Exclusive: Grvt becomes first on-chain exchange to pay retail traders for making markets

Grvt hopes to attract retail liquidity to its platform by offering traders the same advantages typically reserved for institutions.

DeFi is progressively narrowing the gap between institutional and retail traders. On Thursday, August 21, crypto.news can exclusively report that on-chain financial platform Grvt (pronounced gravity)announced the launch of a −1 basis point (−0.01%) maker fee rebate for all users. This effectively means retail traders will get paid as market makers, just like institutional participants.

“By offering rebates that pay retail traders for placing maker orders, we’re not only boosting market depth but also creating conditions that attract greater institutional taker flow. This is about extending incentives once reserved for institutions to the broader retail community, ensuring a more balanced and liquid marketplace for everyone,” Hong Yea, co-founder and CEO at Grvt said.

DeFi platforms still lag when it comes to retail traders

Unlike CEXs and traditional finance platforms, where only market makers qualify for rebates, Grvt will reward all users passively. With this move, the DeFi platform aims to attract more retail liquidity. This could lead to lower hidden costs for traders, tighter spreads, and deeper order books, helping to reduce costs across the marketplace.

Despite the advantages of DeFi platforms when it comes to security and privacy, they still lag behind in retail adoption. CEXs offer easy onboarding and UX features, and dominate in spot volume and the number of users. The total spot volume in Q2 of 2025 was $3.9 trillion on CEXs, vs $876.3 billion for DEXs.

Grvt is a peer-to-peer, self-custodial platform that seeks to include everyday traders in the financial system. Its exchange is built on zkSync’s zero-knowledge infrastructure, enabling privacy and high throughput.