GRVT affiliate program review: 25–35% of perp fees, payment terms unpublished

GRVT’s Ambassador program pays 25% of a referred trader’s perpetual fees on entry and 35% at the top tier, with 2% to 5% more on second-level referrals, and it publishes the volume goals behind every tier. That is more than most two-year-old exchanges put in writing. What GRVT does not put in writing is when commission is paid, in which currency, above what minimum, how long a referral stays yours, or which company owes you the money: the user agreement names a Panamanian entity that is not the Bermuda licensee GRVT announced in 2024. We read the Ambassador guide, the rewards rules, the fee schedule and the 42-page user agreement on 24 September 2026. Our score is 6/10.

Who runs the program

GRVT, pronounced “gravity”, is a hybrid derivatives exchange. Its litepaper of 29 July 2026 describes off-chain order matching with settlement through a custom ZKsync-based layer 2 to Ethereum. Perpetual futures went live on mainnet in December 2024 and spot trading followed; both are live today. The launch release of 20 December 2024 names Hong Yea as co-founder and CEO. The company’s own 2025 retrospective, published 10 February 2026, files the mainnet alpha under January 2025; we go with the release issued on the day.

The legal counterparty deserves more attention than the brand. Clause 1.1(a) of the user agreement, last updated 14 September 2026, names Albatross Group Overseas S.A., a company incorporated in the Republic of Panama, and gives it the defined name “GRVT International”. Clause 1.7(a) states that this company is not licensed, approved or regulated by the Superintendence of Capital Markets, the Superintendence of Banks or any other Panamanian authority. The Ambassador guide names no contracting entity at all, and no Ambassador agreement is published, so the Panamanian company is the only counterparty an affiliate can point to.

The Bermuda story is older and concerns a different company. GRVT’s announcement of 6 December 2024 says GRVT International Limited, a Bermuda company, obtained a Class M “modified” digital asset business licence from the Bermuda Monetary Authority, and adds that this company “has not yet commenced operation” pending pre-operational conditions. Walkers, the law firm that advised, confirmed the work on 10 December 2024. When we searched the BMA’s public list of regulated entities on 24 September 2026, neither GRVT International Limited nor Albatross Group Overseas appeared in it, although the list does carry other Class M digital asset businesses. The list does not say why: a licence can lapse, be surrendered or sit under a name we did not search. What we can say is that the licence GRVT still refers to is not held by the company you contract with, and that the 2024 press release described a company that had not started operating.

Commission structure

The Ambassador guide publishes three tiers. Every new Ambassador starts at the 25% base rate; moving up requires hitting two of the three goals in a two-week assessment period, and the guide says tier changes are applied dynamically, downgrades included.

Tier	Direct commission	Indirect commission	Two-week personal volume	Active direct referrals	Two-week direct referral volume
Silver	25%	2%	over 1 million USDT	more than 3	over 2 million USDT
Gold	30%	3%	over 2 million USDT	more than 6	over 4 million USDT
Platinum	35%	5%	over 3 million USDT	more than 10	over 6 million USDT

Getting in is a separate hurdle. The guide offers two routes: bring ten friends who trade at least 12 million USDT between them within two weeks, with the upgrade applied in the next two-week cycle, or apply directly if you have 10,000 or more followers or trade at least $12 million a month yourself. The first route upgrades you in the next cycle once the threshold is met; the second is an application, not an entitlement. BloFin runs the same idea on a slower clock, a quarterly test of 1,000,000 USDT and ten trading invitees that never stops; see our BloFin affiliate program review. The tiers also carry perks for the Ambassador’s own trading: fee level 4, 5 or 6 (taker 0.037%, 0.034% or 0.032%), a 1.1x to 1.3x multiplier on weekly points, and “weekly cash bonuses for volume and new liquidity”, which the guide does not quantify.

The April guide talks about “trading fees” in general. The newer rewards page of 24 June 2026 is specific: the profit split for the Ambassador program “is calculated based on perp trading fees only”, while trading volume for tier upgrades “counts both spot and perp trades”. Spot fee rewards “may be introduced in a future update”. A spot-heavy audience can lift you into Gold without adding a cent to the commission base.

The fee base is thin, as it is on every perp DEX. The fee schedule, in the table active since 23 March 2026, puts the Level 1 perpetual taker fee at 0.0450% and the maker fee at −0.0001%, a small rebate. A referred taker who trades 1 million USDT in a fortnight generates 450 USDT in fees, of which a Silver Ambassador keeps 112.50 USDT and a Platinum one 157.50 USDT. A pure maker generates no fee at all. The program pages do not say whether maker rebates, trader cashback or fee-level discounts are netted against the commission base. Before forecasting, ask for a settlement statement that shows a mixed maker and taker account. The same question is sharper at Lighter, where Standard accounts pay no fee at all and only Premium taker fees of 0.028% feed the 10–30% referral share; see our Lighter affiliate program review.

