Blockaid: 50% of meme token presales on Solana in 4 months turned out to be fraudulent

The popularity of such assets has also led to congestion on the network

08.04.2024 - 15:35

2 min

What’s new? About half of the presales of meme tokens on the Solana blockchain conducted between November and February turned out to be fraudulent, as reported by cyber security analysts at Blockaid. They noted that the meme coin boom has become “fertile ground” for attackers who are actively exploiting fear of missing out (FOMO) among traders, luring them by mimicking legitimate transactions and creating fake websites.

Material by Unchained

What else is known? Launching tokens via presale has become popular in the Solana ecosystem in recent months. This method involves investors sending cryptocurrency to the creator’s address and receiving a weighted allocation of tokens after the project is launched. In this case, there is no guarantee that the investor will receive new tokens in exchange for the sent cryptocurrency, making presale an extremely popular model for scammers.

As recently as last month, an anonymous blockchain researcher under the nickname ZachXBT reported several cases of scams with damages of over $2,5 million. Later, the creator of the CONDOM token absconded with investors’ funds, raising almost $1 million on the presale.

At the same time, many projects were launched in good faith and are successfully functioning. The top 30 meme tokens in terms of market capitalization include several assets launched by the presale method on Solana, including BOOK OF MEME (BOME) and SLERF.

At the moment, Solana’s efficiency in transaction processing has decreased due to increased trading volume caused by interest in meme tokens and increased activity of trading bots spamming the blockchain. On April 4, Solana’s user transaction failure rate reached a record 77%.

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