$700K liquidity, 4B% mCap growth, and $0 exit: how the top scam scheme on Solana really works
Intro
In my previous articles, I shared how I:
- Built my own arbitrage bot on Solana;
- Explained how pricing works on DEXs — from Raydium to Meteora and Orca — even launched a test pool, added liquidity, ran swaps, and backed it all with real screenshots and calculations;
- Analyzed arbitrage wallets that consistently pull in $50–$70k a month (and sometimes spike to $20k+ from a single transaction).
But today’s topic is different.
I’ve been meaning to write about scams for a while. Not in the “10 ways you’ll get wrecked” kind of way — but about one specific scheme I ran into before I even started building my arbitrage bot.
Back then, I was actively monitoring the Solana blockchain — tracking shitcoin pumps, following wallets, analyzing early buys and exits, trying to find a way to profit. At some point, I spotted a strange pattern and thought:
“Can I outplay whoever’s running this?”
At the time, I didn’t realize it was a scam. I just thought I’d found a goldmine 😁
Honestly? Sometimes it worked. About 40% of the time.
But the winrate wasn’t enough to make it sustainable long-term.
What I did get was a ton of experience.
Now I fully understand how this scam scheme works from the inside.
If I wanted to, I could replicate it — and after reading this article, so could you. Whether to try it (not advised) or just protect yourself.
I’m just sharing the info. I’m not your moral compass.
Вот перевод этого блока с подчёркнутыми жирным ключевыми фразами:
In this article, I’ll show you:
👉 Exactly how this kind of scheme is set up and launched
👉 What it’s designed to exploit
👉 And why even with solid preparation, the odds are never in your favor — and never will be.
How It All Started
At the time, I was actively monitoring the Solana blockchain —
- Using tools like DexScreener and GMGN.
- I was searching for shitcoins, early-stage tokens, and tracking trading pairs by their liquidity and volume.
- I closely followed price movements, trying to understand where the growth was coming from, why sudden drops happened, and what was going on under the hood.
I literally spent days manually tracking new pairs, opening them in Solscan, digging into wallet histories, reviewing transactions from a day, a week, even a month ago.
I analyzed the behavior of specific users and looked for patterns.
Tried to Decode the Strategies
- I was trying to identify the early birds —
- When they got in, how they got out,
- And whether it was possible to automate or manually replicate that behavior.
It was wildly insightful — and mentally exhausting.
- Tested dozens of ready-made bots from the market
- Discovered an interesting arbitrage loophole
- Wrote my own arbitrage bot
- Managed to make a profit… and then lost 80% of it back
Paid Learning (Literally)
I set aside a learning budget of around $3,000 — money I was willing to lose completely in exchange for experience.
- Bought blatant shitcoins, looking for patterns and schemes
- Entered staking pools — both sketchy and legit
- Tested copy trading, algo trading
- And just manually explored: what actually works, and what doesn’t(All of it purely on DEXes)
- I actually ended up with a small profit
- But more importantly — I gained tons of hands-on experience and a deep understanding of how things really work
That phase lasted about three months.
After that, I shifted focus to building my arbitrage bot and dove into architecture and testing.
Soon I plan to head back “into the field” to test a few new hypotheses —
But right now, my top priority is launching the MVP bot to the public.
How I Stumbled Upon the Scam Scheme
Back when I was deep into exploring tokens on Solana, I used various filters to find interesting cases worth analyzing. I focused on parameters like:
- Market cap
- Liquidity
- Activity and number of transactions
- Token popularity
- Growth delta (how fast it pumped in a short time)
- And other metrics…
What Caught My Attention
At some point, I came across tokens with abnormal metrics. Most notably — a 4 billion percent market cap increase. There were only a handful of such tokens across the entire market.
To clarify: this doesn’t mean billions of dollars in liquidity flooded in. It’s just that the price went from something like $0.000000001 to $4 — hence the astronomical growth. Still, it looked impressive and piqued my curiosity.
On top of that, the chart looked… too perfect: a steady, smooth upward trend from the token’s launch. This behavior seemed suspiciously predictable, yet enticing.
So I dug in further and noticed:
- The pool constantly had buy and sell transactions;
- Some wallets would buy and take profit within 10–15 minutes — earning $50–100 per trade;
- Based on the history, someone was consistently flipping and profiting;
- But most people were just buying and holding, whether small or massive amounts.
Naively, I thought I had found a gold mine… and I was about to quietly secure some profits 😄
What I Did
I decided to test the hypothesis: bought $40 worth of tokens, planning to hold for 10 minutes and sell higher.
