Key Highlights
- $EDEL’s pre-launch token moves spark debate, with reports of 30% being sniped, leaving the community questioning transparency and team intentions.
- Bubblemaps links elaborate wallet patterns to the team, but co-founder says 60% of tokens went into vesting, not personal gain.
- Market stays active despite drama; analysts point to new airdrops and partnerships as reasons the token could regain momentum soon.
Decentralised Lending protocol Edel Finance is under scrutiny after reports surfaced that the project team had allegedly sniped 30% of $EDEL tokens before the launch. Bubblemaps, a blockchain analytics platform, says some 60 wallets received ETH just hours before the token generation event.
These wallets funneled funds through many layers of fresh wallets to eventually acquire a major share of EDEL tokens. The total tokens sniped now hold an estimated value of $11 million, according to Bubblemaps’ findings.
Onchain data highlights that half of the sniped tokens were sent to 100 secondary wallets, funded by MEXC, creating a clear link between the team and the pre-launch activity. “These secondary wallets were not random. The list of all 100 secondary wallets is included directly in the token contract creation code,” Bubblemaps noted. This pattern indicates deliberate orchestration rather than coincidental activity.
How the snipe was executed
The pre-launch acquisition involved an elaborate technique. Snipers created Uniswap liquidity pool positions as NFTs, sent the NFTs to new wallets, and then burned them to reclaim the tokens. Bubblemaps noted that even team wallets employed the same method. Wallets associated with the deployer moved EDEL using the same NFT-LP process, eventually selling for approximately $120,000 at the time.
In response, Edel co-founder James Sherborne claimed, “We actually acquired ~60% of supply and placed the tokens into a vesting contract, as per the docs.” According to Edel’s tokenomics, 50% of tokens are allocated to the community, with 80% of this portion available immediately at TGE. Investors hold 15.8%, strategic reserves account for 15%, the team receives 12.7% with a six-month cliff and 36-month vesting, while advisors and airdrops account for 2.7% and 3%, respectively.
Bubblemaps dismissed this explanation, stating, “If you were genuine, you’d have allocated the supply upfront based on your tokenomics. But you didn’t. Instead, you sniped your own token with 100 wallets, routed tokens through LPs, moved NFTs, and burned them to recover funds.”
Market reaction and community opinions
Controversy aside, EDEL continues to trade actively. According to CoinMarketCap data, the price is sitting at $0.030216 at the time of writing, while the 24-hour volume of $3.27 million is down nearly 22% in the last 24 hours.
An X user by the name T Cryptoz came to the team’s defense, stating that the launch tax was openly discussed, with tokens locked on-chain. On the other side, Bubblemaps pointed out that some of these snipers had already sold their holdings, calling into question the transparency of it all.
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