The Meme Coin Project SLERF on the public chain Solana has repeatedly attracted attention due to the founder’s accidental token destruction, which has pushed SLERF to the forefront. Some people believe that this will make SLERF the undefeated dark horse of meme coins this year, but others speculate that it may be a carefully designed marketing scam…
(Previous Summary:
SLERF surpasses BOME to become the 8th largest meme coin by market value. How is the fundraising for compensating victims going?)
(Background Supplement:
Different Endings of 3 Investment Stories on the night of SLERF’s launch)
Table of Contents
Trigger: Founder of SLERF destroys tokens
Twist: LP tokens may be recovered, which once caused SLERF to plummet
Extreme Volatility: An investor loses $775,000 in just 1 hour
Remedy: SLERF initiates donation to refund presale investors
Conspiracy: Is all of SLERF’s manipulation a scam?
In the world of cryptocurrency, meme coins are a unique existence. Compared to so-called “value coins,” they are hardly linked to any “practical value.” However, meme coins are the most magical creations, occasionally giving birth to stories of overnight riches, attracting thousands of outsiders to venture into this dark forest.
Recently, the meme coin BOME ignited a frenzy of fundraising for meme coins on the Solana public chain, similar to the initial coin offering (ICO), and the most attention this week is on SLERF.
With its dramatic action of accidentally destroying tokens, SLERF, which initially followed in the footsteps of BOME on Solana, created a short-term price frenzy. However, some people suspect that SLERF was a carefully designed marketing scam from the beginning, repeatedly creating hot topics and manipulating human nature…
Looking back at the development of SLERF in just a few dozen hours, can we find any clues?
Trigger: Founder of SLERF destroys tokens
Initially, SLERF was just one of the many fundraising projects on Solana following in the footsteps of BOME. After raising 50,000 SOL (about $10 million), investors were eagerly anticipating its replication of BOME’s path, returning SLERF tokens according to investment ratios, listing on major exchanges, and realizing the dream of overnight wealth.
However, at 4 pm on March 18th, a tweet from the founder of SLERF ignited the community. He admitted to making a fatal mistake and accidentally burned all the LP tokens, airdrop reserve tokens, and minted tokens for SLERF:
What does this mean? SLERF originally raised 50,000 SOL, planned to issue 1 billion SLERF tokens, and intended to put 500 million SLERF tokens into the liquidity pool, returning the remaining 500 million tokens to investors. However, the founder burned all the liquidity tokens and 500 million SLERF tokens.
This also means that investors will not receive any SLERF tokens. After the news was released, the community quickly analyzed and pointed out:
As a result, after SLERF opened for trading, the community went crazy, even crashing the trading bots on Telegram. The price of SLERF also skyrocketed under extreme FOMO sentiment and approached $1 at one point.
At the same time, facing the situation where BOME was quickly listed on Binance for spot and contract trading within three days, exchanges such as HTX, MEXC, and Bitget also seemed to want to occupy the market in advance and launched SLERF spot trading on the same day.
Twist: LP tokens may be recovered, which once caused SLERF to plummet
However, things are far from simple. Just when SLERF surged to $1, tobbykitty.eth, co-founder of the Ethereum Layer2 network Starknet, made a suggestion on the social platform X regarding the event of SLERF’s founder destroying the tokens, stating that LP tokens seemed to have a chance of being recovered:
This statement caused an uproar in the community, instantly shattering the concept of “fair launch” for SLERF and causing the token price to drop by over 50%, reaching a low of around $0.35.
However, minutes later, user ghazzog replied to tobbykitty.eth:
Shortly after, tobbykitty.eth replied:
This also means that the funds that were destroyed cannot be recovered. The community once again reached a consensus on SLERF, causing the token price to rebound.
Extreme Volatility: An investor loses $775,000 in just 1 hour
In this ever-changing drama, the fluctuating FOMO sentiment magnified human nature and inevitably led to some paying a painful lesson.
According to the online data monitoring team Lookonchain, a FOMO investor suffered a loss of 3,731 SOL and exited the market within just 1 hour (worth about $775,000):
The trader first spent 5,004 SOL to purchase 790,236 SLERF tokens at a price of $1.32. After the purchase, the price of SLERF began to plummet. When SLERF rose again, the trader spent an additional 2,500 SOL (about $517,000) to purchase 650,330 SLERF tokens at a price of $0.8. However, SLERF dropped again. In the end, the trader chose to sell all the SLERF tokens and converted them back to 3,774 SOL, resulting in a loss of 3,731 SOL, worth about $775,000.
Remedy: SLERF initiates donation to refund presale investors
Due to the lack of compensation plans for many users who participated in the fundraising, the founder of SLERF announced earlier on the X platform on the 19th that a donation wallet had been created to raise enough funds to refund the investments of presale investors. He also stated that once this plan is completed, SLERF will become the undefeated king of memes in the cryptocurrency market.
Towards noon, the founder of SLERF’s call received responses:
Major KOLs and project parties in the community announced their support.
Sun Yuchen, the founder of TRON and the head of Huobi Exchange, announced that he would donate the trading revenue of SLERF on Huobi to the official SLERF team and sponsor some HTX.
Jupiter, a decentralized exchange on Solana, also announced that they would donate the SLERF trading fees.
Even well-known NFT artist Beeple also called for support for SLERF: “The Rise of SLERF”…
After receiving enthusiasm and support from various forces, SLERF started to rapidly rise on the 19th, reaching a peak of $1.48 and a market value of $650 million, becoming the 8th largest meme coin.
At the time of writing, SLERF has confirmed its cooperation with LBank, which will act as the custodian of its fundraising wallet. According to the Solana blockchain browser, the SLERF donation wallet currently holds over 3,628 SOL and other tokens worth approximately $16,000.
Conspiracy: Is all of SLERF’s manipulation a scam?
However, experienced users in the cryptocurrency community also raised doubts, believing that all of this might be a carefully designed marketing scam by SLERF, manipulating the token price by repeatedly creating community hotspots to profit from it.
Although current online data indicates that he did burn the tokens, whether he did it accidentally or intentionally…we may never know. But for SLERF, for meme coins, it has indeed recorded this grand meme carnival in the history books.