A trader, identified by the firm as an “early sniper”—or someone who systematically purchases newly launched tokens—bought $4,000 of the firm’s DisclaimerCoin (DONT) meme coin prior to the firm’s public launch announcement. That stash was quickly worth over $1 million after DeFi Development Corp. started promoting the token rollout and the price of DONT surged.
No roadmap, no utility, no cabal, & no promises.Just a disclaimer: DONT buy it.
The account ultimately purchased around 29 billion DONT tokens across multiple transactions, spending just over $4,000 and ending up with nearly 7% of the total supply of 420 billion tokens by 8:39 a.m. ET.
The trader started purchasing tokens at miniscule market caps nearly an hour before the Solana firm—which holds more than 2.2 million SOL, or around $283 million worth—publicly announced that it had launched the DONT meme coin, around 8:30 a.m. ET.
Following the announcement that the token—branded as an experiment—was launched by the firm, DONT quickly jumped, reaching a $16.5 million market cap around an hour after the public announcement, creating sizable profits for the alleged sniper.
On the surface, the trades might point to a huge victory for a lucky meme coin trader—someone who took a stab on a random token and was handsomely rewarded. But crypto sleuths saw potential red flags in the blockchain data.
Hours after the launch, on-chain observers alleged potential wrongdoing, pointing to a connection between the sniper’s wallet and another Solana address that holds DFDV’s liquid staking token.
Fascinating behavior, the address that funded the profitable trader (HzmFmfZJ6YVEop8AvTrCzwZk7nyh4sWbR3BfWGa9gs3J) holds 30k of DeFi Dev Corp's LST
Using blockchain data, Decrypt was able to independently verify the claim, and on-chain research firm Bubblemaps confirmed Decrypt’s findings.
As the allegations reached DFDV, the firm said it conducted a review of the launch, and ultimately determined the address in question (8FziB) belonged to an early sniper and did not comment on allegations of connections between the company and the alleged sniper.
The proceeds earned from the sniper’s sales, about $200,000 worth of Solana, was then returned to a wallet belonging to the DeFi Dev Corp team in addition to more than 17 billion DONT tokens, about $1.5 million worth. Those tokens were subsequently burned—that is, sent to a blockchain address where they can not be accessed, effectively removing the tokens from circulation. The company did not comment on how it was able to retrieve the tokens from the alleged sniper or if the trader is known to the company.
Following the announcement that the firm had burned the tokens, DONT jumped around 92% in an hour to $35 million market cap—which is 19% of the company’s own $190 million market cap based on the price of DFDV stock.
Shares in the firm are down around 2.33% on Thursday and down 73% in the last six months, now changing hands around $6.29.
