What happened
On October 23, 2026, the Solana-based $kimchi token suffered a coordinated KOL pump-and-dump rug pull that netted scammers over $385,000 in profit after artificially inflating the asset's market capitalization to approximately $14 million.
The scheme began when Solana-focused influencer @kimchi1x received 500 million $kimchi tokens and published a promotional post, which was promptly reposted by @a1lon9. Capitalizing on the sudden social media hype, the token's market capitalization surged to a peak of roughly $14 million. Shortly after the price spike, the promotional repost was undone and the original post was deleted, triggering an immediate market collapse of over 95%.
On-chain tracing revealed that the operators behind the scheme utilized multiple pre-funded wallets to acquire tokens at negligible entry prices and systematically liquidate them at peak valuation, extracting more than $385,000 in net profits at the expense of retail traders.
Scammer Associated Wallets:
4RZDCgCGyifMvciAy3gjNbbyxNjoYp3nHe6meWUymxL4
98xo3EMWR1Xc4aWUHmn8DD4onMqeDuopRiT2hWeMeiFH
5qVRRiL5HmUXFupQBk2QQ34fhf2boPwhQvZk8yMiwg9M
Protocol details
Market Context at Time of Hack
Evidence
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