Grvt completes $19 million Series A funding round, with investors including ZKsync, Further Ventures, EigenCloud, and others, leading privacy-first on-chain finance and opening a new chapter in the trillion-dollar market.

Grvt, an on-chain privacy decentralized trading platform based on zero-knowledge proof (ZK) technology, announced today the completion of a $19 million Series A funding round. This investment cements Grvt’s position as a pioneer in the blueprint for the future of global finance and accelerates its mission to disrupt the fragmented on-chain financial ecosystem by addressing long-standing industry challenges such as privacy vulnerabilities, security, scalability, and ease of use.

As Wall Street embraces blockchain technology, a new chapter in global finance is being written on-chain. In August this year, Ethereum’s on-chain trading volume surpassed $320 billion, reaching its highest level since mid-2021. Research also predicts that the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector will soar from $3.236 billion in 2025 to over $1.5 trillion by 2034.

However, this potential has yet to be fully realized due to a series of issues emerging on decentralized platforms. These problems include "whale hunting," where large trades are front-run or exploited by sophisticated traders scanning the mempool. Such strategies result in billions of dollars in losses annually due to maximum extractable value (MEV) attacks and other manipulative behaviors. In addition, challenges such as smart contract vulnerabilities, compliance barriers on public chains, isolated on-chain ecosystems, and a lack of user-friendliness for ordinary users are also widespread.

Grvt is the only player in the field with a solid first-mover advantage and technical infrastructure to change this status quo. This round of financing was co-led by Grvt’s core technology partner ZKsync and Abu Dhabi-based capital markets infrastructure investment firm Further Ventures. Further Ventures also led Grvt’s strategic investment round in December last year. Other investors include decentralized verifiable cloud platform EigenCloud (formerly EigenLayer), and 500 Global (formerly 500 Startups), a venture capital firm managing $2.3 billion in assets and focusing on global entrepreneurs.

The majority of the funds raised will be used to accelerate Grvt’s multi-pronged product strategy, aiming to serve both active traders and passive investors. This unique approach is currently missing in the trading platform sector, thereby solidifying Grvt’s unique position to unify and dominate the fragmented on-chain financial landscape and bring it into the mainstream. Key product lines include:

· Fixed Yield Generation Flywheel: The industry’s first yield tool that allows users to easily transfer funds between their funds, trading, and vault accounts to maximize returns.

· Infrastructure: Continuously strengthening Grvt’s default privacy infrastructure, which is currently lacking in the industry.

· Stablecoin Empowerment System: Robust stablecoin business foundation, including cross-platform vaults and real-world asset (RWA) integration.

Strong Alliances Accelerate the On-Chain Finance Process

Through zero-knowledge proof technology, combined with ZKsync technology that has been validated by institutions such as Deutsche Bank and UBS, Grvt is building a blockchain-native global model, showcasing the potential of ZK technology in finance, making everyday trading and investing safe, fast, private, and accessible to all.

The ZKsync technology stack helps solve key bottlenecks in on-chain finance:

· Privacy: Grvt is built on a ZKsync-based Validium Layer 2 blockchain, which verifies state without disclosing data, thus ensuring privacy and solving a long-standing problem for DeFi protocols.

· Ethereum-level Security: Layer 2 transactions inherit Ethereum’s security through ZK proofs. All transaction batches are verified on Ethereum, and even if transactions are completed off-chain to improve speed and reduce costs, their validity is mathematically guaranteed.

· Scalability: As a Layer 2 solution, ZKsync greatly improves scalability and can handle transaction volumes far beyond the Ethereum mainnet.

· Accessibility: By processing transactions off-chain in batches and only submitting necessary proofs to Ethereum, settlement costs are significantly reduced, making trading cheaper.

As a key investment arm for Abu Dhabi’s strategic blockchain layout, Further Ventures’ leading role further consolidates its critical position in the global development of on-chain finance.

Meanwhile, the rapidly growing developer ecosystem EigenCloud provides Grvt with scale and security assurance. Its core product, EigenDA, is the preferred data availability solution for Ethereum Rollups. By anchoring data with a distributed validator network, it ensures that Grvt’s ZK technology stack is both verifiable and scalable. In the future, Grvt will also leverage EigenDA’s programmable privacy features to solve the long-standing conflict between data availability and privacy.

Investor and Founding Team Comments

· Grvt Co-founder and CEO Hong Yea: “Privacy is the uncompromisable cornerstone of the future of on-chain trading and investing. Grvt is building a privacy-centric, scalable, and trustless DEX, offering a variety of structured products that demonstrate how ZK solutions can become the new norm, driving an open and secure on-chain financial world. This financing is a strong endorsement of our vision.”

· Matter Labs Co-founder and CEO Alex Gluchoski: “We believe ZK is the ‘HTTPS moment’ for the crypto industry. Just as HTTPS brought the internet mainstream by increasing trust and privacy, ZK will bring the same turning point to Web3. Grvt is uniquely positioned at the heart of this vision.”

· Further Ventures Managing Partner Faisal Al Hammadi: “Further Ventures is committed to supporting the next generation of financial infrastructure. Grvt’s application of zero-knowledge proofs demonstrates how cutting-edge cryptography can underpin institutional-grade markets, and we are proud to work together to build a borderless financial system.”

· Eigen Labs Founder and CEO Sreeram Kannan: “Verifiable data drives verifiable computation. As EigenDA reaches 100 MB/s, the bottleneck has shifted from data to computation. Grvt is tackling this frontier head-on, and their team’s strength and vision are highly aligned.”

· 500 Global Partner Min Kim: “We firmly believe the next frontier of finance will be built on-chain, and privacy is key to unlocking its full potential. Grvt’s vision of combining ZK technology with institutional-grade infrastructure is highly consistent with our philosophy of supporting global entrepreneurs to reshape the financial system.”

Looking Ahead

Grvt is built on a foundation of multiple industry-first innovations—for example, offering a -1 basis point maker fee rebate for all orders, a benefit traditionally reserved for institutions. Its next step is to immediately launch a fixed income product, ensuring all users receive a 10% interest return. The flagship market-making strategy, Grvt Liquidity Provider (GLP), will also be launched, providing retail traders with a fund strategy offering high double-digit annual percentage returns (APR), a strategy previously out of reach for them.

Against the backdrop of rapid industry growth, this financing establishes a solid multi-layered foundation. It combines cutting-edge technology, institutional-grade infrastructure, and a secure data framework to create a platform that cements its strong position in the increasingly crowded on-chain finance sector.

About Grvt

Grvt (pronounced “gravity”) is built on the ZKsync technology stack, providing private, trustless, scalable, and secure on-chain financial infrastructure. Through its decentralized trading platform (Grvt Exchange) and investment marketplace (Grvt Strategies), Grvt enables every user to trade and invest transparently alongside global professionals.

This article is a contribution and does not represent the views of BlockBeats.