Ethereum's latest tax farm meta using the greedily Preloaded CA is descending to a new low.

Just witnessed the following launch, and this is not a unique case:

1. 25% of the total supply preloaded to the CA then progressively dumped on holders shortly after launch.

2. Prior to launch, and here's the kicker, the developer distributed an additional 4% of the total supply across 4 private wallets, unvested, wallets presumably owned by himself. They'll say "private sale", "public sale", "influencer payments", etc, but it's nearly always the team.

3. To kickstart the farm, they paid a major call channel a hefty fee. The secret is to drive hype at the beginning so that as much tax farmed ETH is generated as possible, which is partly why so many projects are soon abandoned.

So not only is the preloaded CA strangling Ethereum, now there's a new trend of unvested allocations on top + callers posting pre-liquidity lock/burn, yet traders are still aping without questioning the setup 🤷‍♂️

"And degens shall inherit the earth"

Oh lordy.

Right, due to development duties I'm a few days behind writing scam detection rules for iToken.

Let's see what the sneaky scam rats have been up to recently...

Token: PEPE (Pepe)

CA: 0xbe042e9d09CB588331Ff911c2B46FD833A3E5bd6

Contract has been properly renounced with no dangerous backdoors and cannot be configured to scam.

Initial allocations based on the total supply

95% added to initial liquidity.

5% sitting in the deployer wallet, unlocked (best to be mindful of this.)

Update: the developer burned the unlocked 5%, so essentially it's become a fair launch.

Liquidity

100% of initial liquidity (1 ETH supplied) burned, which is safe.

Trade tax (immutable)

0% per swap.

Auto-burn

Every two hours the contract auto-burns 0.25% of the pair token balance (not the total supply) to the dead address, which is safe. As some have enquired, I would argue that the burn configuration is optimal and does not present a longevity issue.

Conclusion

Technically speaking, fine.

Notes

Best to be mindful of wallet distribution, and any sniper activity.

📊 DexT | TG | Web | Twitter | KibaSwap 🔄

iReview: Channel | Twitter | Stay safe 🙏

Quick update on this:

The developer burned the unlocked 5%, so essentially it's become a fair launch.

Stay safe 🙏

Token: PEGE (PEPEDOGE)

CA: 0xf994CAB2F787159725372004142a685EA9576824

Contract has been properly renounced with no dangerous backdoors and cannot be configured to scam.

Initial allocations based on the total supply

80% added to initial liquidity.

20% retained by the contract upload launch (AKA the Preloaded CA). However, after the contract had sold approx 13% of that allocation, the developer manually removed the remaining 7% and burned it, which was pleasantly unexpected.

Liquidity

100% of initial liquidity (1.2 ETH supplied) locked for 6 months.

Trade tax (immutable)

1% buy; 1% sell.

Conclusion

Technically speaking, fine.

Notes

Best to be mindful of wallet distribution and any sniper activity.

📊 DexT | TG | Web | Twitter | KibaSwap 🔄

iReview: Channel | Twitter | Stay safe 🙏

Hi all,

After the "New" Pepe review was posted, I instantly received a few DM's asking why it was selected, then others expressing gratitude for the pump that happened (even though the review probably had no part in that).

To explain what happened, just in case anyone is interested:

Yesterday was a long day of coding.

Technical Safety Reviews are currently suspended because building this upcoming ecosystem is all consuming (I'm fighting against it, but moobs have begun to sprout due to excessive chair sitting). Just as I was signing off, Pepe happened to launch (was scrolling verified contracts at the time).

Naturally, was expecting a scam.

However: they used a version of the Clifford contract (one I'd consider to be the safest copy pasta contracts around, providing it's fairly configured and necessary steps are taken); they'd burned liquidity, paid for DexTools (not cheap), and reduced tax to zero quicker than most.

In other words, it stood out from 99% of the tax farm detritus we encounter each and every day.

