> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://trovefi.gitbook.io/trovefi-docs/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://trovefi.gitbook.io/trovefi-docs/get-started/overview.md).

# Overview

## What TroveFi Is

Running money for other people has always been gated. You need a licence, a prime broker, an auditor, a legal wrapper, and a minimum AUM large enough to pay for all of it. The gate is not there because the trading is hard. It is there because custody is hard: someone has to hold the money, and everything else exists to make sure they give it back.

TroveFi removes the custody problem instead of insuring around it. Deposits sit in a smart contract that the manager can trade but cannot withdraw from. The manager's only economic claim is a share of profit, and only profit above the highest level the vault has ever reached. Everything else belongs to depositors, and every depositor can leave without asking anyone.

That leaves the manager with exactly one job: be right about the market.

### Two products

**Vaults** are actively managed. A person runs them. They pick positions, size them, and take them off. You buy shares, and the share price moves with their results. If they make money, they take a cut. If they lose money, they take nothing until they have made it back.

**Buckets** are passive. A bucket holds a fixed set of tokens at fixed weights and rebalances itself when the weights drift. Nobody makes discretionary decisions and there is no performance fee. You are paying for exposure and automation, not for judgement.

Both hold real tokens on-chain, both price positions from AMM time-weighted averages rather than a spot quote anyone can move, and both let you exit at any time.

### What makes it different

**Managers are filtered before they touch real money.** There is no application form. Every prospective manager runs a paper-trading challenge that prices every trade against live Uniswap V3 pool data, has to double a virtual $100,000 over at least a week and at least ten trades, and cannot pass by manipulating a price because the contract reads a five-minute time-weighted average. Passing mints a soulbound token, which is the only key that opens vault creation. Read The Challenge.

**Fees are performance only.** No management fee, no deposit fee, no withdrawal fee, no lockup. Managers take between 0.5% and 5% of new profit depending on their tier, and the platform takes between 0.5% and 1%. The most any depositor can pay is 6% of profit above the high-water mark, and that top rate only exists for managers running more than $50M. See Fee Split.

**Funds cannot be frozen.** Withdrawals work in every vault state, including after a vault is permanently retired. If a vault is paused for more than seven days, or closed at all, holders can pull their pro-rata slice of the underlying tokens directly, with no swap, no oracle, and no cooperation from the manager or the platform. See Exit Guarantees.

**Everything is readable.** Positions, NAV per share, cost basis, accrued fees, the high-water mark, and the manager's entire trade history are on-chain. The dashboard is a viewer, not a source of truth.

### Status

TroveFi is live on **MegaETH testnet (chain 6343)** with five buckets, an active token registry of nineteen assets, and manager vaults created through the factory. Tokens on testnet have no value and the faucet gives them away.

The contracts have not been through a third-party audit. They have been through an internal review and a full-suite Foundry test run, and every subsystem has been exercised with real on-chain transactions rather than simulations. Read Audit Status before you assume anything about mainnet risk, and read Known Limitations for the things we know are imperfect and have chosen to document rather than hide.

### Where to go next

| You want to                                  | Start here                                                         |
| -------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| Put money in and see how it behaves          | [Quick Start](/trovefi-docs/get-started/quick-start.md)            |
| Understand the mechanism before you trust it | [How It Works](/trovefi-docs/get-started/how-it-works.md)          |
| Run a vault                                  | [Becoming a Manager](/trovefi-docs/managers/becoming-a-manager.md) |
| Buy an index rather than pick a manager      | [Buckets Overview](/trovefi-docs/trovefi-buckets/overview.md)      |
| Check what can go wrong                      | [Security Model](/trovefi-docs/security-and-insurance/overview.md) |