On July 12, the pump.fun ICO raised over $500 million on-chain in just 12 minutes, with an additional $100 million from centralized exchanges, involving over 10,000 wallets. However, anomalies emerged as one wallet, identified as 88888FAoqY6JdSvz7fk1FPd6qjPTcCMGcS64GbwonLoE, purchased tokens from 500 different addresses, with each contributing $400 in USDC and a bit of SOL for gas fees. This strategy gave the impression of widespread demand, although it originated from a single entity, which also used older wallets to evade detection by anti-Sybil heuristics. Analysts indicated this behavior might aim to position the orchestrator for future airdrops or rewards for small participants. The actions of this whale do not imply Pump.fun's involvement, highlighting how sophisticated players can manipulate ICO participation and allocations without strong resistance measures in place.

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