Blockchain investigator ZachXBT reported that the Solana (SOL) buying and selling platform Aqua allegedly carried out a rug pull, draining 21.77k SOL price $4.65 million after securing endorsements from main ecosystem companions and just lately passing safety audits.
Aqua positioned itself as a buying and selling infrastructure designed to democratize entry past “insiders or whales,” claiming to have processed over $90 million in quantity with execution speeds reaching milliseconds.
The platform promised income sharing via its AQUA token, which might distribute buying and selling charges to holders through buy-and-burn mechanisms and staking rewards.
Aqua carried out a public sale of their token, sharing an handle the place buyers may ship up SOL and obtain AQUA tokens after launch. In accordance with an announcement, the protocol raised $1 million in half-hour.
A number of endorsement
The mission gained credibility via partnerships with established Solana entities, together with Meteora, Helius, SYMMIO, and Dialect, in addition to promotion from varied influencers.
QuillAudits offered further legitimacy on Aug. 31, congratulating the Aqua workforce for attaining a “99.7% rating” of their safety evaluation and praising their dedication to safety.
ZachXBT’s investigation revealed that funds have been “cut up 4 methods and transferred between middleman addresses earlier than being despatched to a number of instantaneous exchanges” simply hours earlier than his report was submitted.
The workforce disabled replies on all X posts following the alleged exit.
Ethos Community CEO Serpin Taxt confirmed the mission’s dissolution, stating Aqua had briefly contacted his workforce about potential collaboration earlier than disappearing. He added that Aqua’s workforce deleted the messages despatched via Telegram.
‘Liquidity ladder’
The platform launched its token via what it referred to as a “Liquidity Ladder” mannequin, marketed as an alternative choice to conventional presales that will guarantee “deep launch liquidity” and “truthful value discovery.”
This mechanism was designed to reward early conviction whereas avoiding insider allocations that sometimes profit institutional buyers.
Following the alleged rug pull, Aqua revealed a brand new good contract handle and claimed their Medium account was “unexpectedly suspended,” stopping them from publishing an in depth rationalization.
The workforce promised to share info via various channels however offered no updates as of press time.
Meteora co-lead Soju addressed the accusations that the protocol helped a rip-off mission to achieve traction.
Soju said:
“Our prerogative will probably be to help groups utilizing our tech, generally that leads to launch, generally it doesn’t. I personally have put in processes that closely weight this in our favor. Nevertheless, I acknowledge that we may have managed expectations higher and would additional tighten inside processes to cut back this from taking place.”
Regardless of the suspicious transactions of the cash from their presale handle, there isn’t any formal affirmation as of press time that Aqua carried out a rug pull.
Talked about on this article