There is no CPA, no hybrid option and no published cap. Nothing is said about what happens to indirect commission when the direct referrer leaves the program. And keep the Earn on Equity referral bonus out of your model: from 11 August 2026 that program adds one percentage point of APY on the referrer’s own stablecoin balance for eligible referrals, capped at 50 USDT per four-week cycle. It is a yield perk on your balance, not commission on anyone’s trading.

One more gap. GRVT’s help centre lists 41 articles under Rewards and only one of them, the Ambassador page, describes a referral rate. The phrase “unlock up to 25% commission level” implies that ordinary users earn something lower from their referral code, but that lower rate is not published anywhere we could find.

Attribution and cookies

The mechanics are simple: your referral code sits in the profile menu, and your invite link in Reward > Referral Hub, per the account guide of 15 May 2026. What the code does after the click is not documented. There is no published cookie window, no first-click or last-click rule, no cross-device statement, no rule for an existing account that enters a new code and no promise of lifetime attribution. For an exchange that publishes its tier thresholds to the dollar, the silence on attribution is the odd part.

Identity checks happen at account level. Clause 4.3 of the user agreement requires identity verification before an account can be opened, and clause 4.1 allows one account per individual or entity. That makes self-referral structurally hard, though no Ambassador rule mentions it, and nothing says whether commission starts at registration, at verification or at the first trade.

Payouts

This is the section GRVT has not written. The Ambassador guide promises an “Advanced Referral Dashboard” showing earnings on an accumulated and daily basis, and “weekly cash bonuses”, but neither line says when fee commission is credited, in which currency, above what minimum, or whether anything is held back or reversed. There is no first-payment timeline and no clawback clause because there is no affiliate agreement to hold one.

What is documented is how money leaves a GRVT account once it is there. The withdrawal guide of 20 July 2026 limits withdrawals to pre-approved recipient addresses, authorised with the account’s signing key. The fee schedule lists flat withdrawal fees and states that there is “not a separate minimum withdrawal amount”, only the requirement that the amount covers the fee.

Network	Withdrawal fee
Ethereum	2 USDT
Arbitrum One	1.01 USDT
BNB Smart Chain	1.01 USDT
Solana	1.5 USDT
Tron	1.4 USDT

The withdrawal timing page of 30 January 2026 estimates five minutes through the bridging partner for Arbitrum, Base, BNB Smart Chain, Tron, Kaia and Solana, and eight hours for Ethereum, tied to how often GRVT rolls up to layer 1. One hold to know about: under the wallet compliance policy, assets flagged by the compliance screen cannot be traded or withdrawn while under review, unflagged assets stay available, and users generally get 28 days to answer information requests. None of this tells a publisher when commission reaches the account. Ask for a settlement statement and a completed payment before you budget against this program.

The terms that bite

The restricted jurisdictions list, dated 3 August 2026, bans access for anyone residing, located, incorporated or established in the United States and its territories, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong, Russia, Belarus, Iran, Myanmar, Cuba, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, North Korea, Crimea and the other listed Ukrainian regions. It applies to you as much as to your readers; there is no separate affiliate country schedule.

The user agreement contains the clauses an affiliate would normally look for in a partner contract, but written for traders:

• Termination: clause 4.32 lets GRVT end account access “at any time for any reason or no reason whatsoever”, with no liability for losses.
• Dormancy: clause 4.29(b)(viii) lists an account not accessed for two years or more among the suspension triggers.
• Changes: clause 1.6 requires at least 14 days’ notice before a material change to the terms.
• Disputes: clauses 37 and 38 apply Singapore law and SIAC arbitration in Singapore.

Because these are platform terms, nothing in them protects accrued commission after termination or guards the rate against retroactive change. Brand bidding, paid search, incentivised traffic and permitted advertising claims are not addressed anywhere public. Get the traffic source and the creative approved in writing before you buy placements; our Coinzilla review covers one venue where exchange offers are commonly promoted, and the network’s approval is not GRVT’s.

What affiliates report

Very little, in either direction. GRVT has no Trustpilot page at the time of writing: the address for grvt.io returns Trustpilot’s “page could not be found” notice, so there is no review count to cite, good or bad. What Reddit has is GRVT referral codes and airdrop talk; the r/airdrops thread we read on 24 September 2026 is an invite link, a moderator removal and nothing else. We found no dated account of an Ambassador being paid and no dated complaint about one not being paid. That is not a clean bill, and it is not a warning; it is the record of a program too young or too private to have left one. Anyone who has a settled Ambassador statement to show us can write in.

