RaveDAO said Saturday its team is “not engaged in, nor responsible for” the recent surge in its RAVE token, which jumped from $0.25 to $28 in nine days before collapsing to under $4 on Saturday.
Onchain investigator ZachXBT alleged a pump-and-dump scheme, pointing to roughly 90% of supply held across three team-linked wallets, and has offered a $25,000 bounty for whistleblowers.
Binance and Bitget have both confirmed they are investigating the trading activity.
Web3 entertainment project RaveDAO publicly denied any involvement in the recent price action of its RAVE token on Saturday, hours before the token collapsed by more than 80%.
In a six-post X thread, the team said it was aware of circulating rumors and accusations and stated its team "is not engaged in, nor responsible for, recent price action." The thread did not address specific onchain allegations raised by critics, including supply concentration or the timing of exchange transfers before the rally.
The thread also outlined plans to liquidate portions of unlocked tokens to fund operations, hiring, marketing, and philanthropic efforts, and said the team was exploring price-triggered or performance-triggered locks to align incentives with ecosystem growth. "Building a movement requires resources, and we are committed to doing so sustainably and transparently," the team wrote.
RAVE climbed from roughly $0.25 to a peak near $28 in about nine days, per CoinGecko data. At its high, the token briefly ranked around the top 20 by market cap, surpassing Litecoin and Avalanche. It has since retraced sharply, trading around $3.47 Saturday afternoon, down roughly 84% on the day and more than 87% from its peak. Its current market cap stands at about $892 million.
Onchain investigator ZachXBT on Saturday accused the RaveDAO team of orchestrating a pump-and-dump and called on Binance, Bitget, and Gate.io to investigate. ZachXBT cited claims that roughly 90% of the 1 billion RAVE supply is held across three Gnosis Safe multi-sigs attributed to the team, with only about 24% of tokens currently in circulation.$RAVE
