On-chain analysts noticed a possible coordinated attempt to manipulate Fartcoin (FARTCOIN) on the Hyperliquid platform. As a result, the protocol’s liquidity pool lost about $1.5M.
The incident occurred on April 9. It was recorded by blockchain security specialists PeckShield and on-chain tracker Lookonchain. According to their data, a single participant was behind the operation, using four wallets.
How the Alleged Fartcoin Manipulation Happened
According to PeckShield, the attacker took a long position on Fartcoin worth about $15M. In total, this was 145.24M tokens, distributed among four wallets.
Next, he triggered what PeckShield called a “suicidal” liquidation in low liquidity conditions. This led to the activation of the Auto-Deleveraging (ADL) mechanism on Hyperliquid, causing the losing position to be transferred to the Hyperliquidity Provider (HLP) liquidity vault.
Lookonchain confirmed that in total these wallets incurred about $3.02M in losses during the liquidation.
“On paper that’s minus $3M, but thanks to hedging on other platforms the final profit could have been huge,” the message said.
Meanwhile, two traders who were short, with addresses starting with 0x06ce and 0x4196, were subject to automatic deleveraging via ADL. As a result, they locked in about $849K in profit between them.
“Four new wallets, one participant, all simultaneously deposit $USDC and open longs in a coordinated way. Then liquidation in less than 3 hours after a 27% rise, which was followed by a 30% drop. This is what a ‘whale vs. whale’ manipulation looks like, when both sides play the same game but someone gives up first,” wrote the Evening Trader Group.
Amid this incident, the price of Fartcoin showed notable volatility. Yesterday, the memecoin rose to an intraday high of $0.25 — its highest level since late January.
FARTCOIN price dynamics. Source: CoinMarketCap
However, over the past 24 hours the token has dropped by more than 13% and became the most unprofitable asset among the 300 largest cryptocurrencies according to CoinGecko. At the time of writing, FARTCOIN is trading around $0.17.
