Inside the Allegations Fueling LAB Token’s Controversial Price Pump

• ZachXBT estimates LAB token insiders hold over 95% of supply, giving them near-total control over price movement.
  
• Private OTC deals offered discounts as steep as 80%, creating hidden supply unlocks completely invisible to retail traders.
  
• On-chain trails link LAB loan wallets to buyback addresses and a signer previously tied to the RIVER token manipulation case.

A blockchain investigator’s detailed exposé has put LAB token at the center of serious market manipulation allegations, raising questions about how the token reached a $6 billion fully diluted valuation while retail investors reportedly had no access to critical supply and pricing information available to insiders.

Private Deals and Vesting Changes Paint a Troubling Picture

ZachXBT published a nine-part thread outlining what he describes as a coordinated effort to control LAB token’s price through opaque financial arrangements. 

The project was founded by Vova Sadkov and Mark, with its token generation event held in October 2025. 

Their previous project, Eesee, left investors feeling abandoned after the team shifted focus entirely to LAB.

One of the most immediate concerns involves the token’s distribution data. CoinGecko, RootData, and CoinMarketCap each report different float figures for LAB, and the project’s own documentation provides no clear breakdown. 

Based on his on-chain analysis, ZachXBT estimates that insiders currently hold more than 95% of the circulating supply, a figure that would give them near-total control over price movement.

Public sale participants on Legion were also affected when the team extended the vesting cliff from three months to nine months without prior consultation. 

That change was confirmed through an email screenshot shared by a Legion user. Content creators separately reported waiting months for marketing campaign payments with no response from the team.

Backers named in the project include Lemniscap, OKX, Animoca, GSR, Gate, KuCoin, Mirana, and Amber. 

Notably, several of these backers also operate the centralized exchanges where LAB is actively traded, creating potential conflicts of interest that have not been publicly addressed.

Loan Contracts and Onchain Trails Connect the Dots

A draft loan contract from early 2026, reviewed by ZachXBT, shows terms of 7.5% monthly interest over six months, with default repayment structured in LAB tokens at market price.

The borrower is identified as The Lab Management Ltd., a British Virgin Islands shell company, with Sadkov listed as a signatory director. A separate source confirmed that interest payments were made under comparable terms.

The wallet tied to that loan contract is the same one used for LAB’s publicly announced buybacks. That wallet also connects on-chain to a borrower address used on Wildcat Finance. 

Funds from these wallets have moved to exchange deposit addresses that ZachXBT links to Sadkov’s personal accounts, the same accounts that received deposits from Eesee before LAB launched.

Between March and April 2026, insiders deposited 226 million LAB tokens to Bitget addresses, where they remained dormant. 

Then, between May 11 and 12, approximately 100 million LAB tokens worth $482 million were withdrawn across ten separate wallets. 

ZachXBT also identified a multisig signer connected to the RIVER token manipulation case, where over $12 million in tokens moved to centralized exchange addresses.

ZachXBT has called on Binance, Bitget, and Gate.io to freeze insider profits and return funds to retail users or delist the token entirely. 

He has posted a $10,000 bounty for further intelligence and noted he has already paid out $1,500 from his own funds.

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