GRVT Token

Full tokenomics, including allocation breakdowns, vesting schedules, and distribution mechanics, will be published in March. 

$GRVT will play a critical role in strengthening all layers of the platform: the exchange layer, the yield layer, and the payment layer. Token ownership will give you access to: 

• Better fee rates across perpetuals, spot and payments; 
• Enhanced yield on deposits deployed across DeFi; 
• Protocol revenue share and early access to new markets and products. 

Participation rewards usage: trading volume, payments, TVL, and open interest contribute to better fees, boosted yield, and compounding benefits over time. 

In other words, both holding and using $GRVT will strengthen the exchange's economics, and stronger economics support higher returns for everyone inside the ecosystem.

The Compounding Effect

We’re not building just another feature rich exchange. 

We’re building a system where every layer strengthens the one next to it:

• Unified Margin makes Lending more capital-efficient. 
• Lending makes deposits more productive. 
• Productive deposits attract more capital. 
• More capital deepens liquidity.
• Deeper liquidity improves execution. 
• Better execution attracts more traders. 
• More traders create more lending demand. 
• TradFi and spot markets widen the surface area.
• Payments close the loop. 
• And the cycle continues. 

Everything powered by one simple idea: your money should never sit idle.

And while that future is unfolding, we are already building the exchange that pays you today.

Today, Grvt announces the upgrade of its yield infrastructure by integrating Aave Protocol as a trustless DeFi yield source from Ethereum L1.

This integration is enabled by TokenLogic, a premier service provider and financial architect within the Aave ecosystem. TokenLogic powers the yield optimization layer behind the scenes, ensuring trader to earn optimized yield, maximizing capital efficiency without introducing additional complexity.

With Aave integrated into Grvt’s margin system, user deposits are automatically deployed into DeFi’s most battle-tested lending protocol while remaining fully available for margin trading. The same capital earns yield and supports active positions simultaneously, no lockups, no trade-offs. Just unified capital that works for you by default.

The Engine Behind the Yield

At the core of this integration is the Grvt One Balance Engine, a yield and collateral orchestration system designed to enable stackable yield on both idle and active margin. Trader collateral is treated as a single, continuously productive balance: it accrues yield from Grvt’s native revenue flows while being programmatically deployed into external, battle-tested DeFi protocols, such as Aave. These yield layers are composed without locking capital or fragmenting collateral, preserving real-time margin availability and trading performance.

The architecture is enabled by the ZKSync stack Grvt is built upon, which allows Grvt to securely access Ethereum mainnet liquidity and assets while executing within its own environment.

The result is a single balance that remains continuously yielding and always available for trading.

Aave as a Trustless Yield Source

Built on top of Grvt’s native yield layer, Aave Protocol is the first external protocol to join Grvt’s composable yield stack. Integrated via Aave v3 on Ethereum L1, it provides access to one of DeFi’s deepest and most battle-tested liquidity pools. It extends trader margin into Ethereum-native yield without compromising security or capital availability.

To move beyond passive lending, the integration is optimized by TokenLogic, which supplies the active yield management layer. Capital is initially routed through sGHO (Staked GHO) and dynamically allocated across Aave markets and GHO-related strategies, adapting in real time to capture the best risk-adjusted returns within governance-approved parameters.

How It Will Work:

1. Deposit

You deposit USDT/USDC to your Grvt account (self-custodial, as always).

2. Trustless Tokenization

Your deposit is trustlessly tokenized through our integration layer.

3. Deployment to Aave

Funds are deployed to Aave Protocol on Ethereum L1 via the ZKSync Shared Bridge which provides seamless bridging and state updates, ensuring your capital is always accessible for trading without meaningful latency.

5. One Balance

Your balance simultaneously:

• Earns yield from Aave
• Serves as available margin for trading
• Remains in your self-custodial control

6. Automatic Management

When you open trades, margin is allocated seamlessly. When you close trades, capital returns to earning full yield. All automatic. No manual management required.

Looking Ahead

Aave is Grvt’s first trustless DeFi yield integration from Ethereum L1, with the full rollout expected in early March. It marks the starting point of Grvt’s composable yield stack. Looking ahead, Grvt will continue to integrate additional, battle-tested DeFi protocols to diversify yield sources and strengthen capital efficiency. The principle remains the same: Your capital should work for you by default. No trade-offs. No compromises.

👉 Trade and Earn on Grvt

Your trading strategies can now run 24/7, earn rebates on every maker order, and generate yield on your capital. All at once, all on autopilot.

Planemo Trading is now live on Grvt. Connect your account and trade during the campaign period to unlock Fee Tier Level 3 for one full month!

Automate your strategies without writing a single line of code

Planemo Trading lets you build, backtest, and deploy trading strategies with zero coding. Grid strategies, momentum plays, market-making bots. You set the logic, Planemo handles execution around the clock.

Your automated strategies now run directly on Grvt's order book. That means every trade benefits from the same infrastructure advantages you already get on Grvt, but now without lifting a finger.

What this unlocks for you

• Get paid to trade. Negative maker fees mean you earn a rebate every time your bot places a maker order. Your strategy doesn't just perform. It earns.
• Earn yield while you trade. Your deposited capital generates yield by default, even while it's deployed as margin. Your money works twice.
• Trade with minimal slippage. Grvt's deep liquidity ensures your automated strategies execute cleanly, no matter the size.
• Stay in control. Self-custody means your keys and your capital stay with you. Always.

Partnership Promo: unlock Fee Tier Level 3 for free

For the first month users who connect their Grvt account to Planemo Trading and execute at least one trade during the campaign window will get upgraded to Level 3 Fee Tier.

Campaign period: 16 February – 16 March 2026

Your rates for the full month:

• Maker fee: -0.0008% (you earn on every maker order)
• Taker fee: 0.039%

These rates apply across all Grvt markets, regardless if you are trading via Planemo Trading or not.

Get started now

Connect, deploy your first strategy, and start earning.

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