Blockchain investigator ZachXBT published his most comprehensive investigation into LAB to date, alleging that insiders control more than 95% of the AI trading terminal's token supply and coordinated with an unknown market maker to engineer a pump to a $6 billion fully diluted valuation. According to the onchain sleuth's thread, the protocol's suspicious choices left retail participants holding a position in a token whose float, ownership, and supply schedule they cannot meaningfully verify. The investigation builds on a $10,000 bounty ZachXBT posted earlier this month, and lays out what he calls "everything wrong with the current meta of retail extraction on major centralized exchanges." The investigation appears at a time when AI-related crypto projects continue attracting speculative capital across centralized exchanges and private OTC markets, with researchers noting that the episode points to a broader phenomenon in the crypto space where projects increasingly rely on shadowy tokenomics and private agreements to pump prices.
LAB was founded by Vova Sadkov and a co-founder identified as Mark, with the token generation event in October 2025. Backers include Lemniscap, OKX, Animoca, GSR, Gate, Kucoin, Mirana, and Amber, several of which are also exchanges where the token trades. As reported by The Block, no consistent float data is publicly available, with analytics providers like Coingecko, RootData, and CoinMarketCap each reporting different figures. LAB's own documentation provides no breakdown, leaving retail participants without meaningful verification capabilities. The unilateral changes to public sale terms add a further layer of concern, with the team changing certain participants' cliff from three months to nine months without their consent. ZachXBT connected LAB founders Vova Sadkov and Mark to Eesee, a previous crypto project that received criticism from some investors after development activity slowed, with the legacy casts a long shadow on the unfolding story of LAB. The situation worsens as wallets connected to manipulation scams in the past are revealed, with only one signer on the LAB multisig wallets receiving funds from an address linked to activity relating to RIVER, which had offshore withdrawals of over $12 million worth of tokens via centralized exchange in recent months.
ZachXBT identified a private contract carrying monthly interest rates of up to 7.5% for six months, executed by "The Lab Management Ltd." - a BVI Business Company registered at Quijano Chambers, P.O. Box 3159, Road Town, Tortola, British Virgin Islands. The agreement is signed by Vladimir Sadkov as Director and carries an annualized rate of 90%. Payment is made to wallet address 0xf09C19328C26088053a8c9CfB982427bafF2Bd0b on ERC-20. If the borrower defaults, repayment is made in LAB tokens at "market price" - a provision that effectively converts the loan into a token sale at whatever price insiders have pumped the token to. The borrower wallet from that contract is the same address used for LAB's public buybacks, linked on-chain to a separate loan on Wildcat Finance. Funds tied to LAB have flowed to what ZachXBT identified as Sadkov's personal exchange accounts on Bybit and Gate, the same accounts that received deposits tied to Eesee before LAB existed. The team's history with Eesee, a prior project by Sadkov and Mark, also left investors feeling abandoned after the team moved on. Deeper investigation reveals correlations between this wallet and additional borrowing wallets, also with crypto moving to exchange accounts supposedly associated with Sadkov himself, mixing corporate and personal funds poses a real governance and conflict-of-interest risk.
There's allegedly a hidden supply that lives in the OTC structure, with co-founder Mark soliciting OTC buyers in a public Telegram group from January 2026. Screenshots shared by ZachXBT showed discounted token allocations offered through Telegram and WhatsApp groups, including some tranches reportedly sold at discounts ranging from 60% to 80%. The most recent offering - a KOL capital pitch - sat at an 80% discount, with 50% unlocking August 14 and the balance September 15, on the condition KOLs post promotional content multiple times before unlock or be blacklisted. Between March and May 2026, more than 226 million LAB tokens allegedly moved into exchange-linked wallets connected to Bitget. Roughly 100 million LAB tokens later flowed into a group of newly identified addresses. These vehicles create latent supply gluts, undiscoverable by the public, as the price of assets with variable pricing grow, the discounts that are built into these agreements appear to be widening – which only increases any remaining market imbalance. The most alarming part of the LAB case might be the complete information asymmetry, with the team well aware of the token unlocks while market makers facilitate liquidity positioning, while retail investors only observe the token price in the market without visibility into underlying pressures on it.
Despite the controversy, LAB continues recording active trading volume across several major exchanges, with the token currently trading at $5.665 (-11.27%). Some market participants dismissed the investigation as part of the speculative nature of low-float crypto assets, while others argued the findings exposed risks tied to concentrated token ownership. The thread drew immediate reaction, with one commenter noting that Bitget had untagged itself from the thread after being named. Another user pushed back on the investigation's premise, arguing that ZachXBT is bringing more attention than these coins ever had before, and that exposure generates liquidity rather than deterrence. ZachXBT's closing caveat directly addressed this concern, noting that the finding shouldn't be confused as a recommendation to short, because the level of supply control in insider hands could be used to drive the price higher against any short position. He urged Bitget, Binance, and Gate to freeze insider profits and redistribute them to users, or delist without waiting for public pressure. According to critics, exchanges like Bitget, Binance and Gate have the visibility – and responsibility – to step in either by freezing profits linked to insiders or even delisting the token completely. The episode with LAB is far from unique, it points to a broader phenomenon in the crypto space where projects are ever more reliant on shadowy tokenomics, private agreements and centralized exchange collusion to pump prices, with the potential for valuation excellence to obscure often flawed foundations.
