Blockchain analytics firm Bitquery has linked 56 memecoin launches on Robinhood Chain to a single suspected rug-pull crew and put the group's take at approximately $15.5 million — a lower figure than the $18.43 million an on-chain analyst attributed to the same operation in The Block's earlier reporting.
Bitquery published its analysis on September 28, covering activity through September 23 — two days after the cutoff used for the first estimate. The discrepancy between the two figures, noted by Cryptopolitan, reflects different counting windows and tracing methods rather than a dispute that a coordinated operation exists.
How the Tactic Works
Most of the traced activity ran through Pons, a token launchpad on Robinhood Chain that sells new tokens via a bonding curve, giving the earliest buyers the lowest prices. To deter sniping, Pons charges a 99% tax on initial purchases that decays to zero within five seconds. Token creators, however, choose which wallets are exempt from that tax.
The crew's method, per Bitquery: obtain tax exemptions for its own wallets, then buy the curve at launch prices the tax was supposed to protect.
In the clearest documented case, the September 21 launch of the DEED token, a wallet linked to the group funded 92 fresh addresses roughly 40 minutes before the token went live. In the next block, 25 tax-exempt wallets bought about two-thirds of the entire supply. "No one else got a single token at launch prices," Bitquery wrote.
The scale of the leakage is measurable: across the 35 launches Bitquery associated with the group, Pons collected just 1.9 ETH in snipe tax — evidence that the exemptions largely neutralized the platform's core anti-sniping control.
Not One Crew, a Pattern
The more consequential finding is that this is not one crew. Bitquery identified 467 other groups using the same tax-exemption tactic on Pons, suggesting the vulnerability is structural: a launchpad design whose anti-sniping mechanism depends on the honesty of the token creators it cannot vet.
For traders, the lesson is on-chain and checkable before buying any launchpad token: exemption lists and the first blocks of a launch are public. If a large share of supply moved to wallets that skipped the tax ordinary buyers paid, the launch was rigged before it began.
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