Just a few hours after profitable $1 million in X’s latest article contest, a web based consumer popularly generally known as Beaver was caught in a blockchain investigation alleging that he profited over $600,000 from launching meme tokens that may immediately collapse.
The allegation comes from blockchain intelligence agency Bubblemaps, who revealed a detailed thread on February 5, 2026, tracing some on-chain exercise to wallets which might be allegedly linked to the competition winner, an X consumer generally known as Beaver with the deal with @beaverd.
The evaluation claimed that these wallets repeatedly launched meme cash majorly by means of Pump.enjoyable earlier than promoting instantly after launch, inflicting the worth to drop close to zero.
Did X contest winner launch and rugpull memes?
Findings from Bubblemaps’ investigation uncovered Solana blockchain explorer information discovering a number of “Create Token” actions related to wallets that allegedly kind a part of the identical cluster related to Beaver.
An instance includes a token known as $SIAS, which surged as much as $6 million market cap for a brief interval earlier than crashing.
Bubblemaps estimated that wallets on this cluster generated roughly $600,000 in revenue throughout a number of meme coin launches. This follows a sample of repeated situations the place tokens would launch, get pleasure from a brief value spike interval, earlier than collapsing after holding wallets bought their belongings.
This scheme is called a “pump and dump”, the place fraudsters attempt to drive a shopping for frenzy among the many public to extend the worth of an asset, earlier than “dumping” it by promoting their very own belongings or shares on the elevated value.
Pump.enjoyable, initially created as a Solana-based venture that simplifies the method of making tokens, has now grow to be a preferred platform for these scams.
The platform permits anybody to create and launch tokens in minutes, which additionally contributes to an surroundings the place 97% of meme cash fail of their first yr.
Beaver’s response to the allegations
Just a few hours after Bubblemaps’ thread began gaining traction, @beaverd responded by saying “cry me a river,” even including that the allegations introduced ahead have been “not even the highest 5 best hits.” This response didn’t refute the pockets hyperlinks, nor the on-chain transactions Bubblemaps launched.
This reply sparked much more controversy as components of the crypto group started to query the ethics of meme coin launches related to influential creators.
Most argue that when creators with massive followings and a few type of “credibility” from profitable high-profile contests launch tokens, they maintain an unfair benefit over common traders, which permits them to revenue whereas others are left with crumbs of their funding.
As of now, Beaver has but to difficulty a proper assertion addressing the specifics of Bubblemaps’ allegations except for the preliminary response.
X contest rewards engagement over ethics
The X article contest was introduced on January 17, 2026, as a part of X’s technique to encourage high-quality, long-form content material on its platform. The competition promised $1 million to the writer of the preferred long-form article posted between January 16 and January 28.
Nonetheless, the choice standards left loads to be desired. The factors used “Verified House Timeline impressions” as the primary metric, which critics consider primarily rewards engagement farming as a substitute of high quality content material.
The profitable article was titled “Deloitte, a $74 billion most cancers metastasized throughout America,” which dissected information about authorities contracts with the consulting big.
Whereas the competition’s tips explicitly acknowledged that submissions “should not include political or spiritual statements,” NBC Information famous that over $2 million in prize cash went to customers starting from common right-wing influencers to nameless accounts. Additionally they highlighted a historical past of controversial and racist content material from @beaverd’s account historical past.
These allegations add one more layer of controversy to an already disputable prize announcement.
Whereas Elon Musk (X’s proprietor) has positioned the platform as an avenue for high quality content material creation and truthful monetization, others argue that basing rewards majorly on engagement metrics can incentivize dangerous conduct in opposition to common customers, whether or not by means of controversial/racist content material or scams.