MoonCats🇺🇸😺

As crypto markets are rising to new highs, the good old and proven methods of meme coins have reached new heights as well - NOT the good kind!

On 5th of April, Bubblemaps posted the initial thread about MoonCats and its problematic launch.

Meme coins like Doge and Shiba Inu, while often lacking practical utility, have popularized tokens that thrive on community hype and trends. In our previous coverage of Shiba Inu using Bubblemaps, we uncovered concerning wallet connections suggesting coordinated activities. Today, we're discussing the concept of a "fair launch” while looking into an seemingly unfair lauch.

A fair launch aims to ensure that all potential buyers have an equal chance to acquire tokens, with developers releasing new tokens without presales or prior allocations to insiders. However, reality often falls short of this ideal, with developers or insiders sometimes accessing the launch early, compromising its fairness.

Take the recent example of MoonCats on the Base chain. Promotional materials hinted at a connection to the famous NFT collection Cryptopunks, likely to create buzz. Hyped "fair launches" frequently rely on spreading questionable information. While some projects may find long-term success with this approach, most fail. Worse, they attract initial investments with misleading hype, only to collapse at the first hurdle, leaving investors stranded.

In short, MoonCats was live for trading a few minutes before the CA (Contract Address) was publicly shared. This occurred because developers and insiders had purchased a significant portion of the supply prior to announcing the launch on social platforms such as Twitter and Telegram. They were the only ones who knew exactly which token they had to buy as the contract was not verified at launch.

The team involved in the launch eventually confessed to sniping 30% of the supply, while insiders collectively took more than 20%. By using Bubblemaps, we can visually identify these transactions. The clusters of wallets that acquired the tokens before the "official launch" are clearly visible.

Each cluster indicates a different group: one belongs to the team and others to various insiders. After our investigation called them out, the team acknowledged that they had taken 30% of the supply. This is evident from the image below, where all wallets in the team's cluster are linked to a central wallet that distributed ETH to the other wallets.

Upon closer analysis, two additional large clusters are visible, each holding around 20% of the supply, which raises suspicions. Notably, the pink insider cluster has realized over $700,000 in profits, while the orange cluster has not yet sold its tokens for profit. Both clusters acquired their tokens before the “official launch,” indicating potential insider activity.

We have identified several subsequent clusters that have, combined with the two larger clusters, sold for a total net profit of over 2.1 million dollars.

The team claims fair launch, Bubblemaps claim unfair launch.