Is the increase in Rug pulls a sign of the market peak or a retreat?

Written by: Wenser (@wenser 2010), Planet Daily

Editor's note: Since its launch in July, the Robinhood Chain has remained at the forefront of the cryptocurrency market hotspots, particularly during the Meme craze from late August to mid-September, where Robinhood Chain has single-handedly provided screen-dominating innovative assets like "tens of millions in market cap Meme coins" and "crypto-stock pairing Meme coins." However, after entering late September, the Meme market of Robinhood Chain has slightly retreated. On one hand, this is due to the expiration of official Gas subsidies; on the other hand, an increase in Rug pulls has begun, quickly pushing the Meme market into a "run-fast phase."

Recently, on-chain analyst Wazz monitored a Rug Pull gang on the Robinhood chain through a certain Meme coin, discovering that they had launched at least 53 projects in the past two months, cashing out approximately 18.43 million dollars. The question of whether "the market on the Robinhood chain has retreated" may also be observed from this perspective.

DEED as the Trigger: Deep Dive into the Inner Workings of the Token Issuance Group on Robinhood Chain

According to Wazz's revelation, he recently uncovered the largest-scale series of Rug pulls on the Robinhood chain - this organization launched 53 projects within two months, cashing out approximately 18.43 million dollars. This is just the scale of directly associated funds, and the actual profit figure is likely even higher.

Interestingly, the token DEED, which initially prompted his decision to investigate, doesn't even rank in the top 10 for market cap or cash-out revenue among these 53 projects. (Related projects include HOT, WAIFU, RIG, PRESS, BELL, VAULTS, EQUITY, DEED, etc.)

From Point to Network: Deep Dive into the Fund Flow of the Token Issuance Group

The core of this insider information is the flow of funds: the gang directly moves the cash-out revenue from the previous project to the deployment wallet of the next project, and this usually happens just seconds before a transaction is signed by that wallet address. Almost every project has over 70% of its circulating tokens pre-emptively controlled during its launch phase, with each project bundling 70-200 witch wallets, most of which were launched through the Pons V2 version. (Odaily Planet Daily emphasizes: Pons' token projects should be closely monitored, watch out for traps)

Undoubtedly, this is a highly organized Rug pull assembly line – conversely, it could be said that with a little due diligence, most traps could have been avoided.

Additionally, according to Wazz's detection, the token issuance group also has its tricky routines: they create fake coin schemes for their genuine projects - pulling up fake coins to the sky before the real token launch, allowing them to cash out using the fake coins before the true contract address (CA) is announced, thereby maximizing profits. This trick is truly vicious, allowing a project to repeatedly harvest gains. The gang repeatedly cashed out three times during the token issuance process of PINK, CRUMBS, DEED, etc.

Top Three Rug Pull Cash-Out Projects by the Token Issuance Group: CRUMBS, LEGS, PINK

Here are the top three projects by cash-out scale discovered by Wazz through tracking on-chain fund flows and wallet addresses:

CRUMBS: Total cash-out of 3.12 million dollars

This is the wallet trail related to CRUMBS - a total of 92 associated wallets were detected. The project peak market cap was about 8 million dollars, and this token issuance group cashed out 3.12 million dollars, with an issuance cost of about 150,000 dollars.

LEGS: Total cash-out of 2.9 million dollars

This is the wallet trail related to LEGS - a total of 77 associated wallets were detected. The project peak market cap was about 6.6 million dollars, and this token issuance group cashed out 2.9 million dollars.

PINK: Total cash-out of 1.44 million dollars

This is the wallet trail related to PINK - a total of 125 associated wallets were detected (too many to fit all addresses into one screenshot).

Key Information Summary: 45 projects are fund-associated, 4 projects are signature-associated, 4 projects are aggregation-associated

Based on the current investigation information, Wazz provided his summary:

• 45 projects are clearly related through fund flows: the transition wallet from the previous project directly transferred funds to the deployment wallet of the next project's developers;
• 4 projects (VAULTS, WAIFU, second issuance of DEED, CRUMBS) are related through private key signatures: the same private key wallet signed different batches of funds for two different projects;
• 4 projects (LEGS, PINK, and second issuance of CRUMBS) are related through fund aggregation wallets: the revenues of two projects ultimately reached the same receiving wallet.

For example, from DRAFT to DEED, the entire flow chain of three transactions is as follows:

• 98 insider wallets related to DRAFT aggregated all 179.88 ETH into one transit wallet address;
• The transit wallet then transferred the funds to a jump wallet, which further transferred 20 ETH to the DEED developer deployment wallet;
• Only 16 seconds later, this wallet signed the batch fund transfer for DEED.

Among the 53 projects, 45 are connected through this method.

It is worth mentioning that besides this "53 Coin Insider Group," Wazz has also identified at least two other chains of token issuance gangs, but he has not yet managed to directly connect them to this batch of projects. These two token issuance groups also cashed out millions of dollars through a series of coin issues, involving dozens of projects, but so far, the "53 Coin Insider Group" is the largest group he has uncovered.

As for the funds, most of the stolen money has been converted to ETH and placed on the Ethereum network, making the related assets impossible to freeze, but the gang's associated wallets have been stored in Wazz's on-chain database and have been specifically tagged. He will subsequently distribute related on-chain intelligence and wallet label databases for more people to reference, to avoid similar traps.