Merciless Backstab of Hyperliquid, Trove Operations Team Accused of Iranian Background

On January 19, Trove—a project planning to build a perpetual contract DEX focused on leveraged trading of non-traditional assets like collectibles, real-world assets (RWAs), stocks, and prediction markets—originally launched on the Hyperliquid ecosystem and completed an ICO earlier this month, raising roughly $11.5 million. During this period, the community flagged controversies including claims that the project paid KOLs for promotion (with funds flowing to an entertainment platform’s deposit address) and that the ICO fundraising deadline was repeatedly changed. Recently, the project abruptly announced it was ditching the Hyperliquid route to rebuild its entire perp DEX on Solana. At the same time, the Trove team began dumping HYPE. Facing community outrage, the official explanation was that a liquidity provider (LP) closed a 500,000 HYPE position due to "recent negative sentiment," which altered the project’s trajectory. Amid these eyebrow-raising moves, blockchain analyst @eyeonchains analyzed Trove founder unwise’s (@unwisecap) linked social media accounts, noting the Trove operational team likely hails from Iran (possibly even the Kurdish region). The key evidence: unwise’s associated Telegram account includes dozens of groups tied to that region.