Aqua Bot Leverages Promotion from "Ecosystem Partners" to Rug $4.6M Presale

After promising to ‘reinvent’ the onchain trading game, Aqua Bot appears to have rugged its presale contributors, netting over $4.6M in ill-gotten gains.

Aggrieved and defrauded, buyers have turned their anger toward prominent Solana teams, like Meteora and Dialect, who allegedly “endorsed” the emerging application ahead of its dubious sale.

Aqua Bot Sends $4.6M to Exchanges, Abandons Comms

On September 8, Aqua Bot, an emerging Telegram trading bot that processed over 130M since launching on August 12, raised over $4.6M in a token presale. In keeping with the market trend, Aqua Bot promised a generous value accrual mechanic to generate speculative appetite for its native token.

Unfortunately for presale contributors, Aqua Bot appears to have abandoned the project and token, running off with $4.6M in the process. According to an investigation by crypto’s favourite onchain detective, zachxbt, Aqua Bot spilt presale funds between intermediary wallets before sending to multiple instant exchanges.

Adding insult to injury, Aqua Bot further manipulated Meteora liquidity pools to win an additional $77k during the token’s launch. Onchain sleuth dethective posits that the Aqua Bot deployer leveraged similar techniques to those witnessed during other infamously nefarious launches. 

Alongside dubious liquidity provision, the Aqua Bot deployer also scattered tokens across dozens of side wallets to create an artificial sense of asset distribution.

Since the launch, Aqua Bot has disabled comments on its 𝕏 posts.

Meteora, Dialect Respond to Association Claims

In the wake of the 7-figure scam, presale contributors are on a witch hunt to denounce all the KOLs, protocols, and “partners” who promoted or endorsed the application. zachxbt has added more fuel to the fire, insinuating that teams like Meteora, Helius, and Dialect may have been involved in the scam.

While inflammatory, these thinly veiled accusations are unlikely to carry much truth. The term “partnership” is often appropriated in the crypto industry to mean any basic exchange of services. In the case of Helius, Aqua Bot’s use of Helius’ RPCs can hardly be called an endorsement.

However, that hasn’t stopped network participants from gathering their torches and pitchforks and demanding retribution. Responding to criticism that Meteora promoted Aqua Bot’s launch via a Quote Post on 𝕏, Meteora Co-Lead Soju acknowledged that the DEX will “further tighten internal processes to prevent this from happening.”

Dialect, a popular and reputable developer tooling provider, has also found itself under fire for supposedly endorsing Aqua Bot after the latter shipped a feature using Dialect’s Alerts Stack. Dialect founder Chris Osborn has since clarified that the protocol, which offers free, open source tooling, received no compensation as a result of its engagement with the Aqua Bot 𝕏 account.

In a public statement, Osborn expressed his regret for having supported “a new team using our developer tools.” Similar to Soju and Meteora, Osborn dictated that Dialect will be reviewing its internal processes regarding marketing and partnership announcements.

While network participants will argue that the bulk of malicious onchain activity happens in the memecoin trenches and condemn victims for “crying in the casino”, the Aqua Bot scam serves as a timely reminder. Malicious actors are everywhere, and having a functional product and “ecosystem partners” is by no means a vote of confidence.

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