DefiTuna Blows Whistle on M3M3's $200M Market Manipulation Scheme

On February 17, 2025, Moty, the founder of DefiTuna, publicly announced via X that DefiTuna had refunded and severed all ties with Kelsier, an investor who had contributed $30,000 to the project on January 16, 2025.

This decision followed alarming revelations of Kelsier's involvement in market manipulation, particularly in connection with $LIBRA, $MELANIA, and M3M3 memecoin launchpad. Moty disclosed a series of allegedly orchestrated token manipulations that resulted in large-scale extractions from community members.

Moty wrote, "Upon finding out about Kelsier's activities, we have refunded Kelsier and cut all ties."

Moty's Allegations Against Kelsier and Meteora Leadership

Following the announcement, Moty elaborated on his concerns in a series of posts, asserting that:

• Kelsier was involved in a structured scheme extracting large sums from memecoin launches on M3M3.
• Meteora's leadership, including Ben, facilitated a network of influencers who profited significantly at the expense of the community.
• Despite direct outreach to Meteora's core contributors, little accountability was observed from their side.
• Ben, the co-founder of Meteora, indicated he would step down after being confronted but issued a vague public response.

Moty stated, "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."

SolanaFloor contacted Moty for a detailed account of DefiTuna's interaction with Kelsier and to gain insight into how the M3M3 platform, backed by Meteora, operated.

DefiTuna's Direct Experience with Kelsier and M3M3 Platform

Moty detailed DefiTuna's interactions with Kelsier, revealing that Kelsier had approached them via Thomas, an employee based in Lebanon, to assist with providing liquidity for M3M3. Initially, M3M3 was presented as an independent platform, but it was later revealed that Ben had taken ownership.

Kelsier's involvement required projects launching on M3M3 to allocate them a percentage of the token supply. DefiTuna's co-founder, Vlad, was passively engaged under the belief that their collaboration was legitimate.

Moty shared that Kelsier personally asked them to provide liquidity for M3M3 and that Ben, the co-founder of Meteora, prohibited any volume from taking place outside of Meteora. When DefiTuna proposed a strategy for neutral liquidity distribution, they were ignored.

Evidence of Market Manipulation and Rigged Launchpad Tactics

Moty also shared multiple screenshots highlighting manipulative market-making practices:

• Kelsier asked DefiTuna to manage liquidity for M3M3 projects, with MATES being one of the first launches.

MATES is down 95% since launch.

• The next day, when asked by Vlad whether to continue pumping or distribute all tokens from MATES, Hayden Davis responded:

"We are trying to max extract on this one. These founders IDK if they are good guys or bad guys."

• Screenshots revealed that $2.45M was extracted from unsuspecting community members between the MATES and AIAI launches alone.

AIAI (GoatIndex.ai) is down 95% since launch.

Melania Token Launch

According to screenshot evidence shared by Moty, One hour before the launch of Melania's token, Kelsier shared the token address and told DefiTuna that Melania's official X account would post about the token, and Donald Trump would retweet it. Kelsier then sent 1% of Melania’s total supply (worth $100M at peak) from melania-liquidity1.sol to Vlad for liquidity provision.

Shortly after, Hayden asked Vlad to anonymously sell the entire 1% of supply. According to Moty, to avoid tracking, they would open the position on Orca and get LP tokens as an NFT, which would then be sent to Hayden. Hayden and his team would redeem the NFT to access the funds, effectively circumventing onchain tracking.

Alarmed by the request, Vlad consulted Moty, who instructed him to return all funds to Kelsier.

Widespread Extraction from M3M3 Launches

Moty suggested that across multiple projects—including AIAI, MATES, ENRON, Melania, and Libra—over $200M was siphoned. Screenshots indicate that Hayden shared mint addresses of these tokens with a network of influencers ahead of official launches, allowing them to pre-buy and profit significantly.

When questioned about Kelsier's total profits from M3M3, Moty responded:

 "Like if you take into account AIAI + MATES + ENRON + Bunch of other projects ... + Melania + LIBRA .... over 200M? And there are plenty more projects."

SolanaFloor is actively investigating this situation and will continue gathering more evidence as the story develops. Our team is working to verify key claims and uncover further details about the extent of market manipulation linked to M3M3. We will provide additional updates as new information comes to light.