Are you still following KOLs cryptocurrency trading after SHARs plunge of 96

Coin World Report:
The “Leeks” are like goldfish, with only seven seconds of memory.
Author: Jessy
The wealth effect brought by Goat has once again ignited the Meme track.
From the evening of October 23rd to the early morning of October 24th, a project called Shar went public and staged a dramatic scene with a market value of nearly 60 million US dollars in just 8 hours, and then plummeted 96% in five minutes.
The reason for this result is that a wallet address sold 500 million SHAR tokens (50% of the total supply) at once. According to Lookonchain, this transaction came from an insider trader who, at 5 am on the 24th, consolidated SHAR tokens from over a hundred wallets into one wallet and then sold them.
How did this project attract community attention and reach a market value of 60 million US dollars in a short period of time? Investigation revealed that the Shar project relied mainly on endorsements from well-known institutions and the promotion by influential KOLs to gain trust.
After the market crash, the project team claimed that they did not have enough funds to continue the project due to the FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) they encountered.
The biggest whale in SHAR earned 13,910 SOL tokens.
The development of the situation was too rapid. In just 8 hours, the Shar project experienced a dramatic rise in market value to 60 million US dollars and then a drop to 3 million US dollars.
The SHAR token was deployed on October 23, 2024, at 22:00. In the evening, within an hour, the token price reached a peak of nearly $0.06, with a market value of nearly 60 million US dollars. By around 5 am on October 24th, the token price dropped directly from around $0.035 to around $0.0018. According to Lookonchain’s monitoring, the cause of this result was a single insider trader who sold 500 million SHAR tokens (50% of the total supply) at a price of 19,620 SOL tokens ($3.38 million).


According to the disclosed transaction details, the insider trader used a total of 5,710 SOL tokens to buy 665.6 million SHAR tokens (66.56% of the total supply) through 16 wallets and distributed them to over 100 wallets. In the early morning of the 24th, the trader consolidated 500 million SHAR tokens from 104 wallets and sold them all at once. This buy-sell operation earned 13,910 SOL tokens.
This series of actions, distributing tokens to multiple wallets and then consolidating them, was undoubtedly intended to conceal the trace of on-chain operations.
It is impossible to accurately determine whether the wallet address performing this operation belongs to the project team, but the fact that it used 5,710 SOL tokens to buy more than half of the token supply suggests that it is the largest whale and most likely the project team.
After the incident, the project team responded on X, stating that they did not have enough funds to continue the project due to the FUD they encountered. In the chat records provided by KOL @0xSunNF, who helped promote the project, the project team personnel they were in contact with stated that the project’s life ended because of the tweets published by the whistleblower. Currently, the project’s partners and exchanges want to cancel their collaboration with Shar. The project team is studying refund plans, but there is no news yet.
KOL’s Waterloo
According to the promotional materials of the Shar project, several well-known KOLs were supposed to support the project. However, after the incident, some KOLs came out one after another to state that they had terminated their cooperation with Shar, while others claimed that they had never collaborated with the project.


In fact, many people did buy the token under the promotion of these KOLs. @0xSunNFT, a KOL with over 100,000 followers, stated that he had cooperated with the project team and had posted two tweets to promote the Shar project, which have now been deleted.
After the incident, @0xSunNFT posted on X, stating that he had not sold the coins received from the project team and had also used his own money to buy the token.
@0xSunNFT stated in the community after the incident that he had never met the project team in person. He saw in a video that the project team had set up a booth at this year’s TOKEN 2049 event and had collaborated with market maker CSL to design clothes. Based on this judgment, he believed that the project team was trustworthy and accepted their advertisement.
He previously stated on X that he received the project team’s promotion fee in the form of one SHAR token. He received a reward of 1 million SHAR tokens from the project team. He also purchased 100 SOL worth of SHAR tokens. (Currently, according to @0xSunNFT’s publicly disclosed address, records of him purchasing SHAR tokens twice with 100 SOL can be found, but the receipt of 1 million SHAR tokens as a reward has not been confirmed, and it is highly likely that the reward was not deposited into his public account.)
At its peak, 1 million SHAR tokens were worth about $60,000, and the current value is approximately $2,000.
An individual familiar with KOL project promotion in the incubation industry stated that it is common for projects to find KOLs for promotion, and sometimes KOLs will join forces to manipulate a project.
As for CSL, they also distanced themselves from Shar after the incident, stating that they had never cooperated with the Shar project and that the claim of cooperation between Shar and DWF in the project’s promotional PPT was also false.
CSL’s staff also stated that the reason they followed Shar’s Twitter was that Shar had participated in CSL’s event, so they paid attention to their tweets.
Based on the content published on Shar’s official X account, it can be seen that they started posting messages on the X account before Token2049 held in Singapore in September this year. They attended Token2049’s event and had a collaboration with a project called @CryptoFightWeek. A promotional poster for the Shar project appeared at the boxing match they organized.
However, buying tickets for Token2049 does not provide any endorsement for this project.
False advertising, riding on the reputation of well-known institutions, and paying KOLs for project promotion are not costly. If the remuneration for KOL promotion, as mentioned by @0xSunNFT, is in the form of SHAR tokens, it is essentially worthless for the project team.
Currently, some victims in China have reported this to the police.
Summary
After the incident, some KOLs came out to state that they had not reached a cooperation agreement with Shar, while Shar’s official X account stated that they had communicated with these mentioned KOLs, and although they did not reach a cooperation agreement with all of them, they did receive their quotations. It is evident that KOLs receiving payment for project promotion is a very common practice.
Currently, investors often follow the recommendations of KOLs, especially when it comes to Meme Coins that rely on emotions and hot topics. The involvement of KOLs can quickly spread the project within the community. Furthermore, KOLs not only benefit from project promotion fees but also profit from insider information by getting close to the project team and engaging in buying and selling activities.
It is not uncommon for projects endorsed by KOLs to exit scams, leaving investors in the dust. They change their names and continue to lure investors. And the “leeks” are like goldfish, with only seven seconds of memory.