The Grove — the desk of Loko, the tree-keeper — is a mid-cap organic-growth scanner. Every hour it sweeps roughly 150 of the largest tokens in the $150M–$2B market-cap band and asks one question of each: is the growth real, or is it farmed?
A token's price can be pumped, its "TVL" rented with emissions, its social buzz bought. The Grove looks past all of that to the things that are hard to fake — revenue, fees, TVL backed by real usage, holder distribution, and smart-money behaviour — and grades each project on how authentic its growth is. Real roots, not manufactured growth.
| Layer | What it does |
|---|---|
| The scan | Hourly sweep of the $150M–$2B universe. Three hard gates cut the obvious rejects (§8), then every survivor is scored. |
| Factor score | A 0–100 organic-growth score built from three backtest-validated factors — Value, Growth, Momentum — weighted toward real cash flow, with safety & distribution acting as screens (§6). |
| The four tiers | Projects are sorted into tree tiers — Canopy, Rooted, Sapling, Seedling — by score (§4). |
| GAR + flags + thesis | A Growth Authenticity Ratio (§7), anti-gaming flags (§9), and a one-line plain-language thesis on every top pick. |
The Grove has two access levels, both reached at /loko:
| Tier | What you see |
|---|---|
| Preview (everyone) | The live tier distribution (how many Canopy / Rooted / Sapling right now), the scan freshness, and a single blurred teaser pick — enough to feel the shape of the Grove. |
| Member (paid / lifetime) | Every Grove card in full: exact scores, GAR, the full factor breakdown, all flags, the organic thesis, the track record, and the paper-trade button. |
Go to /loko. Anyone can land here and see the preview.
Already a member? Sign in with a 6-digit email code (no password). The page confirms your plan and unlocks the full Grove automatically.
Not a member yet? Unlock the Grove. Access activates the moment your plan is active — one account unlocks the whole site.
Open /loko. There is nothing to configure — the scan runs server-side. A cron worker rescans the whole universe every hour, scores it, and writes the result; the page simply shows that current snapshot, so you always land on fresh data.
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| Tier counts | How many projects currently sit in each tier. A market full of real growth fills Canopy/Rooted; a frothy market leaves them empty and piles into hype — that's a read in itself. |
| Scanned | The size of the universe swept this run (~150). Only survivors of the hard gates that also clear the Seedling floor (42) become cards. |
| Last scan | "Xm ago" — the snapshot's age. It refreshes hourly; a few minutes old is normal and healthy. |
| Few cards | A legitimate read, not a bug. The Grove only shows projects whose growth actually scores — a disciplined market simply has fewer of them. |
Every project that clears the gates and scores is sorted into one of four tree tiers by its 0–100 organic-growth score. Think of it as a tree's life stage — how mature and how real the growth is.
| Tier | Score | Read it as |
|---|---|---|
| 🌳 Canopy | ≥ 88 * | Mature organic leaders — deep, self-funding growth. Rare; the market has to be genuinely strong to grow one. * also requires real yield and no critical red flag (§6). |
| 🌲 Rooted | 76–87 | Established, real growth with proven usage and cash flow. The core of a healthy Grove. |
| 🌱 Sapling | 58–75 | Early but real — genuine signal, still proving durability. Higher risk, higher potential. |
| 🌿 Seedling | 42–57 | Emerging / watchlist. Something real is there but thin or unconfirmed. Handle with care. |
Each qualifying project renders as a card. Here is a real card, annotated field by field:
The Grove scores each project relative to the rest of the universe — the way a real quant desk ranks stocks — not against fixed dollar thresholds. Each factor is measured for all projects, then converted to a standing versus peers: a project a full standard deviation above the pack scores ~80; an average one scores ~50. Missing data counts as average, never as a penalty. The final 0–100 is then smoothed against the previous scan, so a name doesn't lurch between tiers just because its peers moved that hour — the board tracks real drift, not noise.
Only the three factors below drive the score — the ones that hold up in a backtest. Everything else (safety, holder distribution, smart-money flow) is real and shown on the card, but it acts as a screen and a warning, not a score input (see the note).
| Scored factor | What it measures |
|---|---|
| Value | One combined read of cash-flow quality — capital efficiency (fees per dollar of TVL) plus earnings yield (revenue & fees vs market cap). These measures move together, so they're averaged into a single factor rather than counted three times (see the note below). Size-neutral, and the Grove's heaviest weight. |
| Growth | TVL and fee momentum — real expansion in usage, not a one-off spike. |
| Momentum | Recent price trend (30-day). A real factor in every market, but kept light — it's regime-unstable, and the Grove is about substance over chart. |
Shown on the card, but used as screens — not scored:
| Screen / context | How it's used |
|---|---|
| Safety | Contract-safety standing (GoPlus / honeypot, §8). A critical flag gates the token out entirely before scoring (§8). |
| Distribution | Holder concentration and wash-trading checks. A wash-traded or whale-dominated book raises a flag and caps the token below Canopy — it can't be called a mature leader. |
| Smart Money | Whether informed / early wallets are accumulating (+) or distributing (−). Distribution raises a flag and caps the top tier. |
GAR is the Grove's one-glance organic-vs-hype read. It compares a project's fundamental momentum (TVL + fee growth) against its price momentum — both measured relative to the universe — and reports the gap in standard deviations (σ). Positive means fundamentals are outrunning the price; negative means the chart is ahead of the substance. It's a descriptive read, kept deliberately separate from the score.
