Grvt, a decentralized exchange built on zero-knowledge technology, has raised $19 million in a Series A round as it looks to tackle some of decentralized finance’s deepest flaws, from front-running to poor usability.
The fundraising brings Grvt’s total capital raised to more than $25 million, following a $6 million strategic round in December 2024. The round values the company at an estimated $150 million, according to people familiar with the matter.
The round was co-led by ZKsync, the Ethereum scaling project that provides Grvt’s base technology, and Abu Dhabi’s Further Ventures, which had already backed the startup in a December strategic round. EigenCloud, formerly EigenLayer, and Silicon Valley investor 500 Global also participated.
Further Ventures, backed by Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth interests, manages more than $200 million in assets and has previously funded blockchain firms including M2 and Fuze. 500 Global, one of Silicon Valley’s most active VCs, has invested in more than 2,700 companies worldwide.
Grvt says it will use most of the new capital to accelerate product development, with plans to roll out cross-exchange vaults, options markets, and real-world asset integrations. The rest will go to hiring and community building as the exchange expands internationally. The company currently employs around 40 staff across Singapore, South Korea, and the UAE, and aims to double headcount within the next 12 months.
“Onchain finance has been held back by privacy gaps that expose users to exploitation,” said Hong Yea, Grvt’s co-founder and CEO. “By building a scalable, trustless DEX powered by zero-knowledge proofs, we aim to make secure and private onchain trading the norm.” Hong previously served as head of digital assets at Mirae Asset Securities, South Korea’s largest investment bank, before founding Grvt in 2022.
The company’s pitch comes as onchain finance grows rapidly. Ethereum’s onchain volume topped $320 billion in August, the highest since 2021, and analysts expect the broader DeFi sector to swell from $32 billion this year to more than $1.5 trillion by 2034. Yet the industry continues to wrestle with problems including “whale hunting,” where large trades are front-run, smart contract exploits, and fragmented liquidity. In 2023 alone, more than $1.7 billion was lost to DeFi hacks and exploits, according to Chainalysis, while maximum extractable value (MEV) attacks have drained billions more from users through predatory trading practices.
Backers say Grvt is well placed to help. “We believe ZK is the ‘HTTPS moment’ for crypto,” said Matter Labs CEO Alex Gluchoski. “Just as HTTPS took the internet mainstream by adding trust and privacy, ZK will do the same for Web3.”
Abu Dhabi-based Further Ventures framed its support as part of the emirate’s broader fintech ambitions, while Eigen Labs founder Sreeram Kannan highlighted the tie-in with EigenDA, the firm’s high-capacity data availability layer for Ethereum rollups.
Abu Dhabi has become a digital asset hub through initiatives like the ADGM’s (Abu Dhabi Global Market) crypto framework, which has already licensed exchanges including Binance and Kraken.
By embedding ZKsync’s Validium chain, Grvt gives users Ethereum-level security, cheaper settlement, and privacy by default. The company is betting that combination can attract both institutional players and retail traders to a sector still plagued by structural risks. ZKsync’s Validium can process up to 2,000 transactions per second, significantly above Ethereum’s current 15 tps capacity, and cut average transaction fees from $5-10 on mainnet to below $0.05, according to Matter Labs.
