A single Solana wallet generated $1.4 billion in suspected wash trades on Raydium using about $12,000 in working capital. Bitquery also found pools showing billions in liquidity backed by just $10,238 in USDC reserves, but it did not identify the operator.
A single Solana wallet generated $1.4 billion in suspected wash trades, accounting for nearly a quarter of Raydium's concentrated-liquidity volume. On Oct. 21, blockchain analytics firm Bitquery reported that the wallet made up 22.7% of the $6.17 billion traded across Raydium's concentrated liquidity market maker (CLMM) pools between Sept. 21 and Oct. 20.
A $12,000 stake produces billions in turnover
However, the wallet did not need much money to do it. Bitquery identified 108,871 swaps across 438 pools, many holding tokens that imitated XRP, Litecoin, Monero and Lisk. It traced the activity to a suspected wash-trading operation. The operation used about $12,000 in working capital.
The operation bought tokens and sold them back into the same pools. In one Oct. 20 transaction, the wallet exchanged 11,102 USDC for tokens in a pool carrying Lisk's LSK ticker and sold them back 22 seconds later for 11,100.87 USDC.
That round trip created approximately $22,200 in recorded volume at a cost of $1.13, excluding network fees. Bitquery counted 22,685 completed round trips during the reporting period.
Fake pools show billions in liquidity
The displayed liquidity looked far larger than the reserves behind it. According to Bitquery, ten pools linked to the wallet showed about $5.93 billion in combined liquidity on DEXScreener while holding just $10,238 in USDC reserves.
One pool using Lisk's ticker displayed $579 million in liquidity while holding approximately $19 in USDC. The valuation came from nearly one billion tokens priced at about $0.58 each, close to the market price of the legitimate Lisk cryptocurrency.
The pools also surfaced in token searches. In one example, seven of the top ten DEXScreener search results for XMR were associated with the suspected cluster. Bitquery identified 12 suspected helper wallets that executed about 1.25 million swaps. Only four wallets outside the cluster traded its pools the previous week, generating about $27 in combined transactions.
The operator remains unknown
Bitquery linked the wallets through shared trading pools, funding sources and direct transfers, but it did not identify the operator or establish investor losses. The findings also do not establish Raydium's involvement or the involvement of the trading platforms displaying the pools.
The case leaves an open question for any decentralized exchange: whether its volume rankings, token searches and liquidity displays can separate independently funded markets from coordinated trading.
Source: CryptoSlate
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