Have you ever encountered memes where chasing the price leads to a crash, while cutting losses leads to a rally? How do market makers operate? Do addresses holding Top 100 assets have insider information? What strategies can be used to avoid being manipulated by market makers? This article will deeply analyze market maker addresses and trading data through several types of coins.

What is the main purpose of market manipulation?

Before analyzing the manipulation techniques, we need to clarify the main purposes behind pump and dump strategies. The purpose of a market maker’s pump is to prevent low-priced tokens from falling into the hands of others and to sell them at a higher price for greater profits. The purpose of a dump can be for several reasons: one, to wash out other low-priced tokens and collect them for themselves, then quickly sell off the high-priced tokens; and two, simply to say, “I’m done!” and cash out.

With these objectives in mind, a pump is usually fast-paced. How can you execute a fast pump? Only with large buy orders can a rapid price increase happen. So during a pump, there will be one or more addresses consistently making large buy orders. If you notice two addresses buying continuously with at least $1,000 per order, that’s a pump. Therefore, when identifying market maker addresses, you can filter for buy orders greater than $1K and check if the main trading token of the address is the one in question—this can tell you which address is executing the pump.

Similarly, how does a market maker collect initial low-priced tokens? They must quickly strike at the very beginning, at the lowest point, and pull away most of the tokens. So by looking at the earliest transaction records, you can see all the actions of the market maker collecting low-priced tokens.

Types of Memes

Now that we understand the main objectives of market makers in pumping and dumping, we can classify different memes based on the market maker’s strategy.

One-Time Waves

It can be said that 90% of memes fall into this category. The market today is different from a year ago. With the introduction of Pump, creating a coin doesn’t require much time or money—just fill in the coin’s name, website, Twitter, and pay 0.02 SOL to launch it. Therefore, most people who create coins are just trying to ride the wave and experience the market. With Pump, more than 10,000 tokens can be launched in a single day, so it’s impossible to have enough funds to support every coin for multiple waves. As a result, most memes are a one-time wave.

For example, the token “Birds” was launched and within 25 minutes, its market value dropped from 2.2 million to 100k. Since then, the coin has shown no significant fluctuations.

DEV runs away, the market maker enters

Meme coins are emotion-driven markets, and a good narrative is one of the essential conditions for a coin to become a hundred-fold asset. When DEV cashes out during a pump, some market makers quietly position themselves, absorbing these tokens with low-cost positions, then releasing favorable news to reactivate the token.

For example, in this case, DEV exited at the highest point, and the token’s market value dropped from 2.4 million to a low of 260k. During this period, the market maker continued accumulating tokens, establishing a CTO community, and launching activities on Twitter to revive the coin.

Of course, don’t forget that market makers revive a token purely to make a profit, so there is always a risk of a dump. For example, as shown with BOGGS, DEV cashed out on the first day. A few days later, the market maker took over, started building a CTO community, and pumped the market cap to 4 million within a week, only to dump it instantly and exit a week later.

DEV is the banker

These types of coins are mostly created and controlled by large institutions or prominent influencers who play with tokens they create themselves. For example, the PRO and ANTI tokens, which became hugely popular in the Desci sector, were driven by DEV. The DEV doesn’t sell off tokens but relies on actions, narratives, and funding to pump the price.

Market Maker’s Manipulation Techniques

After understanding the basic types of meme coins, we can take a closer look at the manipulation techniques used by market makers.

One-Time Wave Manipulation Technique

Let’s start with the one-time wave strategy, using BOGGS as an example. In BOGGS, we can see that the market maker sniped and bought the token immediately after it launched. Shortly after the token’s release, two addresses simultaneously purchased the token, both with an identical buy amount of $367.24.

Following these addresses, we find that the sniping purchase was made from the DEV address. Upon examining the DEV address, we can see that it only made a single buy and a single sell transaction.

However, when we shift our focus to the two other addresses, we discover that these are the true market maker addresses. They bought in immediately after the launch and continued to buy and sell repeatedly—accumulating at lower prices and selling at higher points—eventually making a profit of $3,000.

At this point, we realize that while DEV seemingly only made $200, the actual profit was $3,000.

Using our meme-catcher analysis tool, we can identify a strong correlation between these three addresses.

DEV Manipulation Technique and Second Pump

Using qAI as an example, we see a classic second-pump scenario. On the surface, DEV appears inactive, but in reality, there’s continuous behind-the-scenes manipulation. When examining the top profit-making traders, it becomes clear that the market maker’s secondary addresses were consistently selling, unloading tokens from the first pump all the way through to the second pump.

Additionally, when the first dump reached the bottom, another address emerged, consistently buying during the accumulation phase. This address then steadily sold off tokens as the market cap climbed to 2 million.

We can observe that the market maker continued accumulating at the bottom before January 3. Then, on January 4, qAI released a video outlining its concept, which helped stabilize the price and initiate a slow upward trend. Finally, a significant pump occurred in the early hours of January 6.

During the pump, the market maker behind qAI continued selling tokens, ultimately bringing the market cap down from a peak of 2.3 million to a stable level around 1 million.

This demonstrates that market makers’ manipulation strategies go beyond simple buy-low, sell-high tactics; they also coordinate with information releases, using positive news to attract liquidity.

Using the meme-catcher analysis tool, we found that the related addresses consist of three and two, respectively, with the top 100 addresses accounting for 91.38% of the total. This clearly shows how powerful the market maker’s accumulation strategy is.

At last

In the meme market, one key point to remember is that meme coins are always driven by emotions. When emotions run high, it’s easy to FOMO and chase the price, while fear can lead to panic selling. Market makers act in opposition to human nature: they sell off at the highs and accumulate at the lows. Once enough tokens are accumulated, the market maker releases positive news and uses new addresses to pump the price and attract liquidity. This cycle of high selling and low buying is repeated until a significant profit is achieved.

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