Author: Gemini, Deep潮 TechFlow
As the end of the gas subsidy period approaches at the end of September, the Meme trenches on the Robinhood chain are experiencing a visible retreat. Weekly trading volume on the Pons V2 launch platform has sharply declined since mid-September, and the once bustling activity of tens of thousands of trades per day is rapidly cooling down.
Buffett says, "Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked."
On the RH chain, after the tide recedes, we see not only retail investors swimming naked, but also the "pumpers" frantically stirring beneath the surface, artificially creating massive pump-and-dump schemes.
On-chain analyst Wazz yesterday uncovered a harvesting network hidden beneath the frenzy of this chain:
Over the past two months, a highly coordinated group has systematically manipulated at least 53 projects through pipeline-style pump-and-dump schemes, directly siphoning up to $18.43 million in liquidity from the chain.
Their trading timing precisely rode the wave of maximum speculative frenzy from July to early September, when Pons fees once surpassed Solana’s. When everyone was blindly rushing into new launches, no one took the time to carefully examine token distribution or funding sources;
Only when the tide goes out does this industrialized harvesting machine become so glaring.
The trigger: $DEED — a ghost token that can’t even crack the top ten on the crime leaderboard
The investigation into this gang began with what appeared to be an ordinary street dog crash.
While reviewing the token $DEED, analysts identified textbook "assembly-line rug pull" characteristics: at launch, approximately 98 wallet addresses collectively sniped the token, immediately acquiring 86% of the total supply. Once retail buying pushed the market cap higher, these wallets simultaneously dumped their holdings, causing the market cap to collapse to zero.
But tracing upstream from the $DEED token issuance fund account—the core private key used exclusively to pay token issuance fees and inject initial liquidity—a much larger financial network emerges.
What’s terrifying is that DEED doesn’t even rank among the top targets in this group’s harvesting scheme. The real big hits were CRUMBS (which drained $3.12 million using 92 bundled wallets), LEGS (which drained $2.9 million), and PINK (which drained $1.44 million). Without exception, these projects exhibited extreme token concentration and abrupt, cliff-like market cap dumps.
The Perfect Crime: Fake Contracts, Privileged Backdoors, and a 16-Second Fund Loop
Further analysis reveals that this team is not a group of retail speculators who “strike and move on,” but rather operates a tightly coordinated, fully automated “cycle trading” production line.
According to Wazz's tracking, the group's methodology can be broken down into three highly sophisticated steps:
Step 1: Fake Contract Warm-up
Before the real contract launches, they deploy two to three fake contracts with the same name, manipulating market sentiment and pre-harvesting impulsive FOMO capital. Once market attention peaks, they reveal the genuine contract address to maximize their profits.
Step 2: Exploit privileged backdoors to achieve absolute control
At the token launch on the platform, creators set "anti-snipe tax exemptions" for their own 70 to 200 wallet addresses. This meant that at second 0 of the launch, these bundled wallets could acquire 70% or even up to 86% of the total supply with virtually zero friction, leaving retail traders on the secondary market with nothing but endless dumping.
Step 3: 16-second rapid money laundering, start the next round
This is the most critical part of the entire operation and serves as irrefutable evidence of their coordinated scheme. After completing a harvest and cashing out, these illicit funds are swiftly consolidated into a transit wallet, then immediately transferred into the “token issuance fund account” of the next new scam project.
Wazz captured an extreme example: immediately after the previous batch (DRAFT) transferred 179 ETH into the intermediary, funds were routed to deposit 20 ETH into the $DEED token issuance address. Just 16 seconds later, this account automatically paid the $DEED token issuance fee and completed the opening signature.
Of the 53 mined launches, 45 were directly tightly coupled through this ultra-fast fund flow, creating a fully self-sustaining scam fund wheel.
The tuition fee of the hype phase
Currently, the majority of these $18.43 million in profits have already been bridged back to the Ethereum mainnet, leaving Robinhood with minimal on-chain room to freeze assets.
According to investigators, this is not even the only group—there are at least two other interconnected criminal networks that have not yet been fully integrated into this map.
The Robinhood chain itself has not cooled down. Its TVL, stablecoin supply, and official flagship RWA and tokenized stock businesses are still operational. What has truly cooled is the speculative dog coin frenzy that was fueled by extremely low token launch barriers, easily bypassed anti-snipe mechanisms, and upfront gas subsidies.
In this arena, retail investors believe they are participating in a liquidity feast brought by traffic giants, but in reality, they are often just fueling this precisely engineered extraction machine.
When the gas subsidies ending at the end of September fully cease, the cost structure for listings and wash trading will change, and this artificially created wave will eventually subside. The $18 million lost is the most expensive tuition fee that retail investors paid during the speculative early stage of a new chain.