- Bubblemaps flagged coordinated early purchases of the AI token Ava as suspicious activity.
- Twenty-three wallets, allegedly connected to support for Ava AI, bought 40% of the token supply at launch.
- The AVA price has fallen 96% from its peak in January 2025.
The Solana-based AI token Ava AI (AVA) has come under scrutiny after blockchain analytics firm Bubblemaps revealed that nearly half of the token’s initial supply may have been acquired by a small group of wallets linked to the project’s deployment.
The findings suggest potential insider coordination during the token’s launch, raising concerns about the fairness and decentralization of its initial distribution.
Coordinated buying at launch
According to Bubblemaps, 23 wallets, including the deployer, were freshly funded just before AVA debuted on the memecoin launchpad Pump.fun.
These wallets, briefly funded from Bitget and Binance, received similar amounts of Solana (SOL) and showed no prior on-chain activity before acquiring AVA.
Bubblemaps described the behavior as a classic example of “sniping,” where crypto bots buy tokens immediately after public release to gain a price advantage over regular investors.
Further analysis showed these wallets were connected to other accounts that also bought AVA earlier.
The similarity in funding sources, timing and purchase amounts strongly suggests coordination across several clusters of wallets.
Bubblemaps emphasized that many of these actions went unnoticed at the time, underscoring the need for continuous monitoring of early token distributions to detect suspicious behavior.
Implications for investors
The news of early wallet coordination sparked debate among investors and analysts.
Some, including Twitter user ScoutOnchain, argue that speculative buying and FOMO are intrinsic to new crypto trends, while others call for more accessible analytics tools to help investors spot suspicious activity.
Concentrating nearly 40% of AVA’s supply in a few wallets carries material implications for retail investors.
A large supply controlled by a small number of actors can increase the risk of price manipulation or a “rug pull,” where insiders sell their holdings and trigger a market collapse.
AVA’s price trajectory appears to reflect those risks.
After reaching an all-time high of $0.3318 on January 15, 2025, the token has dropped roughly 96% from that peak and is currently trading around $0.01062 with a market capitalization of about $10.6 million.
The 24-hour trading range is approximately $0.01043 to $0.01143, while the seven-day range has fluctuated between $0.008029 and $0.01371.
Despite the price decline from its peak, the circulating supply remains nearly identical to the total supply at around 999 million AVA, with the maximum supply capped at 1 billion.
Bubblemaps has committed to continued monitoring of early token movements and to providing the community with insights, signaling further efforts to increase transparency around new launches.