A new potential memecoin rug factory has been discovered on Robinhood Chain as the network experiences a surge in coordinated scam activities. On September 28, blockchain security company GoPlus revealed that it had uncovered a high-risk operation associated with numerous memecoins that had funneled over $9 million through a shared fund-consolidation network in the last month.
The operation utilized batches of newly created wallets to amass and sell tokens before transferring the profits to related addresses. The main consolidation wallet held approximately 3,589 ETH, equivalent to around $9.49 million, from its latest 400 transactions as of September 28. GoPlus clarified that this figure represented gross flows rather than net profits or investor losses.
The security firm highlighted a recurring pattern in which funds from one set of launches seemed to finance subsequent ones. Operators would launch a token based on a popular theme, distribute the supply among new wallets with minimal transaction history, and sell through contracts like PonsV2Helper and UniversalRouter. The ETH generated from these sales would then be channeled through local sweep wallets before reaching the broader consolidation cluster.
This structure obscured the true ownership of a token by spreading out the selling process across multiple seemingly unrelated addresses, creating the illusion of independent market activity before consolidating the proceeds elsewhere. GoPlus emphasized that this setup differed from a traditional rug pull where liquidity vanishes suddenly or buyers are unable to sell. Instead, the concern lay in the coordinated ownership and exit strategy across seemingly distinct wallets, followed by reinvestment in subsequent launches.
The discovery of this second suspected rug factory followed the identification of another alleged serial-rug operation on Robinhood Chain by on-chain researcher Wazz. This operation reportedly extracted around $18.43 million from at least 53 memecoin launches over a span of approximately two months. The operation employed a variation of the same playbook, with groups of 70 to 200 wallets acquiring significant portions of the token supply shortly after launch.
Both operations shared common characteristics such as the heavy use of Pons V2 infrastructure, the use of large wallet batches to mask supply concentration, and the movement of capital from one launch to the next. However, GoPlus cautioned that there was no evidence linking the two clusters to the same operators. The newer operation relied more on fresh wallets followed by consolidation, while the Wazz-linked group utilized larger clusters to control the supply early on.
The distinct approaches suggested that the fraudulent activity was more widespread than initially thought, with operators able to replicate similar economic models using different wallet structures. This posed a significant challenge for platforms, launchpads, and trading interfaces in detecting and preventing such scams.
The increasing prevalence of suspected rug factories on Robinhood Chain comes as the network experiences rapid growth, surpassing $1.5 billion in total value locked within a few months of its launch. With an estimated $50 million in revenue generated over three months, the network has attracted significant trading activity.
As Robinhood Chain continues to expand, the platform presents an opportunity for developers to tap into its large existing customer base and introduce on-chain products to a wider audience. However, this distribution advantage also raises the stakes in terms of detecting and preventing abusive token launches early on.
In conclusion, the emergence of a second suspected rug factory underscores the importance of implementing robust safeguards to protect users and prevent organized token operators from exploiting the network’s distribution layer. Robinhood’s challenge lies in maintaining an open environment for growth while safeguarding against fraudulent activities that could potentially target a broader retail investor base.
