|

Solana Project Aquabot Vanishes With $4.65M in Presale Rug Pull After Being Promoted by Major Influencers

🥷🏽

A Solana-based Telegram buying and selling bot mission, Aquabot, has allegedly executed a rug pull, disappearing with greater than $4.65 million in presale funds simply hours earlier than its deliberate token era occasion.

On-chain investigator ZachXBT was the primary to flag the suspicious exercise, noting that Aquabot’s presale pockets moved 21,770 SOL, value roughly $4.65 million, into a number of middleman addresses earlier than routing the funds to instantaneous exchanges.

The transfers had been break up into 4 tranches, a tactic usually related to makes an attempt to obscure transaction trails.

Solana Community Warns of Presale Scams After Aquabot Controversy

The presale deal with, recognized as 4Ea23VxEGAgfbtauQZz11aKNtzHJwb84ppsg3Cz14u6q, had collected the funds by what the mission described as a “gamified” presale mechanism.

Investors had been instructed they may obtain multipliers on their allocations by a randomizer, and the crew initially promised 100% token distribution at launch with out vesting.

However, shortly earlier than the token era occasion, Aquabot altered its phrases, imposing vesting on presale patrons.

The sudden fund actions got here simply earlier than the launch, triggering accusations of fraud throughout the Solana neighborhood. Following the transfers, the Aquabot crew locked replies on all of its X posts, additional fueling considerations.

The state of affairs has drawn heightened scrutiny as a result of a number of high-profile names in the Solana ecosystem had promoted Aquabot.

Platforms and groups, together with Meteora, Quill Audits, Helius, SYMMIO, and Dialect, amplified the mission in current weeks.

Influencers additionally endorsed the presale, touting its novel strategy to distribution and low buying and selling charges in contrast with rivals.

Critics argue that such endorsements have created a false sense of safety across the mission.

“Once once more, respected protocols work together and make partnerships with ruggers, after which they act like nothing occurred,” one neighborhood member wrote, reflecting rising frustration with repeated presale scams on Solana.

Aquabot marketed itself as a low-fee Telegram buying and selling bot, promising a 0.25% transaction payment construction and a novel “liquidity ladder” presale design supposed to stagger entry costs for patrons.

The strategy was pitched as an answer to the “inorganic” buying and selling patterns that always emerge when all presale traders share the identical value foundation.

Enthusiasm for the mannequin was seen throughout X, the place some customers mentioned that they thought of replicating the thought for future token launches.

Instead, the mission seems to have adopted a well-known sample of sudden fund withdrawals and vanished communication channels.

With the presale funds now dispersed throughout exchanges, restoration prospects seem slim.

The incident has reignited requires better transparency in Solana’s quickly rising ecosystem.

Critics say groups and traders have to train way more warning when associating with new tasks, significantly these providing novel mechanics or unusually favorable phrases.

“There will be no tolerance for such conduct. What we want—on the very least—is radical transparency throughout Solana,” ZachXBT mentioned in his Telegram channel, the place he first detailed the transfers.

Surge in Solana Presale Scams Raises Investor Concerns

This is just not the primary time the community has confronted presale scams; final yr, ZachXBT warned that many projects are both fraudulent or on the verge of rug pulls.

On Solana, presale hype fueled a wave of rug pulls. Blockchain investigator ZachXBT flagged a number of instances the place tasks collected tens of millions in SOL earlier than vanishing.

One pockets tied to @Sartoshi0x raised 7,000 SOL however withheld 62% of the funds. Another rip-off directed 2,100 SOL to a pretend Jared MEV bot account.

Presales by @bluekirbyftm and @Vombatus_eth additionally collapsed after guarantees of refunds had been damaged. In whole, simply 33 presales pulled in over $150 million in SOL.

Despite the dangers, Solana’s social metrics surged. LunarCrush reported greater than 22.6 million engagements and 121,000 mentions, with Solana’s market cap climbing to $116.7 billion.

A $1.65 billion Solana treasury initiative led by Galaxy Digital, Jump Crypto, and Multicoin Capital additional boosted confidence in the ecosystem.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., federal prosecutors secured a conviction in one of the year’s biggest cryptojacking cases. Charles O. Parks III, often known as “CP3O,” was sentenced to 1 yr and a day in jail for defrauding cloud service suppliers of $3.5 million in computing energy.

Between January and August 2021, he mined practically $1 million value of Ether, Litecoin, and Monero. Parks laundered the proceeds by exchanges and luxurious purchases, together with a Mercedes-Benz, earlier than pleading responsible to wire fraud in December 2023.

Scams additionally prolonged to new token launches. The WEB3 presale, which raised $500,000 in hours, drew scrutiny after ZachXBT linked its crew to the failed Squiggles NFT mission and alleged scammer Raichu.
And in June, the identical investigator tied WhiteRock Finance to ZKasino’s $33 million exit scam, exposing what seemed to be a laundering scheme disguised as a real-world asset platform.

The put up Solana Project Aquabot Vanishes With $4.65M in Presale Rug Pull After Being Promoted by Major Influencers appeared first on Cryptonews.

Similar Posts