Plus, the VC was running and the host (apparently, a random holder yet known and experienced in pushing tokens) seemed level headed and echoed potential in consideration of the original Pepe V1 soft rug news / narrative that hit the headlines yesterday.

So despite weeping eyes, my pre-pillow thought process was:

"Easy contract (that I happen to like) to review, plus, it's been a while. No Preloaded CA. Any snipes aside, safe. Community frenzy + spaces support active. And Dear God, can we move away from this 'retard' meta now, please!"

In addition, there has been too much talk of scams here recently, so nice to discuss something positive for a change.

Anyway, that's how the selection criteria led to the spur-of-the-moment free review, if it helps in your trading criteria-to-decision making process.

Stay safe 🙏

Morning Crypto,

I wonder what wackiness you have in store for us all today...

Quick post regarding dividend themed projects launched on Ethereum, as taken, verbatim, from a conversation in the iReview chat:

>>>

Following on from this, a couple of things regarding dividend / rewards mechanics and why some, including myself, would argue that they're generally best to avoid:

1. Unless you hold a decent amount of the circulating supply, the rewards are negligible. And if that's the main selling point of the project, taking cutthroat traders (some call these jeets) into the equation, those rewards alone don't justify holding.

2. Being ultimately Ponzi, dividend projects require huge volume. We're on Ethereum where GAS costs are higher (compared to say BSC) in a supposed bear with +600 launches per day, so they don't stand a chance. Even BabyCake holders struggled, and that was on BSC with extreme FOMO.

3. Then there's the safety aspects surrounding external contracts.

<<<

In summary, dividend contracts are best to avoid.

Instead, would suggest seeking out well run, safe meme/genuine utility projects with an engaged, well-informed community.

Stay safe 🙏

Token: CHAD (Chad)

CA: 0x7d7ef607A2B7aB675194D85eB03b276a93F6b71d

Contract has been properly renounced with no dangerous backdoors and cannot be configured to scam.

Initial allocations based on the total supply

90% added to initial liquidity.

8.5% securely locked for 7 days via Unicrypt.

1.5% sitting in the deployer wallet, unlocked (best to be mindful of this as time progresses.)

Liquidity

100% of initial liquidity (1 ETH supplied) burned, which is safe.

Trade tax (immutable)

0% per swap.

Conclusion

Technically speaking, fine.

Notes

Best to be mindful of wallet distribution and any sniper activity.

📊 DexT | TG | Web 🤷‍♂️ | Twitter | KibaSwap 🔄

iReview: Channel | Twitter | Stay safe 🙏

Hi all,

As with any successful token, scammers begin to circle (they have no shame).

To clarify, and I've just confirmed this with the New Pepe team, there is no staking platform (the image above represents a post created by scammers).

So don't send your Pepe tokens anywhere unless you intend to swap via a trustworthy exchange, which would be either: a DEX (Uniswap, KibaSwap, etc); one of the confirmed CEX's (currently LBank and MEXC).

Stay safe 🙏

Renounce does not equal safe...unless thoroughly analysed by a trustworthy developer.

Best to mistrust common sales pitches in this space, until proven otherwise.

⚠️ Locked: BRUH (SwapBro)

Another hard scam using a non-verified external contract exploit, which are fairly easy to identify, most of the time.

Quick tip before buying (no coding experience necessary) in order to try and avoid similar hard scams:

1. View the contracts' verified source on Etherscan. BRUH - Etherscan.

2. Quickly scroll through the code looking for any address (you can exclude the common ones e.g. the zero, dead, Uni V2 router address, etc). In BRUH's case, line 1097 reveals the following:

treasuryWallet = payable(0x41DD528e4AFcb5591f4b98A6722e6a2d0859D961);

3. Paste that address into the Etherscan search box.

4. That will lead you to this page.

5. You'll notice that it's a contract (not a wallet address) and that the contract has not been verified (absence of a noticeable green tick ✅ upon the Contract tab), which statistically speaking is a gigantic red flag. Therefore, best to avoid buying.