Three seconds later — the price just crashed to zero.
The market cap — from billions (or millions, doesn’t matter) — dropped to three dollars.
At that point I got really curious — what the hell just happened?
Sure, I only lost $40. But the frustration wasn’t about the amount. Just a few hours earlier I had been flipping shitcoins for hours, refreshing stats every 5 seconds, and made around $120…
And then — boom. A third of that profit vanished in 3 seconds.
It was around 4 a.m., and I knew there was no way I could sleep. I needed to get to the bottom of this.
Why It Surprised and Hooked Me
I had never seen anything like it before. Sure, I’d seen tokens drop 5–10x in an hour or even in 20 minutes — that’s normal volatility for a shitcoin.
But a total crash to zero in 3 seconds? That was new.
I realized I had stumbled onto something completely different. Something that, from a user’s perspective, looked like a legit earning strategy, but in reality turned out to be a carefully disguised scam.
And not just a scam — a highly efficient, fully controlled, and nearly risk-free one, as I later found out.
So I started digging deeper — to understand what exactly happens under the hood, who profits from it, and how it all works.
In Short — What This Is and How It Works
Before we dive into the breakdown with screenshots, let me quickly explain how the whole scheme works, so you have the full picture.
In the next section, we’ll actually find one of these setups live on Dexscreener and break it down step by step — together.
The General Idea Behind the Scheme
To pull off this scam, the creator needs a decent amount of liquidity — anywhere from $100,000 to $500,000. That money is used both to create the pool and to simulate activity (“boosting”).
Here’s how the scheme is structured:
- Token creation
- A brand new token is minted — takes just a couple of minutes and costs next to nothing.
- They can assign any name, symbol, icon — it all looks clean and polished.
- Liquidity pool creation
- For example, they add 1 billion freshly minted tokens and 1650 SOL (≈$250,000) into a new liquidity pool.
- This sets the initial price and market cap.
- Fake growth simulation
- Hundreds of fake wallets are created.
- The main wallet sends SOL to them — from a few cents to a few thousand.
- These wallets start “buying” the token from the pool, driving up the price and mCap.
- The chart looks smooth, stable, and consistently rising.
- Getting featured on Dexscreener and other trackers
- Thanks to the rising price and high liquidity, the token makes it to trending sections.
- It visually appears like a promising, trending coin.
- Some anti-scam filters (like gmgn) might even let it slip through.
- Victim attraction
- Users see the beautiful chart, active trades, and solid liquidity — and start buying in.
- They swap real SOL for the fake token, expecting further gains.
- Rug pull
On Creating Tokens
While building my arbitrage bot, I also implemented a few smart contracts in parallel — specifically for:
- Creating custom tokens
- Minting and distributing them
- Transferring between wallets
- Setting metadata, logo, and name
The whole process turned out to be ridiculously simple: literally 1–2 commands and boom — your own “ShibaSolDogeElon” is live and ready to be listed.
It’s almost free and takes just a couple of minutes.
Sure, the mint account will be brand new, but to the average user, the token looks completely legit.
Why the Scheme Works
- The creator controls all the liquidity.
- They’re the one who mints the token, sets up the pool, and fakes the trading activity.
- They control everything — the price, the chart, the timing, and the scale.
Removing the liquidity can happen at any moment — the creator just pulls their funds from the pool.
At that point, everything goes to zero.
Why It’s Hard to Spot for Newcomers
- The token’s price rises steadily and predictably.
- The chart looks “alive” — with visible activity, frequent buys and sells.
- The market cap seems huge (thanks to a clever combo of billions of tokens and deep liquidity).
- It often passes anti-scam filters, since there are no obvious whale holders.
- From the outside, it looks like a trending shitcoin on the rise.
Can You Make Money on This?
- Buy right at the launch (literally minutes after it starts).
- Sell before the creator pulls the liquidity.
- You don’t know when exactly they’ll pull the plug.
- Max profit potential: around 3–4x.
- Potential loss: 100%.
- Win rate for an average user: 10–20% tops.
That kind of risk/reward is unplayable long-term. You’ll inevitably lose money.
Why This Scheme Scales So Easily
- Everything is automated: new tokens, new pools, fake transactions.
- Launched every 30 minutes to an hour.
- Thanks to the number of victims and the amount of SOL flowing through the network — it’s still running today.
In the next section, I’ll walk you through a live example of how this scheme works — using gmgn.ai, Solscan, and step-by-step comments on each transaction.
