A new Solana-based token, FOCAI, has drawn attention for its rapid market capitalization growth and subsequent decline amid allegations of insider trading practices. According to on-chain data, 15 wallets, suspected to belong to insiders, collectively spent 67.16 SOL (around $14,600 at the time) to purchase 605 million FOCAI tokens (roughly 60.5% of the total supply) from Raydium, a decentralized exchange on Solana. These tokens were then sold for 94,175 SOL, netting the suspected insiders a profit of approximately $20.48 million, based on market prices at the time of the trades.
However, further analysis revealed that these large acquisitions were not made by ordinary buyers but by members of the FOCAI team themselves, who used multiple wallets to acquire the tokens. This revelation sparked backlash in the crypto community on X, with some highlighting the massive gains made by a single address, which reportedly turned an investment of roughly $1,168 into $3.47 million in three hours, as highlighted by one widely circulated post.
As the news spread, it also raised concerns about the project's legitimacy. One crypto analyst on X labeled FOCAI a potential scam, pointing to the codebase being largely copied from an existing token called Eliza with minimal modification or addition of genuine blockchain functionality. The analysis further alleges that despite heavy use of terms like "AI" and "blockchain" in FOCAI's marketing, there appears to be little technical evidence to support those claims. Additionally, the analysis notes that the project's documentation is inconsistent or incomplete across different languages, and there are missing token economics and unclear smart contract implementations.
These findings echo warnings from other observers, who have noted that the code is heavily forked, lacks key security measures, and shows little sign of a truly decentralized architecture. The discovery of an apparent insider strategy for acquiring and later selling the majority of FOCAI tokens has further fueled doubts about the project's transparency and raised questions about how decentralized or fair the token's launch actually was.
Meanwhile, market data from Pump.fun suggests that most traders who participated in FOCAI did not profit significantly, highlighting the skewed nature of such maneuvers.