| Badge | GAR (σ) | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| ORGANIC | ≥ +0.5 | Fundamentals are growing ahead of the price. The move is earned. |
| MIXED | −0.5 to +0.5 | Roughly balanced — some real growth, some price. Watch closely. |
| HYPE-LED | ≤ −0.5 | Price is running well ahead of the fundamentals — sentiment, not substance. The classic fade risk. |
Before anything is scored, every candidate must pass three hard gates. Fail one and it never appears in the Grove — no score, no card.
| Gate | Rule | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Market-cap band | $150M – $2B | The Grove is a mid-cap desk. Below $150M is micro-cap lottery territory; above $2B the easy organic growth is largely done. This band is where real growth is still ahead of the price. |
| Age | ~90 – 730 days | Old enough to have real history and usage (not a week-old launch), young enough to still be a growth story rather than a legacy giant. |
| Safety | No critical contract flag | The contract is checked against on-chain safety sources (GoPlus / honeypot). Anything with a critical red flag — honeypot, malicious mint, hidden owner powers — is cut before it can score. |
Beyond the score, each card can carry signals and ⚠ flags — the Grove calling out the specific ways growth gets faked. When you see a flag, read it as a targeted warning.
| Flag / signal | What it's telling you |
|---|---|
| ⚠ Mercenary TVL | Large TVL with little or no fees — capital that's rented by token emissions and will leave the moment the rewards stop. |
| ⚠ Overvalued vs fees | Market cap is enormous relative to the fees the protocol actually earns — priced for a future it isn't yet delivering. |
| ⚠ High concentration | A small number of wallets hold most of the supply — one exit can wreck the price. |
| ⚠ Suspected wash trading | Volume is implausibly large versus market cap — fake activity inflating the numbers. |
| ⚠ Social hype > fundamentals | The social buzz is running far ahead of the on-chain reality. |
| ⚠ Smart money distributing | Professional / early wallets are selling into the move. |
| ⚠ Unlock cliff <90d | A large token unlock is due soon — fresh supply about to hit the market (dilution). |
The card also surfaces the positive read of these same signals: smart-money posture (accumulating / neutral / distributing), social divergence (does buzz match on-chain?), and days to next unlock. Green signals reinforce a high score; flags are the fine print a high score can hide.
Above the cards sits a simple filter bar. Tap a tier to show only those projects; tap All to see everything.
There's nothing else to tune — the Grove is intentionally opinionated. Cards always arrive sorted by score, highest first, so the strongest organic growth is at the top of whatever tier you're viewing.
The Grove grades itself. Every time a strong pick (Canopy or Rooted) appears, it's logged with its price and quietly tracked. The track strip at the top of the members' view shows how those calls have actually done.
| Metric | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Tracked | How many strong picks are being followed. |
| Graded | How many have been open long enough (≥24h) to score. |
| Hit +50% / +100% | The share of graded picks that reached a +50% (or +100%) peak after the call. |
| Median peak | The typical best-case move across graded picks. |
Every card has a 🎯 Paper-trade this button. It sends the pick straight to the Paper Desk, where you rehearse the entire trade — size, stop, target — with a pretend account and zero real money.
On any Grove card, tap 🎯 Paper-trade this. The pick opens on the Paper Desk pre-loaded.
Size the position and write a stop and target before you "enter" — the same discipline a real trade needs.
Watch it mark to live price in your practice book. Learn how the idea behaves before it ever costs you.
Put the pieces together into one repeatable loop:
Open the Grove. Start at the top — Canopy and Rooted are where the most authentic growth lives. Nothing to configure; it's already fresh.
On a card that interests you, read the factor pillars. The score is carried by the three that matter — Value (cash flow), Growth, Momentum — while Safety and Distribution act as screens. A card standing on Value and Growth is on firmer ground than one riding Momentum alone.
Is GAR organic or hype-led? Are there ⚠ flags — mercenary TVL, an unlock cliff, smart money distributing? The flags are the risks a score can hide.
Paper-trade it (§12). If the idea survives all of the above and you can hold it with discipline on paper, only then size it small and act in your own wallet.
| Symptom | Fix |
|---|---|
| Grove says "warming up" | The page reads the last hourly snapshot. Right after a cold deploy the snapshot is empty until the first scan runs — reload in a few minutes. The Grove never shows demo or sample data. |
| Still seeing the preview as a member | Your session may not have refreshed. Sign in again, then reload /loko. The full Grove unlocks once your active paid / lifetime plan is confirmed. |
| Very few cards | Not a bug. Only projects that clear the three gates and score ≥ 40 become cards, so a cautious market legitimately shows a short list. |
| A card's revenue / TVL looks blank | Not every mid-cap is a fee-earning protocol tracked on DeFiLlama. When a metric genuinely isn't available it's left blank rather than faked — the score simply leans on the pillars that do have data. |
| Scan age looks old | The Grove refreshes hourly. If "last scan" is many hours old, the hourly job may have missed a beat — it self-heals on the next run; the data stays valid meanwhile. |
Anything else? Open a ticket on Support.
Read the tier. Read the pillars. Check GAR and the flags. Then paper-trade before you decide. The Grove surfaces and scores organic growth — you make the call, you place the trade, you own the risk.