On March 7, Binance said after review that the reason why the price of $GPS fell sharply immediately after the spot listing was that a market maker continued to sell about 70 million $GPS tokens, making a profit of about 5 million US dollars. A further investigation announcement later showed that the market maker provided market maker with $GPS at the same time, and had serious market violations. This incident reveals the dark side of market manipulation in the industry, which is a regulatory issue and security risk that the entire industry cannot ignore.

As a company focusing on Web3 security and compliance, this article Beosin will use $SHELL as an example to analyze on-chain information through the Beosin Trace tool to reveal suspicious token price manipulation, providing users with clearer risk warnings.

$SHELL on-chain data analysis

On February 13, MyShell, a decentralized AI consumption layer project, conducted IDO activities on Binance Wallet and PancakeSwap, and launched several centralized exchanges. After a period of significant fluctuations after the $SHELL token was launched, it rose to around $0.7 as the news of Binance went online, and then fell all the way and involved the market makers' market smash.

According to the analysis of the on-chain tracking tool Beosin Trace, the addresses closely related to the MyShell team are as follows:

Initial address: 0x6234E951F488784AECD82963e896EC896360e5Fa

First layer distribution address: 0xbC31F9b63F69E86CBf03c3B48bee56072139d534

left;">Layer 2 distribution address: 0xf60ba384557ce2eb394c77cd8346fe6e489cfa4d

Safe multi-sign wallet: 0x45cacf6ece305843a45160e8302bc06588ab1174

Further analysis, 2025-02-27 19:08:19 (UTC+8), about 112 minutes before $SHELL was launched on Binance spot. The first layer distribution address 0xbC31 transferred 1,538,462 $SHELL to the Binance user address 0x0a367f918340d47d36b21c93e9a2b6853cc9d6f0 (calculated based on the closing price of $0.6 in the first hour after the opening of Binance, worth about $1 million), as shown in the figure below:

Subsequently, at 2025-02-27 20:19-20:40 (UTC+8), the second layer distribution address 0xf60b transferred 4,829,160.62 $SHELL to another Binance user address 0xa594bdd2214a48ecc3b89c8d0376830d0e19c994, and the Bitget hot wallet transferred 999,998.58 $SHELL to this address, totaling 5,829,159.2 $SHELL (valued about 3.5 million US dollars), as shown in the figure below:

The price of $SHELL from February 27 to 28 was the highest in history. Combined with the market maker's problems and the price performance of $SHELL, the above $SHELL transferred to Binance is likely to be sold.

In addition, according to Beosin Trace's analysis, after $SHELL was launched on other centralized exchanges on February 13, the MyShell team's related addresses transferred hundreds of thousands of $SHELL to Bitget and Gate exchanges many times. The specific situation is as follows:

Address 1: 0x31034fb4a5212994f1540ab7067f721f152421ac

Ethereum Network

2025-02-14 16:56:23 (UTC+8), sign the wallet 0x45ca to Bitget user address 0x31034fb4a5212994f1540ab7067f721f152421ac transferred 500,000 $SHELL.

BNB Chain Network

2025-02-14 18:14:16 (UTC+8), transfer 500,000 $SHELL to the Bitget user address 0x31034fb4a5212994f1540ab7067f721f152421ac.

Address 2: 0x5299498b5088e120094de1cc585b860b229d85fd

Ethereum Network

2025-02-13 19:50:11 (UTC+8), the second layer distribution address 0xf60b transferred 500,000 $SHELL to 0x5299498b5088e120094de1cc585b860b229d85fd, and then the address transferred 500,000 $SHELL to Bitget and Gate exchanges within 6 hours.

BNB Chain Network

2025-02-13 19:50:22 (UTC+8), the second-layer distribution address 0xf60b transferred 500,000 $SHELL to 0x5299498b5088e120094de1cc585b860b229d85fd, and within 1 hour, the address transferred 150,000 $SHELL to the Gate Exchange, and on February 20, the second-layer distribution address 0xf60b50,000 $SHELL to the Bitget Exchange.

Address 3: 0xf8706f1e4c4502b7cc5eb1b6140f6de5324e2bd4

BNB ChainNet

2025-02-13 18:17:16 (UTC+8), the second layer distribution address 0xf60b transfers 5 million $SHELL to 0xc606, and then at 20:56:25 (UTC+8), 0xc606 transfers 2.5 million $SHELL to 0x89fe. On March 11, 0x89fe deposited 612,913.95$SHELL to the Bitget user address 0xf8706f1e4c4502b7cc5eb1b6140f6de5324e2bd4.

The following is an overview of the on-chain flow of $SHELL from TGE to March 13 on the Ethereum network and BNB Chain network: the MyShell team allocated the token shares of IDO and Binance Airdrop on the chain, created the PancakeSwap liquidity pool, and initiated two transactions of $SHELL totaling 15 million transactions to Bitget before February 17, and a transaction of $SHELL of 10 million transactions flowed to Gate.

Overview of the flow of $SHELL on the chain

These huge transfers may be considered as market-making needs of Bitget and Gate exchanges. The above hundreds of thousands of $SHELLs were transferred to the exchange at addresses related to the project team, which inevitably caused doubts from the crypto community about the project.

As tokens that have experienced a sharp decline as soon as they were launched, GPS and SHELL are likely to be the tip of the iceberg of many market makers. After Binance's review was announced, a community user revealed that the market maker who smashed the market this time was a well-known market maker in the industry. The relevant Binance accounts have been frozen, and the on-chain address of the market maker has not yet been made public.

The above situation further exposes the possible manipulation and opacity in the current crypto market, and also highlights the core issues of the lack of effective supervision behind the projects that launch centralized exchanges.

In this article, we detect possible price manipulation behaviors in the crypto market by analyzing on-chain data. The reason why we focus on on-chain data is because blockchain has transparency and data availability.Centralized exchanges cannot provide relevant internal information to the public. Our analysis only involves the behavior patterns of addresses, so the above analysis alone is not enough to prove that there is market manipulation. However, if on-chain analysis can be combined with off-chain information (such as internal review of exchanges), these analyses can provide a valuable start and strong evidence for a deeper investigation.

In addition, we remind users to remain alert when conducting crypto asset transactions. They should carefully evaluate the background information of the project from multiple angles, and try to choose projects that have been strictly audited and compliant.