Let’s Watch the Scam in Real Time
Head over to gmgn.ai, open the “Trending” tab, sort by “Market Cap” — and at the top, you’ll see a freshly launched token called “Truth”. Looks like a knockoff of Trump’s real token or his social media.
The first “Truth” token seems legit: reasonable chart, 3-month lifespan.
But the second one? It’s only been alive for 9 hours, its market cap is absurdly high, and the growth looks like a SpaceX rocket to Mars.
Open the Token — What to Pay Attention To
At the top, you’ll see that all anti-scam filters are cleared.
There’s an audit confirming token burns, no massive holders, and snipers are holding instead of instantly dumping.
- Market cap is insane — totally unrealistic for a memecoin.
- Same with liquidity — way too much for a token that’s only 9 hours old.
- Just over 1,000 holders — not suspicious by itself, but worth noting.
- The chart shows a steady upward climb — unnaturally stable.
- At the bottom, the transaction history reveals a high level of activity if you scroll through.
What Stands Out When You Open the Token
Open the token in gmgn (or any similar tool) — and at first glance, everything looks too good to be true. Here’s what I immediately notice:
- All anti-scam filters are cleared. The token appears “safe”: liquidity is burned, holder distribution looks “normal”, there’s no top holder sitting on 90% of the supply, and even the snipers (who bought in the first few seconds) are still holding instead of dumping. It gives a false sense of trust and transparency.
- Market cap is off the charts. An absurd number — totally detached from reality for a token that’s… 9 hours old. Like, “born yesterday — worth more than half of CoinMarketCap today”? C’mon.
- Liquidity is suspiciously high. Hundreds of thousands of dollars for a fresh memecoin? That’s a direct red flag. No legit project does that. It’s deliberately done to create an illusion of credibility.
- Just over 1,000 holders. Not too many, not too few. Just enough to avoid looking dead — and to trigger FOMO in you if you feel like you’re “missing the next big thing”.
- Chart looks textbook perfect. A smooth upward climb, no sharp dumps, like someone drew it with a compass. Way too clean for a wild market where memecoins normally swing 50% every minute.
- Transaction history below. A steady stream of buys and sells. Looks like real trading activity — but in reality, it’s often just orchestrated noise from fake wallets.
Let’s See Who’s Behind This
In the bottom right corner, you’ll easily find:
- the liquidity pool contract address,
- and the token creator’s wallet — the mastermind behind the scheme.
And hey, no reason to be shy — let’s take a peek at what they’re up to.
Who spun up this whole circus?
What other tokens have they launched?
How did they move liquidity around?
Sometimes you’ll uncover an entire gallery of identical scams — the same person pumping out these schemes every 30 minutes, copy-paste style.
Under the Hood — Let’s Dive into Solscan 🧠
We’ll start by opening two contracts:
Open it in Solscan — and right away, you’ll see:
- Token balances in the pool: looks solid, both the scam token and SOL are present.
- Platform: it’s running on Raydium AMM V4 — the oldest and simplest pool type. It’s stable, but highly vulnerable to this kind of scheme.
- Transaction volume: off the charts. The pool is just 9 hours old, yet the activity is so high that scrolling down to the very first transaction becomes a full-blown mission. If you plan to click through it manually, be prepared to lose a couple of hours — maybe even a whole day.
Checking the Pool on Raydium Directly
Let’s open the same liquidity pool through Raydium’s interface.
Here’s what immediately stands out:
- The swap fees look impressive — but don’t fall for it, it’s just an illusion.
- Most of that fee volume comes from fake swaps, made by the scammer using their own fake wallets.
- In other words, they’re just transferring funds between their own addresses, and the fees show up purely for show.
📌 At first glance, the pool looks active and alive — but all this activity is manufactured. It exists only to lure in real users.
Tracing the Creator
Now let’s take a look at the token creator in Solscan.
Open their transaction history and scroll all the way down to the very first operation.
Where did this token originally come from — and who minted it?
📌 The first transaction is a transfer of 11 SOL to the account that created the token.
We open this wallet and immediately notice:
- Thousands of transactions
- A bunch of tokens in the balance
- Transfers of 250 SOL, 1700 SOL, 1500 SOL — and that’s just at a glance
- It looks solid — very likely the main wallet of the scheme’s creator
Following the money trail
Let’s trace where those 1700 SOL ended up.
