I bought an XT crankset circa mid 90's which had four factory-applied "worms" of grease inside of the square holes, one on each flat. By this time, as I mentioned, Shimano was adding a steel stop ring to their spindles on the driveside which prevented the chainrings ever moving in to far to where shifting might be compromised by the front derailer cage not being able to pull far enough inward (starting to become an issue with the 1-3/8" seat tubes coming into vogue). This model XT crankset featured a removable spider and was the last before they went to Octalink. It had more metal around the square holes than did the preceding 8s compact XT crankset.