Coinbase’s Layer 2 network, Base, is facing intense scrutiny after what appears to be a major pump and dump—one that it inadvertently helped fuel. The project’s official Twitter account publicly promoted a meme coin titled “Base is for everyone.”
This triggered a speculative surge, driving the token’s market cap to an estimated $15 to $20 million within hours of launch. The token quickly plummeted near zero in mutes.
Did Base Just Help Fuel a Pump and Dump?
Base’s tweet, which featured promotional imagery and direct links to the meme coin on Zora, created the perception of legitimacy.
Traders piled in, and price charts reflected an explosive rally—followed by an equally sharp collapse.
Within one 4-hour trading window, a green candle representing millions in inflow was immediately reversed by a red candle of equal size, marking a total loss of liquidity and confirming a textbook pump and dump.
The token’s value fell by more than 99%, and trading volumes on Uniswap surged past $13 million during the brief window of activity.
base just had a major rug pull, here’s what went down
what happened
→ official base twitter promoted memecoin “base is for everyone” → immediate speculative frenzy, token pumped from launch to ~$15-20m mc → liquidity pulled, token instantly collapsed to near-zero within… pic.twitter.com/rQzgCg59Z3
There is massive ongoing outrage against both Coinbase and Base. Crypto influencers have called the incident a failure of due diligence and communications strategy.
Accusations of incompetence and poor risk oversight are spreading fast on social media, while memes mocking the network’s “Base is for everyone” slogan are everywhere.
Base is yet to provide an official response to the incident.
Three Bittensor subnet tokens — Chutes, Proprietary Trading Network, and Targon — are among the top projects to watch this week.
Chutes remains the largest subnet token by market cap despite recent price pressure, while Proprietary Trading Network is gaining attention through the DeFAI narrative. Targon, meanwhile, is trading at deeply oversold levels and could be setting up for a potential rebound. Here’s a closer look at each of these Bittensor-based tokens heading into the first week of May.
Chutes
Chutes is a serverless AI compute platform built by Rayon Labs. It is designed to deploy, run, and scale any artificial intelligence model within seconds.
Users can interact directly with the Chutes platform or integrate it easily through a simple API, offering fast and flexible AI infrastructure without the complexity of traditional server management.
Chutes is currently the largest Bittensor Subnet token by market cap, but it has faced pressure recently, falling nearly 18% over the past seven days.
After rallying 67% between April 7 and April 12, the token has since dropped about 30% from its peak. Its Relative Strength Index (RSI) is now at 23.78, signaling deeply oversold conditions.
This setup could mean that Chutes is nearing a potential reversal zone.
If the project manages to recover its earlier momentum, being the biggest Subnet on Bittensor could amplify its gains through network effects, potentially triggering a strong uptrend that could drive the price back toward the $0.40 range.
Proprietary Trading Network
Proprietary Trading Network, or Taoshi, is a decentralized finance platform operating within the Bittensor ecosystem. It builds dynamic subnetworks where decentralized AI and machine learning models analyze data across multiple asset classes.
Its mission is democratizing access to sophisticated trading strategies, combining AI, blockchain, and finance to deliver advanced data that helps users make more informed financial decisions.
Proprietary Trading Network’s market cap is close to $50 million, with its trading volume jumping nearly 160% in the last 24 hours to reach $3 million.
Proprietary Trading Network Token Performance. Source: Tao Stats.
If the current momentum strengthens, the token could soon rise to retest the $0.20 and $0.25 resistance levels, supported by growing attention across these sectors.
Targon
Manifold Labs developed Targon, which is a Bittensor Subnet token that is building an AI cloud platform that enables users to run inferences on AI models at high speed and low cost.
Through its Playground and API, Targon offers many models optimized for completion and chat tasks.
The platform emphasizes fast performance, high scalability, and cost-efficiency, allowing developers and companies to deploy and scale AI models while minimizing infrastructure complexity easily.
A new report from Solidus Labs has revealed that 98.6% of tokens issued on Pump.fun, a popular token creation platform on Solana, are considered scams or involved in fraudulent trading.
Additionally, similar issues have been identified on Raydium, a major decentralized exchange (DEX) on Solana.
Report Reveals Massive Scam Rate on Pump.fun
Solidus Labs, a company specializing in blockchain risk monitoring, released a detailed report on the state of certain platforms on the Solana blockchain. According to the report, Pump.fun has issued over 7 million tokens since its launch in January 2024.
However, only 97,000 of these tokens have maintained a liquidity of at least $1,000, which is less than 1.4% of the total tokens.
Pump & Dump tokens on Pump.fun. Source: Solidus Labs
More alarmingly, 98.6% of tokens issued on the platform have been identified as scams or show signs of fraudulent trading. One of the largest scams uncovered by Solidus Labs involved MToken, resulting in losses of up to $1.9 million.
“good (in different ways): railgun, farcaster, polymarket, signal. bad (in different ways): pump.fun, Terra/Luna, FTX. The differences in what the app does stem from differences in beliefs in developers’ heads about what they are here to accomplish,” shared Buterin
93% of Liquidity Pools on Raydium Show Signs of “Soft Rug Pull”
About 25% of these scams involved amounts less than $732. However, the median rug pull involved about $2,832, while the largest detected rug pull totaled $1.9 million.
Though the amounts look relatively small compared to multi-million-dollar scams, the sheer number of affected pools shows the prevalence of this issue.
A common thread between the two platforms is that both are built on the Solana blockchain. Solana is known for its high transaction speeds, processing thousands of transactions per second, and low costs, averaging just $0.00025 per transaction. Because of its technical advantages, Solana has become a prime target for criminals and scammers.
Despite these challenges, Solana remains a promising blockchain with many legitimate and interesting projects. Platforms like Raydium are vital in Solana’s DeFi ecosystem, with monthly trading volumes reaching billions of dollars.