GRVT against the alternatives

We read the public referral pages of two other perpetuals venues on 24 September 2026. Rates are shares of each program’s stated fee base, not of trade value.

Program	Starting direct share	Higher published share	Attribution duration	Payment mechanics
GRVT Ambassador	25% after qualification	35%	Not published	Not published
Aster	10%, which the referrer can split with the trader	20% on VIP 1 referrals and 10% on VIP 2 and above for approved affiliates	365 days by default	Credited to the Aster account by the following day, in the fee asset
GMX V2	5%	10% and 15% at the standard tiers	Per trader, 12 months or $20,000 in affiliate rewards, whichever comes first	Accrues on-chain in each market’s collateral token, claimable at any time

Aster is the closest comparison: an application-based upgrade, no published minimum and a next-day credit that GRVT does not match; our Aster affiliate program review reads its rules and the application form in full. Its terms exclude liquidation fees, self-trade volume and zero-fee volume, revoke everything on a detected self-referral and reserve the right to change or cancel the program at any time. GMX documents how a code stored in the browser is written to the contract on the trader’s first order and how rewards accrue per market; its cutoff of 12 months or $20,000 per trader is the least generous duration in the table, and the only one written down. A publisher can model a defined expiry. Nobody can model an unstated one. Myriad’s prediction-market builder program takes the third route, attributing each purchase on-chain with nothing promised beyond it; see our Myriad affiliate program review.

For an audience that also trades on centralised venues, our crypto exchange affiliate programs comparison sets ten programs side by side on the same questions. The useful number everywhere is cash received per referred trader after exclusions, not the largest percentage on the page. For a centralised exchange that leaves as many of these fields blank as GRVT does, see our Flipster affiliate program review.

Verdict

6/10. GRVT publishes the part of an affiliate program that most young exchanges hide, the tier schedule and the goals behind it, and its fee base is easy to read. It leaves out the part that decides whether you get paid: the payment schedule, the currency, the minimum, the attribution rule and the name of the company that owes you. The company on the user agreement is a Panamanian entity that says it is unregulated, and the Bermuda licence in GRVT’s marketing belongs to a different company that we could not find in the regulator’s public list.

Our rubric reserves 8 and above, for a DEX program, for a fee share that can be verified on-chain, a documented contract and a permissionless claim. GRVT offers none of the three; commission is calculated and credited by the exchange, on terms it has not published. For the contrast, Ostium’s builder program has all three, and we counted its payments on the live contract. It stays above 5 because the rates are public, the restrictions are public and we found no payment complaints. A small trial with a written statement of the payment terms is a reasonable next step. A paid acquisition budget is not, until the settlement statement exists.

FAQ

What is the GRVT affiliate commission?

Ambassadors earn 25% of their direct referrals’ perpetual trading fees at the Silver tier, 30% at Gold and 35% at Platinum, plus 2%, 3% or 5% of indirect referrals’ fees, per the Ambassador guide. Spot fees are excluded from the commission base under the rewards rules.

When does GRVT pay affiliate commissions?

GRVT does not publish a commission payout schedule, currency or minimum. The Ambassador guide mentions a dashboard with daily earnings and weekly cash bonuses, neither of which is a commission payment term. Account withdrawals themselves carry flat fees of 1.01 to 2 USDT and no other minimum.

Is the GRVT affiliate program legit?

It is a documented program run by a live exchange with public tier rules. Whether it pays reliably is not documented anywhere we could find: there is no Trustpilot page, no affiliate agreement and no published payout record. The company on the user agreement is Albatross Group Overseas S.A. of Panama, which states that it is not regulated there.

What is the difference between GRVT’s referral and Ambassador programs?

The Ambassador program is the published fee-sharing tier reviewed here. Ordinary users also have a referral code, but its rate is not published; the guide only says Ambassadors “unlock up to 25%”. Separately, Earn on Equity adds one percentage point of yield on the referrer’s own balance, capped at 50 USDT per four weeks.

Does GRVT offer lifetime attribution?

Nothing published says so. There is no cookie window, no attribution rule and no duration statement in the Ambassador guide or the user agreement.

Can US affiliates or US traders use GRVT?

No. The restricted jurisdictions list bans anyone residing, located, incorporated or established in the United States or its territories, and the same list covers Canada, Singapore and Hong Kong.

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