Onchain analyst links $18.4 million in Robinhood Chain memecoin extractions to single rug-pull operation

A single operation extracted at least $18.43 million from 53 memecoin launches on Robinhood Chain over roughly two months, according to an onchain investigation published to X on Sunday by pseudonymous analyst Wazz.

The Block's review of Robinhood Chain data confirmed how 10 of the launches listed in Wazz's thread were sniped, as well as one of the fund flows they used to tie launches together. The Block did not independently replicate the $18.43 million total.

In their thread posted to X at 8:59 a.m. ET, Wazz said nearly every launch was sniped for 70% or more of its supply by bundles of 70 to 200 wallets.

Most of the tokens were launched through Pons V2, they said. Pons is the leading token launchpad on the recently launched Robinhood Chain.

Wazz linked 45 launches by tracing payments from one launch's collection wallet to the next token's funding wallet. The analyst linked four more launches through private keys that were used to sign batch funding transactions for more than one launch, and linked another four through a shared collector wallet.

"The proceeds of one launch pay the key that funds the next," they wrote.

CRUMBS, which promises to let users "turn eligible receipts into stock-token rewards from the companies you already shop with," was the biggest extraction in dollar terms in Wazz's list at $3.12 million, followed by LEGS at $2.9 million and PINK at $1.44 million. Wazz said they identified at least two other serial deployers that they could not link to this group.

Most of the money is sitting in ETH, so it can't be frozen, Wazz said. Wazz told The Block they valued each launch at ETH's price around the time of its launch or sale.

Creators exempted their buyers from Pons' anti-sniping tax

Pons V2, like many other token launchpads, sells new tokens along a bonding curve. Its documentation says the launchpad charges a 99% "snipe tax" on buys in the first seconds after launch to deter bots hunting for new tokens, with the tax falling to zero in about five seconds. Creators can waive it "for a team bundling its opening buys across several wallets," for up to 32 addresses.

Wazz's thread included a table of 11 launches, 10 of them on Pons V2. The Block matched all 10 onchain.

The Block's analysis found that the same pattern shows up in the nine launches from late August onward. The creator's launch transaction waived the anti-sniping tax for 15 to 25 wallets, and one to three blocks later, a single transaction bought tokens for each one of them at once.

In each launch, that single transaction emptied the bonding curve, pushing the token into a Uniswap v4 pool. The creator and the exempt wallets came out of the opening transactions holding 82% to 86% of supply, the same shares that Wazz concluded were sniped.

All nine opening buys went through one unverified contract created on Aug. 28. Wazz told The Block the contract belongs to a commercial bundling tool with many unrelated users. Of the 53 launches on Wazz's list, 25 used it for their opening buys. The Block could not determine who operates the tool.

EQUITY, launched Aug. 12 before that contract existed, followed a looser version of the pattern. Its creator exempted 31 wallets from the snipe tax, and 21 of them bought within about a second of launch in separate transactions, leaving them and the creator with 65.7% of supply.

Wazz's list includes three launches each named CRUMBS, PINK and DEED within about a day of one another, and the token in Wazz's table was the last of each set. Wazz alleged the group ran fake launches of hyped tokens to take money from buyers before announcing the real contract address.

From DRAFT to DEED

Wazz cited DEED, the launch they said prompted their investigation, as an example, saying proceeds from an earlier token, DRAFT, paid for it. The Block traced the flow Wazz described onchain and confirmed each transaction.

At 9:36 a.m. ET on Sept. 14, 98 wallets that had held DRAFT each sent ETH to the same address within three seconds, for a combined 179.88 ETH. That address forwarded the full amount in one transaction to a wallet beginning 0x9d06.

On Sept. 21 at 7:09 p.m. ET, the 0x9d06 wallet sent 50 ETH to another address. That address then sent 20 ETH at 7:11 p.m. ET to a wallet beginning 0xf268.

Sixteen seconds later, 0xf268 sent 15.98 ETH in a single batch transfer to 50 addresses. The recipients included DEED's creator, the wallet that paid for DEED's opening buy and the other 24 wallets that the creator exempted from the snipe tax.

DEED went live 40 minutes later, at 7:51 p.m. ET, and its creator and exempt wallets ended the opening buy holding 86% of supply.

The 0x9d06 wallet funded another token named DEED the same day. At 5:53 p.m. ET, it sent 18 ETH to a different address, which less than a minute later funded the wallet that made that identically named token's opening buy. 

DEED's payouts

The 92 wallets that 0xf268 funded received 130.75 ETH from selling DEED into its Uniswap pool, according to onchain data reviewed by The Block. The wallets started selling the token one second after launch.

DEED's creator also pulled 69.06 ETH in creator fees out of Pons' fee escrow contract, onchain data shows. 

That adds up to about 199.8 ETH, or roughly $535,000 at current prices, against the 228.92 ETH Wazz lists for DEED. The Block's count only covers wallets 0xf268 funded. Wazz said their figure counts 98 wallets, including 67.55 ETH in creator fees, and falls to 212.94 ETH after subtracting the 15.98 ETH funding transfer.

On Sept. 24, the 0x9d06 wallet deposited about 86.5 ETH into a contract belonging to cross-chain bridge Relay. Relay then delivered about 86.3 ETH to a wallet on Ethereum, which swapped it for about 231,000 DAI and moved the stablecoins to a new address the next day, where they remained as of publication time Sunday.

Robinhood launched Robinhood Chain, an Ethereum layer 2 built with Arbitrum's tech stack, on July 1, with memecoins and stock-linked tokens driving much of the network's trading activity so far.

Fees from Pons drove Robinhood Chain to a record $6 million in a single day earlier this month. The Block's Robinhood Chain dashboard tracks the network's fees, volume and users.

The Block has reached out to Pons and Robinhood for comment.