Stay safe 🙏

Token: DORKL (DORK LORD)

CA: 0x94Be6962be41377d5BedA8dFe1b100F3BF0eaCf3

Contract has been properly renounced with no dangerous backdoors and cannot be configured to scam.

Initial allocations based on the total supply

97% added to initial liquidity.

2.7% sitting in the deployer wallet, unlocked (best to be mindful of this.)

0.3% transferred to a private wallet.

Liquidity

100% of initial liquidity (1 ETH supplied) burned, which is safe.

Trade tax (immutable)

0% per swap.

Conclusion

Technically speaking, fine.

Notes

Best to be mindful of wallet distribution and any sniper activity.

📊 DexT | TG | Web 🤷‍♂️ | Twitter 🤷‍♂️ | KibaSwap 🔄

iReview: Channel | Twitter | Stay safe 🙏

Evening all,

If anyone has any information regarding the Pepe V1 - CA 0x6982508145454ce325ddbe47a25d4ec3d2311933 - team or any scams they are suspected of being responsible for, please leave a comment or DM.

This request is for a genuine good cause, although I cannot reveal any details at this stage.

Many thanks.

Token: KCG (Gunshow)

CA: 0x56CcC9D0551B15E242A1e6B9cDCD35E9B13B5B7b

Contract has been properly renounced with no dangerous backdoors and cannot be configured to scam.

Initial allocations based on the total supply

Fair launched: 100% added to initial liquidity.

Liquidity

100% of initial liquidity (1 ETH supplied) locked for 6 months.

Trade tax (immutable)

2% per swap: project wallet.

Conclusion

Technically speaking, fine.

Notes

Best to be mindful of wallet distribution and any sniper activity.

📊 DexT | TG | Web | Twitter | KibaSwap 🔄

iReview: Channel | Twitter | Stay safe 🙏

Prepare for a run of tax farmers hurriedly deploying to try and capitalise on the latest Matt Furie tweet...

And of course, the old-school liquidity pullers e.g.

Added 1 ETH, pulled 9 ETH + tax proceeds on top.

https://etherscan.io/address/0x182f3f7011239669c4236a2fa85256802b626660

Scammers delight.

DeFence #10 - Identifying heavily sniped launches - Part 1

As a retail trader, one pattern to be aware of involves teams fair launching (adding 100% of the total supply to initial liquidity) only to then greedily self-snipe a large amount of the total supply.

Take recently launched MOONC as an example:

- Lacklustre website but passable for some.

- Fitted the recent Blue Smurf Cat meta.

- Added 100% of the total supply + 1 ETH to initial liquidity.

- Approx 50 wallets sniped approx 70% of the total supply in the first 2 blocks, spelling danger for retailers.

How do we know it was sniped by the team? Typically speaking, stealth launched tokens for disposable meme projects are not that heavily sniped by outsiders, so it's a matter of common sense. The team knew the CA beforehand so were able to use certain tools to target and multi-wallet buy upon trading being enabled, having setup their wallets beforehand.

Retail traders aped, a few call channels were paid, more aped, price went up, then the team began to dump on holders heads, all the while encouraging TG members to raid and work for their bags, their being to operative word. Over the next few hours, the inevitable decline to worthless dust transpired.

And that was considered a fair-launch.

Spotting snipes

Perhaps the simplest way is to visit DexTools fairly soon after launch, navigate to the first page of swaps (listed beneath the chart) looking for buys of the same amount in a certain block (typically, zero or one).

Another way is to visit the token Holders page on Etherscan.

If 40 wallets all bought 1.75% of the total supply in block zero, that's a whopping 70% of the total supply in the hands of one or more snipers, and if it was supposedly a stealth launch like the one above, best to assume those snipers are the team themselves, in which case the project is heavily flawed.

Why is the project flawed? To put it another way: if a developer only added 30% of the total supply to initial liquidity then distributed 70% to his own private wallets, would you as a holder object?

The only difference is that the team sneakily bought from the market rather than being airdropped, but the end result is the same.

Stay safe 🙏