Aqua positioned itself as a trading infrastructure designed to democratize access beyond “insiders or whales,” claiming to have processed over $90 million in volume with execution speeds reaching milliseconds.
The platform promised revenue sharing through its AQUA token, which would distribute trading fees to holders via buy-and-burn mechanisms and staking rewards.
Aqua performed a public sale of their token, sharing an address where investors could send up SOL and receive AQUA tokens after launch. According to an announcement, the protocol raised $1 million in 30 minutes.
The project gained credibility through partnerships with established Solana entities, including Meteora, Helius, SYMMIO, and Dialect, as well as promotion from various influencers.
ZachXBT’s investigation revealed that funds were “split four ways and transferred between intermediary addresses before being sent to multiple instant exchanges” just hours before his report was submitted.
The platform launched its token through what it called a “Liquidity Ladder” model, marketed as an alternative to traditional presales that would ensure “deep launch liquidity” and “fair price discovery.”
This mechanism was designed to reward early conviction while avoiding insider allocations that typically benefit institutional investors.
The team promised to share information through alternative channels but provided no updates as of press time.
Meteora co-lead Soju addressed the accusations that the protocol helped a scam project to gain traction.
“Our prerogative will be to support teams using our tech, sometimes that results in a good launch, sometimes it doesn’t. I personally have installed processes that heavily weight this in our favor. However, I recognize that we could have managed expectations better and would further tighten internal processes to reduce this from happening.”
Despite the suspicious transactions of the money from their presale address, there is no formal confirmation as of press time that Aqua performed a rug pull.
