A user created nearly 18,000 tokens via memecoin launchpad Pump.fun, raking in almost $3.8 million in profits from trades, according to Conor Grogan, head of product business operations at Coinbase.
Grogan highlighted that this user creates an average of 12 tokens per hour until he goes to bed and repeats the process the following day.
According to a Dune Analytics dashboard by user Evelyn233, the wallet’s first mint on Pump.fun happened on Nov. 6, 2024. This wallet is the largest token deployer on the launchpad.
Notably, the wallet has a 55.57% win rate on its roughly $6.8 million in trades, resulting in $3.76 million in profits.
If Pump.fun creates a native token and rewards users with an airdrop, Grogan estimates that this wallet would make eight figures from the event.
Rug pull industry
Although Grogan acknowledges the use of bots on Pump.fun to create tokens, he believes the work done with this wallet is manual, citing its inactive periods.
He shared:
“I dont think its a bot given its inactive at certain times! Maybe a bot working in conjunction with a human(s).”
Additionally, Grogan suspects that creating many tokens is profitable and that this tactic will be used more as people realize its effectiveness.
A user identified as Artemis commented that this practice is already familiar, calling it a “rug farm.” They shared a wallet that created 44,591 tokens on the Ethereum (ETH) layer-2 blockchain Base, profiting $600,000 within 150 days. Artemis estimated that 177.39 ETH was stolen from 9,256 users.
Artemis added that scammers drain the liquidity from a token in less than a minute after a significant investment or if there are no buyers. They showed a token with liquidity drained 26 seconds after a user invested 0.99 ETH as an example.
Furthermore, as bad actors profit, they increase the liquidity in the pools to make their tokens look more legitimate.
Artemis concluded:
“It’s interesting, that rugs are almost normalized in the industry. While protocol hackers are being prosecuted for stealing similar amounts, rugpullers seem to never face the justice.”
