After Bald quickly became the "leading runner," can the Base ecosystem recreate the Meme craze?

Author: Mia, Chaincatcher

Recently, the meme leader Bald on Base skyrocketed, sparking heated discussions in the crypto community. Just as everyone was immersed in thoughts of "Will Bald create a new myth of wealth?", Bald's rapid rug pull hit crypto users hard.

In just 7 minutes, Bald withdrew a total of 8,660 ETH and 179 million BALD in liquidity, causing the price of BALD to plummet, with a maximum drop of 80%. According to Geckoterminal data, there is currently only 0.0141 ETH left in Bald's liquidity pool. Additionally, Base's TVL also fell sharply. Data from DefiLlama shows that the peak TVL of Base reached 41.2 million USD yesterday, but has now dropped to 8.97 million USD, a decline of 78.22%.

Source: Geckoterminal.com

Source: DefiLlama.com

After the wild fluctuations, Bald only responded on Twitter, stating, "It seems that the Base chain can handle heavy loads well," implying that the release of the Bald project was merely to test the actual load handling capacity of the Base chain, and denied selling tokens, stating, "Since deployment, only operations such as adding and removing liquidity and purchasing tokens have been conducted."

However, Bald's mysterious operations have sparked a lot of speculation in the crypto community about the forces behind it. More importantly, as liquidity withdraws from Bitcoin Ordinals and BRC-20 hype projects, more on-chain funds are beginning to move. With the upcoming launch of the Base mainnet in August and Bald's "rug pull" breaking the mold, can Base create a new meme craze?

Meme Leader Bald Turns into "Rug Pull Leader," Behind-the-Scenes Manipulator Raises Suspicions

"Bald," as the name suggests, means "bald head," and Bald, deployed on Coinbase's native Layer 2 network Base, inevitably brings to mind Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong. On one hand, the bald image in Bald's social media background seems to resemble Brian Armstrong's bald silhouette; on the other hand, the deployer holding a large amount of cbETH has led to speculation that Bald was created by someone related to Coinbase.

With Bald's price skyrocketing 30,000 times within 24 hours of its launch, people began to speculate whether this was Brian Armstrong's way of giving everyone a benefit with the launch of the Base mainnet. The rumor that "Coinbase is behind Bald" began to spread in the crypto community, intensifying FOMO sentiment and sparking a trading frenzy for meme coins on Base.

According to DEX Screener data, the largest decentralized trading platform on the Base chain, LeetSwap, saw its 24-hour trading volume soar to 230 million USD, with 526,000 transactions, and all top ten trading pairs, except for the platform token Leet, were meme coins. Furthermore, investor enthusiasm for Bald remained undiminished, with its 24-hour trading volume accounting for half of the platform's total trading volume, reaching 110 million USD.

However, the rumors linking "Bald and Brian Armstrong" quickly fell apart. The deployer withdrew most of the liquidity, delivering a sudden "rug pull." If Bald were indeed related to Brian Armstrong or Coinbase, wouldn't that be like shooting oneself in the foot? So, who exactly is the mastermind behind Bald?

Crypto KOLs have collectively thrown out a "bombshell," claiming that the originator is SBF, and the rumors are not baseless. Research on on-chain data shows that the deployer's address received thousands of ETH from wallets associated with FTX and Alameda Research.

Furthermore, research by Blockworks data analyst Andrew Thurman further confirmed this speculation, as he discovered that the deployer's related wallet address had conducted about 400 transfers to blacklisted USDT addresses, stating, "There is definitely a serious connection to Alameda Research."

In addition, keen crypto community member "Hype" noticed clues in Bald's Twitter language, such as "Correct" and "quite well," which appeared in Bald's few tweets, and these are indeed SBF's common phrases. Hype also noted that the deployer's wallet address has existed for a long time and was one of the first voters in the DeFi platform Sushi Swap proposals, indicating that the Bald deployer can be considered an OG in the crypto circle.

Just yesterday, the FTX 2.0 restructuring plan was resubmitted, and such coincidences have led crypto users to connect the dots, speculating whether SBF really intended to use the funds from the "Bald rug pull" to cover the funding gap for FTX users.

Of course, some people find such conspiracy theories a bit amusing, as SBF is currently under strict internet surveillance and can only use a flip phone; these assumptions are completely unfounded. Additionally, judging that SBF is the mastermind behind Bald based on a few words from Bald's Twitter seems overly simplistic.

The situation spiraled out of control, with some even blaming the collapse of Bald on SEC Chairman Gary Gensler's self-directed performance, believing that Bald's collapse might provide him with more material to sue Coinbase's behind-the-scenes team.

Currently, it is difficult to determine who the mastermind behind Bald is. However, it is undeniable that Bald's brief myth of wealth has indeed refreshed the crypto community, and although it has turned into a zero-sum game, it has become a traffic-generating tool for the Base ecosystem.

Meme Coins Rise as New Ecosystem Traffic Tools, Can Base Create Another Meme Craze?

