Grove is a credit infrastructure protocol that allocates stablecoin liquidity into institutional credit strategies within the Sky Ecosystem. It was incubated by Grove Labs, a subsidiary of Steakhouse Financial, and emerged from stealth in June 2025 at the Cannes, France event with a $1 billion allocation from the Sky Ecosystem. The protocol's native token, GROVE, launched on the Ethereum network in June 2026.

Overview

Grove operates as a Sky Prime Agent within the Sky Ecosystem, formerly known as MakerDAO, which issues the USDS stablecoin. The protocol routes stablecoin liquidity into diversified credit strategies, including AAA-rated CLO tranches, private credit, and tokenized Treasury bills, using both onchain and offchain mechanisms. At its 2025 launch, Grove was described as a "Star" within Sky's Endgame governance framework, designating it as a semi-autonomous protocol operating within the Sky Ecosystem. ^[1] As of July 2026, Grove reports $2.60 billion in total value locked (TVL) across 16 active allocations. ^[2]

Background

Grove Labs, the entity behind Grove, was co-founded by Mark Phillips, Kevin Chan, and Sam Paderewski. It is owned by Steakhouse Financial, a DeFi-focused financial advisory firm. The founding team brings backgrounds at institutions including Deloitte, Hildene Capital Management, BlockTower Capital, and Citibank. ^[3] The protocol was officially unveiled at an event in Cannes, France on 25 June 2025. ^[4]

Technology

The technology underpinning Grove comprises the Grove Allocator, a non-custodial, vault-based smart contract system designed to maintain onchain custody of funds at all times. This system consists of four core contracts: ALMProxy for custody, MainnetController for Ethereum hub logic, ForeignController for operations on spoke chains, and RateLimits for managing capital movement within configured limits. These components work together through a three-layer architecture separating custody, business logic, and risk management. Governance of these operations relies on roles inherited from OpenZeppelin AccessControl, including DEFAULT_ADMIN_ROLE, RELAYER, FREEZER, and CONTROLLER. ^[2]

RateLimits enforce time-based caps for preventing excessive capital movements, while the architecture supports integrations with Aave V3, Curve, Uniswap V3, Ethena, Pendle Finance, Centrifuge RWA vaults, and cross-chain bridging via CCTP and LayerZero. ^[2]

Products

Grove's suite of products includes the Grove Allocator, Grove Basin, Grove Financing, and Grove Savings. The Grove Allocator provides infrastructure for deploying stablecoin capital into diversified credit strategies. Grove Basin, announced on 14 May 2026, focuses on providing instant onchain stablecoin liquidity for eligible tokenholders related to tokenized credit products. Grove Financing offers financing and liquidity services tailored for credit originators. Grove Savings acts as an interface to the Sky Savings Rate, allowing users to supply [USDS] or [USDC] to mint sUSDS, with the Sky Savings Rate governed by Sky Ecosystem's directives. Grove Points launched on 21 May 2026 and accrue to participants who supply through Grove Savings. ^[1]​

GROVE Token

The GROVE token is the native ERC-20 token of the Grove Protocol with a genesis supply of 10,000,000,000 tokens, launched on Ethereum in June 2026. The token is expected to support governance activities within the Grove ecosystem, facilitating community participation in proposal processes. Staking and voting mechanics are anticipated as forthcoming developments. Its total supply is allocated as follows: 70% to the Sky Ecosystem, 25% to Grove Team and Contributors, and 5% to the Grove Foundation. ^[5] The GROVE token began trading on Coinbase in limit-only mode on 6 July 2026, followed by a listing on KuCoin the next day. ^[6]​

Partnerships and Deployments

In June 2025, the Sky Ecosystem approved a $1 billion allocation deployed through Grove's infrastructure into the Janus Henderson Anemoy AAA CLO Strategy (JAAA), developed with Centrifuge as an onchain vehicle. ^[7] The JAAA is managed by the same portfolio managers as Janus Henderson’s AAA CLO ETF. Subsequently, in July 2025, the Sky Ecosystem approved an allocation of $250 million into JAAA, a AAA-rated CLO tranche product issued via Centrifuge. ^[8] In line with regulatory frameworks, Grove published a crypto-asset white paper under EU Regulation 2023/1114 (MiCAR). ^[3]