Investigator Alleges LAB Insiders Hold 95% of Token Supply

Onchain investigator ZachXBT published an investigation alleging that insiders in the LAB project controlled more than 95% of the token supply and coordinated a rapid price pump in May 2026. The report says the token generation event occurred in October 2025 and that LAB surged more than 350% in under 72 hours in early May, briefly reaching a $6 billion fully diluted valuation before falling more than 65% within hours.

Blockchain records cited in the investigation show wallets linked to the LAB team deposited about 96 million LAB tokens into accounts on the Bitget exchange shortly before the May surge. The analysis says insiders accumulated roughly 226 million LAB in addresses tied to Bitget between March and April 2026. Between May 11 and May 12, the report identifies transfers of about 100 million LAB, valued at roughly $480 million at the time, moved into ten newly created wallets within a 12-hour window.

The report describes four concurrent mechanisms the investigator says the LAB team used to extract value from retail participants. It identifies private over-the-counter loans arranged by co-founder Vova Sadkov that carried a 7.5% monthly interest rate for six months and were priced at discounts of 60%–80% to market. Some loan agreements allegedly required key opinion leaders to post promotional content multiple times as a condition for token unlocks.

The investigation states that public sale vesting terms were changed after the fact, extending a cliff period for public buyers from three months to nine months without their consent. Creators who ran promotional campaigns for LAB reported long waits for promised marketing rewards and said the team provided no clear timeline or confirmation of payments. The report also points to an opaque market-making agreement between LAB and an unnamed counterparty whose terms were not disclosed to token holders.

The investigator named Bitget in the report and described the exchange as part of a “Chinese CEX cartel.” The report names Shawn Liu as a behind-the-scenes operator and contrasts him with Bitget’s public-facing CEO, Gracy Chen. ZachXBT posted a $10,000 bounty seeking contracts, chat records or other documents tied to market-making activities involving LAB across exchanges, and urged Binance, Bitget and Gate to freeze insider profits or delist the token.

The investigation references prior work by the same investigator that alleged a group behind another token controlled more than 90% of its circulating supply and coordinated cross-exchange trades to engineer a pump-and-dump. It also notes that LAB founders Vova Sadkov and a co-founder identified as Mark previously ran a project called Eesee that changed direction before delivering on earlier commitments, leaving some investors dissatisfied.

The report relies primarily on onchain data and contract records to trace token movements, deposits and changes to vesting arrangements. The document does not include a response from LAB founders or from the exchange executives named in the report.