We open the recipient address — and a few things jump out immediately:
- Wallet balance: 4000 SOL — roughly $700,000 at the time of writing
- Multiple incoming transfers from various addresses
- An active history of interactions with pools and contracts
Looks like we’ve found the scammer’s main account — the one used to inject liquidity, create pools, and orchestrate the entire scheme.
Just open the transaction history and see for yourself — everything’s right there in plain sight.
I opened the first 5 transfers — and the picture was, to put it mildly, quite telling:
- All interactions involve scam-like tokens;
- One of them is Truth, the one we started with;
- The others are exactly the same: identical charts, same metrics, same mechanics.
I’ve attached screenshots below so you can compare.
See for yourself — no illusions here: a person or team is just running the same scheme in a loop, each time under a different name.
https://gmgn.ai/sol/token/49SVBWdnPfrYzE7JgRTHnnYe6ogQ8tEFw8uZwQfMZ1ZV
https://gmgn.ai/sol/token/6g68oVcrP66HVzzxKqEUPpurTAm8Xxgq8M5GeGeoHb9F
https://gmgn.ai/sol/token/49SVBWdnPfrYzE7JgRTHnnYe6ogQ8tEFw8uZwQfMZ1ZV
https://gmgn.ai/sol/token/4R41guMKkZ3BSu2XDybzWsHdPnJA8hhGA93aiVNKt1S4
https://gmgn.ai/sol/token/49SVBWdnPfrYzE7JgRTHnnYe6ogQ8tEFw8uZwQfMZ1ZV
To complete the picture — here are a few other tokens launched by the same creator. It’s the exact same scheme every time:
- Liquidity is injected;
- Price is pumped through fake buys;
- Visually — clean chart, appealing metrics;
- In reality — the same scam, just with a different name.
Links to screenshots and wallet addresses below — feel free to check them out and see for yourself how copy-pasted the whole thing is.
https://gmgn.ai/sol/token/4R41guMKkZ3BSu2XDybzWsHdPnJA8hhGA93aiVNKt1S4
https://gmgn.ai/sol/token/49SVBWdnPfrYzE7JgRTHnnYe6ogQ8tEFw8uZwQfMZ1ZV
Conclusion
Scams on Solana aren’t rare — they’re industrialized. These schemes follow a polished template: cheaply mint a token, inject fake liquidity into a pool, artificially pump the price using self-controlled wallets, and wait for real users to bring in real money. This process repeats every 30–60 minutes, nonstop.
Everything looks so “clean” that most victims never realize they’re part of a well-planned trap.
🔍 How the scam works (in short):
- A token is created (costs $0.0001 and takes 2 minutes);
- Large liquidity (1,000–2,000 SOL) is injected into a pool;
- Billions of tokens are added at a microscopic price;
- Hundreds of fake wallets begin “buying” — price and market cap rise;
- The token appears in Dexscreener top lists and attracts real traders;
- Victims jump in, thinking they’ve caught a promising early gem;
- When real deposits exceed the scammer’s cost, he pulls all liquidity;
- Price drops to zero, market cap vanishes, users are left with worthless tokens.
⚠️ Why it works:
Because it looks like a promising meme coin:
- Smooth, stable price growth;
- Huge (but fake) market cap;
- High liquidity (controlled by the scammer);
- Scam-check filters passed (no obvious red flags);
- Constant “activity” — actually fake transactions.
🛑 All trust signals can be faked:
- Chart? Drawn with fake buys.
- Volume? Fabricated by fake wallets.
- Liquidity? Fully under the scammer’s control.
- Market cap? Inflated by math, not value.
- Anti-scam filters? Easily bypassed with wallet tricks.
🎯 What you should know:
- You’ll never know when the scammer will pull the liquidity;
- Getting out with profit is pure luck;
- Best-case: 3–4× gain. Worst-case: 100% loss;
- Realistic win rate? Under 10–20% — due to greed and delays;
- Risk/reward ratio? Heavily against you.
🧠 How to avoid it:
- Check: who created the pool, where liquidity came from, how old the token is;
- Don’t fall for the chart or market cap — it’s a mirage;
- Use Solscan to trace big transfers and track the creator’s moves;
- Avoid tokens with no purpose, team, or utility;
- If you must play — treat it like a casino: tiny amounts, expect total loss.
This article isn’t an “anti-investment guide” — it’s an attempt to expose how the scam works from the inside.
So you can learn to spot organic growth vs. a staged setup.
So you can make decisions based on data — not hype.
And so next time you see a perfect chart backed by a 7-figure market cap, you won’t fall for the same trap again.