While this unlocks creativity and new communities, it also introduces two pervasive threats that drain retail capital and distort market signals:
Rug Pulls
A rug pull occurs when the token creator (or a coordinated set of wallets) simulates organic demand by spoofing buys/sells and gradually pushing price and market cap upward.Once sufficient liquidity and social traction are reached, the actor dumps holdings across multiple wallets, triggering a rapid crash — often up to 99% drawdown within minutes. Key signals typically observed:
- Coordinated buy patterns from clustered wallets
- Abrupt synchronized selling near local peaks
Farming Manipulation
Farming is slower, harder to detect, and often more convincing. The attacker (or a botnet of wallets) keeps price “balanced” while gradually increasing market cap.They orchestrate controlled pumps and pullbacks to simulate healthy volatility, using social narratives to attract new buyers.
Over time, this controlled behavior nudges the asset into a cascading decline — again, frequently culminating in a ~99% loss. Typical characteristics:
- Many recently created wallets among top holders
- Repeated cyclical pumps with tight amplitude control
- Social amplification synchronized with on-chain activity
Why It’s Hard to Detect
- Fragmented, high-throughput activity on Solana
- Obfuscation via multi-wallet orchestration and fresh wallets
- Delayed or noisy community reporting
- Visual charts look “healthy” until they don’t