Engineered Volume, Retail Exposure
How one operator faked trading activity on 1,141 new tokens, and what it cost the everyday buyers it drew in.
In 14 days, one operator created 1,141 new tokens. It made each one look busy by trading with itself, then took the money back out, every time. 141 of the 149 outside buyers who joined in lost money.
How the scheme worked
The same four steps, repeated 1,141 times. Only one token was live at a time.
- Fund a fresh account. The farm's main account (the hub) sends 50.1 ETH (~$121,000) to a brand-new wallet created for one token.
- Open a liquidity pool. The new account creates a token and puts that ~$121,000 into a liquidity pool. The token's page now shows about $242,000 of money behind it.
- Fake the buying. Ten more accounts run the farm through buying the token again and again, about 11.4 ETH (~$27,600) per token. This is wash trading: the farm trading with itself so the token looks popular.
- Take the money back. The account removes the money from the pool, a median 16 minutes after launch, and often within a minute of the first outside purchase. Buyers are left with tokens they cannot sell. The money returns to the hub, and the cycle starts again.
The money map ?
Every account and liquidity pool in the scheme leads back to one main account at the center. Drag to rotate, scroll or pinch to zoom, and hover or tap a dot for details. Click a dot to trace its money; click it again to clear.
- Main account (hub)
- New account, one per token 1,141
- Pool emptied in under 2 min
- Pool emptied in 2–15 min
- Pool emptied after 15 min
- Farm buying account 10
- Outside buyer 149
What this means: everything traces back to one main account. Each token was launched from a new account that was used once and then dropped, so on any single token's page the 1,141 tokens look unrelated. Turn on "Show fake buying" to see the 10 farm accounts behind almost all of the purchases.
What the data shows
The scheme ran like a machine: the same money, the same steps, around the clock. Five charts show it from different angles.
Where the money came from and went
Average per token, in ETH with dollars
How long each token's liquidity pool lasted
Minutes from opening the pool to emptying it
New tokens launched per day
Eastern Time
What happened to every new liquidity pool on the network
17,695 pools that started with at least $500, Oct 12–26
Related finding: some farms watch for specific buyers
Share of purchases followed by the pool being emptied within about 6 seconds
What this means for everyday buyers
Almost everyone who bought from outside the farm lost money. Below are the measured results, then the warning signs anyone could have checked. These are risk signals, not investment advice.
What happened to the outside money
Why the tokens looked safe
Warning signs you can measure
Scale check: the total outside loss is small in dollars because few outsiders bought, and most bought small amounts. The risk is the pattern. Once your money is in a pool like this, its owner can take the money back within seconds, and there is nothing left to sell into.
How we did it
We read the public records ourselves and followed the money one transfer at a time.
- Count everything. We read every new liquidity pool created on Robinhood Chain over 14 days, about 117,000 in total. We kept the 17,695 that started with at least $500.
- Spot the pattern. One starting amount kept repeating: exactly 50.097 ETH (~$121,000), in 1,141 pools. Each pool came from a different new account.
- Follow the money. For each pool we pulled its full trading history, then traced who funded the account that created it. Every trail led to the same main account. That account also sent 1.8 ETH (~$4,350) to each of 10 buying accounts, 1,140 times, through a bulk-payment tool.
- Double-check it. All 1,141 new accounts got exactly 50.1 ETH (~$116,000–$126,000, depending on the day) from the same main account. 1,127 of them sent their money back to it afterward: 69,321 ETH (~$167.4M) in total. No two of the farm's pools were ever open at the same time, every pool was emptied, and the 10 buying accounts also sent their leftovers back.
- Make it readable. We turned 2,443 accounts and liquidity pools and 13,754 money transfers into the map above and five plain-English charts.
Tools and sources: public Robinhood Chain records, CoinGecko for historical ETH prices, Python for the analysis, and three.js and Chart.js for the visuals. No paid data and no private data.
Download the map data (JSON) · every account listed is public and can be looked up in a blockchain explorer.
Lessons for anyone buying new tokens
What the data shows, not investment advice.
- The money behind a token can be borrowed for minutes. Each of these tokens showed about $242,000 behind it (the ~$121,000 deposit, counted on both sides of the pool). Every pool was emptied within 29 minutes (median 16), and the same money moved on to the next token.
- Busy trading can be one operator trading with itself. 99.99% of the 13,041 ETH (~$31.5M) of buying came from 10 accounts the farm paid for. Outside buyers put in 0.68 ETH (~$1,657) in total, and lost almost all of it.
- A brand-new creator account hides its history. All 1,141 tokens came from accounts with no past, so no single token page connects them. Tracing who funded each account is what reveals the pattern.
- Money that isn't locked usually leaves. Across all 17,695 new pools on the network in this period, 97.3% were emptied. Only 1.4% had their money locked so the creator could not take it back.
Words used on this page
Plain definitions for the crypto terms above. Dotted-underlined words show the same definition when you hover or tap them.
- Robinhood Chain
- A public blockchain network built by Robinhood, where anyone can create a token and let others trade it.
- ETH
- Ether, the main currency on this network. Every ETH amount on this page also shows dollars at that day's price.
- Wallet / account
- An account on a blockchain. Anyone can create one in seconds, for free, with no name attached.
- Liquidity pool
- A shared pool of money (the token plus ETH) that lets people buy and sell a token instantly. Its size is called liquidity.
- Pulling or removing liquidity
- The token's creator takes the money out of the pool. After that, the token can no longer be sold for anything.
- Rug, rug pull
- Slang for pulling the money out of a token's liquidity pool, leaving buyers with tokens they cannot sell.
- Deployer
- The brand-new account that created one token and its liquidity pool. Each was used once.
- Hub wallet
- The farm's main account. It funded every other account and collected the money afterward.
- Wash trading, engineered volume
- The farm trading with itself so a token looks busy and popular. The trades are real transactions, but they are not real demand.
- Locked or burned liquidity
- Money in the pool that the creator has made impossible to withdraw, either for a set time (locked) or forever (burned).