Review of the Stable deposit activity timeline: rat trading and the victory of insider information.

Written by: David, Deep Tide TechFlow

Today's biggest FOMO and criticism comes from Stable's pre-deposit activity.

At 9:13 AM, the stablecoin public chain project Stable announced a pre-deposit event on its official Twitter. The $825 million quota was sold out in a very short time, making the event seem extremely popular and successful.

In the celebration post of Stable, the comment section is filled with various complaints and criticisms, and the core reason is that everyone has seen a clear truth through on-chain data:

Before the announcement of the event, a large amount of funds had already been deposited in advance, leaving very little room and opportunity for everyone to make deposits.

Specifically:

15-20 minutes before the announcement, 825 million in deposit limits has already been filled to 90%; 20 addresses have filled up 700 million of the limit.

After the announcement, only 192 addresses successfully participated, and they only shared a total of 70M in quota.

Before the announcement was made, the largest deposit address had one person depositing 100 million US dollars.

Information asymmetry, insider trading, and front-running are particularly evident in this event by Stable. After digging deeper into the on-chain data, the community also discovered that the controller of Stable's official deposit contract also took a share of the profits.

Integrating various scattered data together, reviewing the complete timeline of the Stable deposit activity, you can easily see that this is a victory concerning insider trading and mouse warehouses.

Pre-sale, now presented in a rush format.

Let's start with a comparison:

October 24, 8:48:47: The first large deposit of 50 million USDT entered the deposit Vault.

October 24th 9:13:00 UTC+8: Stable officially announced on Twitter that the event has “officially started.”

The time difference is about 24 minutes.

What happened in these 24 minutes? On-chain data shows that over 70% of the final deposit limit has already been reserved.

After the official announcement was made, in reality, there was less than 30% of the quota available for regular users to compete for. And this 30% was quickly consumed within 26 minutes, leaving most users who only participated after seeing the announcement empty-handed.

The Dune dashboard regarding this event provides a clearer picture, showing a dramatic increase in deposit limits after 8:48, indicating that most of the opportunity had already ended before it even began.

And when tracing the sources of these large deposits made with prior knowledge, a key player emerges: BTSE Exchange.

Maximum deposit address: 0x833999c2fe99e388c100fab7680a1e45e3e825b2

Deposit Amount: 101,400,000 USDT

Source of funds: Transferred from BTSE exchange address 0xbb4d1dc5c1abec4ea11166ec97e714862863ad1d on October 23 at 14:21 UTC.

Preparation time: complete funding preparation 18 hours in advance.

Second largest deposit address: 0xfca49ab538972876d79aa0082b265b6b049f0b21

Deposit Amount: 86,850,000 USDT

Source of funds: Also allocated internally from the BTSE system.

Operating mode: Distributed through multiple intermediary addresses, but ultimately all point to BTSE.

Third largest deposit address: 0x4e1f6753640f87854b377c36efb2af0d0e19a5d2

Deposit Amount: 60,000,000 USDT

Operation Mode: BTSE → Intermediate Address → Deposit Address

From this funding flow model, it can be seen that these large deposits do not come from retail investors or ordinary institutions, but are coordinated operations conducted through the BTSE exchange system. The three largest deposit addresses control a total of 248 million USDT, accounting for 30% of the total quota.

What is even more interesting is the evidence regarding the Gas fees. All large deposits used an unusually high Gas fee of 50 Gwei, while the average Gas fee across the network was around 1.14 Gwei at that time.

This cost-agnostic high gas fee strategy seems to have only one purpose: to ensure that transactions are packaged by miners at the first opportunity, avoiding any possible delays or failures.

The rat warehouse is one of our own.

If the pre-announcement rush 24 minutes before was already outrageous, then the following discovery completely tore off the veil of this event.

The Twitter account @aggrnews has reconstructed a longer timeline through on-chain data mining: the layout of this insider trading started as early as 20 days ago.

Moreover, the controller of the Stable deposit contract may have directly participated in insider trading, using their privileged access to facilitate profit transfers.

Let's turn back time to October 4th:

On October 4th, a funding relationship was established. Address 0x1fa1c… transferred ETH to the Owner address (0x1407c35Ad0ed3f9e143Ee6b99CF2da920606e760) of the Stable deposit contract (which has contract management authority). It is worth noting that this Owner address is actually a 5-person multi-signature Safe wallet that controls the entire deposit contract.

On October 24th, the Sniper Matrix was deployed. The same 0x1fa1c… address suddenly became active, precisely distributing 0.017 ETH as gas fees to 10 independent addresses. These 10 addresses had no prior connection and seemed more like “shells” specifically prepared for deposit activities.

Subsequently, these 10 addresses acted almost simultaneously, completing deposits in the golden time window before the official announcement, totaling nearly 500 million USD, accounting for over 60% of the total quota.

What is even more intriguing is that the operations of these 10 addresses are highly consistent: uniform Gas fee amounts, similar deposit times, and orderly deposit amounts. This almost militarized precision in operations would be nearly impossible to achieve without internal information support.

Although we cannot determine whether the 5 signers of the multi-signature wallet were directly involved in this insider trading, the correlation is sufficient to indicate the issue: at least one address close to the core circle was aware of the accurate activity time and contract address in advance.

Ironically, as the Owner of the deposit contract, this address theoretically has the authority to pause/resume the contract and view all deposit data.

The referee and the athletes wore the same pair of pants; this competition on who can store faster was destined to have a result from the very beginning. Those users who rushed in after seeing the official tweet at 9:13 were merely playing the role of an audience in this already scripted grand show, likely having bought tickets but unable to see the performance.

Where is my opportunity?

Now, various presale and new project activities in the crypto space have increasingly become a feast for scientists and insiders, making it extremely difficult for ordinary users to fairly share in the pie.

Looking back at the first phase of the Stable pre-storage event, how can you increase the certainty of your chances of obtaining it? The answer may lie in the following two ways.

First, become a member of the insider circle. You are a core member of this project, knowing the news in advance, but this is obviously very difficult to achieve.

Second, monitor for front-running on-chain. Hard work can make up for lack of talent; therefore, monitor various on-chain data more frequently and possess a certain level of data analysis capability.

For example, when the insiders start depositing, different monitoring tools have actually already reacted. That transfer of 100 million US dollars in stablecoins is often labeled as “large amount” on the monitoring tools.

At almost the same time, multiple other addresses also made transfers to this $100 million incoming address, with amounts all exceeding $50 million. At this point, if you happen to be a research-driven person who is accustomed to setting various alerts, you should have sensed something unusual.

However, this still does not guarantee that you will have the opportunity to make a deposit. Further analysis of the address that receives multiple deposits is needed, including creation time, creator association, contract description, and various other information, in order to have a certain probability of identifying “this is the Stable deposit Vault.”

In addition, you need to make decisions and execute trades in a very short period of time, paying Gas fees that are far above market prices to ensure the success of the transaction… This entire process may only have a window of a few minutes, requiring strong on-chain analytical skills and execution ability.

Therefore, it is hard to say that this is an opportunity that an ordinary crypto player can have.

Ultimately, in a market with extreme information asymmetry, ordinary investors are always at a disadvantage. Fairness has never been the rule of the crypto game; information gaps and rent-seeking are.

Instead of fantasizing about fairness, it is better to accept reality and adapt to the rules.

Either work hard to improve your ability to acquire information and your technical level, climbing up the food chain; or adjust your mindset and strategy to seek more certain opportunities within your capacity.

Stable is certainly not the first, nor will it be the last. Mouse warehouses will continue, insider trading will continue, but the market will also continue.