It is worth mentioning that the volatility and speculative nature of meme coins have gradually made them a new tool for generating traffic in a bear market where liquidity is drying up.

Earlier this year, the Solana ecosystem's meme coin Bonk brought new hope to the gloomy Solana ecosystem. As Bonk's price surged, the price of SOL tokens also rebounded significantly, leading to a return of more liquidity to the Solana ecosystem, and previously departed ecosystem projects began to return.

Similarly, the first meme coin of the Arbitrum ecosystem, AIDOGE, also brought new vitality to the Arbitrum ecosystem. On one hand, AIDOGE's surge undoubtedly activated the enthusiasm of Arbitrum community users. On the other hand, it combined popular elements to create hype with the AI+Arb+Doge combination, further generating market FOMO and opening up new narrative play.

Although Bald also saw a rapid rise followed by an immediate drop, it successfully generated traffic for the Base chain to some extent, and even became an effective tool for testing the actual load handling capacity of the Base chain, benefiting some "smart" players.

According to blockchain detective Lookonchain, Bald's rapid rise allowed some savvy investors to reap huge returns, listing four profitable addresses that used 0.534 ETH (about 1,000 USD) to purchase 50 million Bald. These transactions occurred within minutes of Bald's launch, accounting for 50% of the total supply, and these addresses quickly sold 37 million Bald, earning a massive return of 554 ETH, exceeding 1.04 million USD.

As the myth of wealth on the Base chain continues to ferment, Base is gradually becoming the birthplace of new trends in cryptocurrency, with more and more meme projects gearing up to launch on Base. Currently, a search on Twitter can reveal various meme projects set to launch on Base.

As liquidity withdraws from Bitcoin Ordinals and BRC-20 hype projects, more on-chain funds are beginning to move, and increasing attention and capital may concentrate on the Base chain. This is likely to trigger the next wave of meme craze, but the outcome of Bald's "rug pull" may have served as a warning for users planning to jump in. Whether Base can become the next "Wild West" for memes remains to be seen.

Additionally, it is important to emphasize that although the previously mentioned meme coins like Bonk from the Solana ecosystem and AIDOGE from the Arbitrum ecosystem have been used as "traffic tools" and brought hope and excitement for the rapid rise and recovery of ecosystems, looking back now, their outcomes are destined to be negative and short-lived.

In the Crypto Winter, Where Are the Market Boosters Beyond Meme?

The short-term volatility, heightened FOMO sentiment in the community, and excessive speculation have filled the crypto market with bubble risks, and every wave of meme market sentiment, whether long or short-term, has the potential to collapse the overall market. This time, Bald's rug pull has become the shortest-lived meme coin in the world, and before Bald's collapse, no users noticed that Bald had not locked its liquidity. Some crypto influencers even rallied for Bald, causing a rush of investors into it, as if the entire crypto community were "hungry wolves" yearning for the birth of a "wealth myth."

Perhaps the prolonged crypto winter has made every new thing a target for investors to "FOMO" into, but when we truly reflect on this year's so-called "hype," we find that from the Ethereum Shanghai upgrade at the beginning of the year to the revival of the Bitcoin ecosystem (the emergence of Ordinals and BRC-20), and even the once-lauded projects like Arbitrum and Sui, none have brought any surprises to investors; even if there were, most were fleeting.

From last year's FTX collapse, the bankruptcy of crypto banks at the beginning of the year, to several leading exchanges facing SEC lawsuits, the frequent occurrence of black swan events has led to a gradual depletion of liquidity in the crypto industry, and the entire crypto market is showing unprecedented signs of fatigue. Investors are gradually losing patience and becoming anxious, as the entire crypto industry seems to be waiting for an opportunity to trigger a market-wide recovery and surge, with every "hype" becoming a lifeline for the market.

The restless market atmosphere has also led to frequent security incidents. Recently, the stablecoin protocol Curve was attacked due to a vulnerability in the underlying programming language Vyper, facing losses exceeding 50 million USD, and the founder is also facing on-chain debt liquidation. Additionally, influenced by Bald's breakout, the liquidity pool of the still-developing Base ecosystem DEX Leetswap was also attacked, resulting in a loss of about 620,000 USD, and trading has been halted while investigations are underway to recover the funds.

In today's chaotic crypto market, compared to the "high-end" project narratives and underlying logic, simple and crude meme coins seem to be more capable of acting as a "booster" to activate the market. As mentioned earlier, meme coins have their pros and cons and are not a long-term solution. The recovery of the crypto market and the entire blockchain field still requires the birth of a truly long-term product or project that can break the mold, as well as the expansion of application scenarios. Only by breaking the shackles of the crypto circle and promoting the internal concepts and technologies can we attract broader external liquidity, bringing more new vitality and fresh fuel to the entire market.

Although the bear market is calm and torturous, the long bear market has given the market and the industry an opportunity to pause and reflect: Where will blockchain head in the future?