DefiTuna founder uncovers network exploiting $200 million from meme coin launch on Solana

Key Takeaways

A coordinated scheme on Solana allegedly extracted $200 million from investors through meme coin launches.
DefiTuna’s Moty points fingers at Kelsier Ventures, Meteora, and M3M3.

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DefiTuna co-founder Moty Povolotski has alleged that Kelsier Ventures, Meteora, and M3M3 coordinated a series of meme coin launches on Solana to extract $200 million in profits at the expense of unsuspecting investors.

In a series of tweets on Feb. 17, Moty revealed that Kelsier Ventures had invested $30,000 in DefiTuna last month, but upon discovering Kelsier’s activities, DefiTuna refunded the investment and severed all ties.

Kelsier Ventures, led by CEO Hayden Davis, is a key entity in the Libra token launch. In a recent interview with Coffeezilla, Hayden admitted that the team sniped during the Libra token launch.

“I have personally gone the extra mile by risking myself and everything we built over at DefiTuna to try and get key players to speak up and start naming the bad actors and weeding them out,” the DefiTuna founder stated.

The founder disclosed the existence of “a massive spiderweb of influencers who are banking millions from the Meteora community enabled by the leadership team of Ben.”

According to Moty, Ben, or Ben Chow, planned to resign after the Libra scandal.

A video obtained by SolanaFloor and later quoted by Moty shows that he told Ben about Hayden’s alleged meme coin misconduct. Ben appeared to be surprised by the news, denied any involvement by himself or Meteora, and said he regretted connecting Hayden with other projects.

🚨 BREAKING: SolanaFloor has obtained exclusive video evidence exposing a $200M+ memecoin extraction scheme tied to @KelsierVentures , @MeteoraAG and @WEAREM3M3_ .

The footage, featuring DeFi Tuna Founder @CavemanDhirk and Ben Chow, lends further credibility to allegations of… pic.twitter.com/rjPLBgKCjG

— SolanaFloor (@SolanaFloor) February 17, 2025

Following Moty’s tweets and the footage, Meow, the pseudonymous co-founder of Jupiter DEX, announced that Ben resigned from his role at Meteora.

Meow strongly denied any involvement of Jupiter or Meteora in insider trading, financial wrongdoing, or inappropriate token distribution.

Hi, I’m meow from Jupiter, and I also cofounded Meteora.

Firstly, I’d like to reiterate my confidence that no one at Jupiter or Meteora committed any insider trading or financial wrongdoing, or received any tokens inappropriately.

Secondly, we are hiring an independent 3rd…

— meow (🐱, 🐐) (@weremeow) February 18, 2025

More details surface

According to the evidence shared with SolanaFloor, Kelsier approached DefiTuna through a Lebanon-based employee to provide liquidity for M3M3, a platform allegedly owned by Chow. Projects launching on M3M3 were allegedly required to allocate a portion of the token supply to Kelsier’s group, as detailed by Moty.

Screenshots indicate that $2.4 million was extracted from community members through the MATES and AIAI token launches, with both tokens dropping 95% since launch.

In the Melania meme token case, Kelsier provided DefiTuna with 1% of the total supply, worth $100 million at peak, requesting an anonymous sale through Orca LP tokens as NFTs to avoid on-chain tracking. Hayden, however, told Coffeezilla that his team did not profit from the Melania token launch.

When questioned about Kelsier’s total profits from M3M3, Moty stated: