A few days ago, the crypto market maker DWF was ridiculed and ostracized by the crowd at a Token 2049 forum. Fellow GSR publicly stated that DWF was "not qualified to be on the same stage as Wintermute, OKX and other institutions." Wintermute CEO Evgeny Gaevoy also expressed support for this statement. Crypto KOL Huma conducted an investigation into the past information of DWF and its founder Andrei Grachev.
The investigation revealed that Grachev emerged from the Russian crypto community around 2017 and worked in the logistics industry. He founded several logistics companies, all of which have now collapsed. In the crypto community, he introduces himself as a winning trader and partner at Crypsis Blockchain Holding. Grachev later became RACIB’s Vice President in 2018. In 2019, Grachev became head of Huobi Russia. His partner at RACIB was Vladimir Demin, who also led Huobi Russia after Grachev. Demin is also a senior manager at VEB Ventures, a venture capital arm of VEB. Demin and Grachev later co-founded VRM.trade (the predecessor of DWF Labs).
Additionally, according to the forklog article cited above, the owner of a company called DAS Index accused Grachev of not paying back a $10,000 debt he owed while he was leader of Huobi Russia. VRM.trade is a high-frequency trading company co-founded by Demin and Grachev. The exact business and size of VRM.trade is unclear. They claim a daily trading volume of $10-20 billion. The VRM team also created their own OTC trading platform, Black Ocean. Where did DWF Labs come from? It turns out that DWF is a rebrand of VRM. VRM Trade’s last tweet was on May 31, 2022, while DWF Labs’ domain name was registered on May 30, 2022. Is there any particular reason for rebranding? This remains an unsolved mystery.
The investigation revealed that Grachev emerged from the Russian crypto community around 2017 and worked in the logistics industry. He founded several logistics companies, all of which have now collapsed. In the crypto community, he introduces himself as a winning trader and partner at Crypsis Blockchain Holding. Grachev later became RACIB’s Vice President in 2018. In 2019, Grachev became head of Huobi Russia. His partner at RACIB was Vladimir Demin, who also led Huobi Russia after Grachev. Demin is also a senior manager at VEB Ventures, a venture capital arm of VEB. Demin and Grachev later co-founded VRM.trade (the predecessor of DWF Labs).
Additionally, according to the forklog article cited above, the owner of a company called DAS Index accused Grachev of not paying back a $10,000 debt he owed while he was leader of Huobi Russia. VRM.trade is a high-frequency trading company co-founded by Demin and Grachev. The exact business and size of VRM.trade is unclear. They claim a daily trading volume of $10-20 billion. The VRM team also created their own OTC trading platform, Black Ocean. Where did DWF Labs come from? It turns out that DWF is a rebrand of VRM. VRM Trade’s last tweet was on May 31, 2022, while DWF Labs’ domain name was registered on May 30, 2022. Is there any particular reason for rebranding? This remains an unsolved mystery.