A Solana meme coin promoted by crypto influencers skyrocketed to a market cap of $54 million in under an hour—but soon after, the price dramatically collapsed in a matter of seconds as a clutter of wallets sold $3 million worth of tokens in one fell swoop.
Sharpei (SHAR) launched on Wednesday and was promoted with cartoonish artwork of a Shar Pei dog. Combined with a push by Crypto Twitter influencers—also known as “key opinion leaders” or KOLs—the meme coin quickly ran to a $54 million market cap.
As this peak was hit, the project’s pitch deck leaked with claims that the project’s creators had onboarded “50+ tier 1 KOLs,” and had plans to partner with exchanges and other projects. Some of the influencers named in the document have denied any involvement with the project.
The leaked deck claimed that a strategic partnership with leading meme coin BONK would come once SHAR hit a $100 million market cap—which was denied by Bonk core contributors Kadense and Nom. Meanwhile, the pseudonymous influencer Joji, who has over 200,000 followers, was also named as being involved—a claim the influencer denies, sharing a screenshot of Telegram messages that purportedly disproved a partnership.
But it wasn’t all a lie. Another influencer who goes by Yelotree, who has 180,000 followers, was featured in the deck and posted about the project. Yelotree told Decrypt that he was paid for the promotion three months ago, although this was not disclosed in his tweet. Yelo claimed that other big KOLs were involved in the project, many of which have deleted their posts.
As this all unfolded, SHAR retraced from $54 million to $35.5 million. This must have worried insiders, as the token then plummeted 96.3% to a $1.3 million market cap in just two seconds following a massive, coordinated sale.
“One of the most insane rugs I’ve ever seen,” a pseudonymous trader said on Twitter.
Blockchain data visualization company Bubblemaps identified that 60% of the total token supply was bought at launch and spread across more than 100 addresses. Every single one of these addresses then sent its supply to a central wallet, which sold everything in one clip for $3.4 million. The firm confirmed to Decrypt that it would define this as a rug pull.
In response, the official SHAR Twitter account explained that due to the fear, uncertainty, and doubt (aka “FUD”) that had spread, the project “no longer had the funds to continue operations.” Sharpei’s creators said that they would provide proof of communication with every named influencer, although they hadn’t finalized agreements with everyone. That still hasn’t happened, a day later.
The SHAR team did not respond to Decrypt’s request for comment on Twitter.
Influencers are often sent a percentage of the total token supply in exchange for social media promotion of a project. For example, leaked messages with Wizard Of SoHo, a pseudonymous KOL with over 115,000 followers, showed that the influencer asked for 0.75% of the token supply in exchange for promotion—which the team did not accept.
For many projects, this is a fundamental part of marketing and promotion—not dissimilar to celebrity endorsements of products. This exists from the grassroots of Pump.fun degen gambling on meme coins with micro-influencers receiving payments for small-cap tokens, all the way up to the large multi-million-dollar tokens.
“KOLs are an important part of crypto, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with projects needing marketing.” Bubblemaps co-founder and CEO Nick Vaiman told Decrypt. “The issue comes when KOLs fail to disclose their involvement, [and] don’t reveal how much they bought or received.”
Edited by Andrew Hayward
