ENS: Did they pump and dump while Vitalik was speaking up?
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ENS: Did they pump and dump while Vitalik was speaking up?
Just as the entire ENS community was immersed in the joy of its token price potentially "reclaiming past glory," a large-scale on-chain token transfer undoubtedly poured cold water on the members.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Mia, ChainCatcher
Editor: Marco, ChainCatcher
On January 12, there were numerous developments regarding ENS on-chain and exchange activities. At noon, according to on-chain analyst ai_9684xtpa's data monitoring, the ENS project team or investors appeared to be selling off holdings.
It is reported that address 0x1b9...b578f received a total of 403,000 tokens over the past year from project team cold wallets, with 21,000 transferred into Binance five hours ago. All these tokens have now been gradually flowing into exchanges. Later, Spot On Chain revealed on social media that Brantly Millegan, former operations director of the ENS official team, deposited approximately 199,000 ENS (worth $4.57 million) into Coinbase about 16 hours ago and still holds 465,000 locked ENS tokens (worth $10 million).
Following news of large-scale token transfers from wallets to exchanges, rumors began spreading in the crypto community that "ENS will rug pull under Vitalik Buterin’s cover." Investors started panicking—according to market data, after peaking at $24.90 on January 11 at 21:00, ENS began trending downward. At the time of writing, it was trading at $21.10, down 3.35% for the day.
On January 3, Vitalik Buterin shared ENS’s Layer2 data resolution solution on X and wrote: “All L2s should run CCIP resolvers so that ENS subdomains can be registered, updated, and read directly on L2. ENS is too important to be unaffordable.”
In this post, Vitalik specifically mentioned ENS, calling it the most successful non-financial application on Ethereum. This tweet thrust ENS into the spotlight, with the crypto community interpreting it as Vitalik openly endorsing ENS. The celebrity effect triggered a surge of investor interest, driving up the token price.
According to Binance data, since the tweet was posted on January 3, ENS has risen from $8 to $21.10, reaching a high of $24.90—an increase of 311%. As prices continued climbing, FOMO among investors intensified.
Suspicious Large Token Transfers
Just as the entire ENS community basked in the excitement of what might be a resurgence in price, large-scale on-chain token transfers came as a cold splash of water. Even more shocking was the fact that the wallet belonged not to some anonymous whale but to the ENS official team itself—dealing a sharp blow to investor confidence. Soon after, rumors spread that “ENS will rug pull under Vitalik’s protection.” So far, the ENS team has not responded to these events.
Looking back, in terms of functionality and utility, ENS truly is—as Vitalik said—the most successful non-financial application on Ethereum. Moreover, ENS offers a user-friendly experience crucial for blockchain mass adoption and aligns with Layer2’s goal of expanding Web3 to broader audiences.
However, concluding that such a well-known project is about to rug pull based solely on large on-chain transfers seems overly hasty. Furthermore, current market data shows no severe panic or massive sell-offs, indicating that investor faith remains largely intact. So what do these moves really mean? Could there be a new proposal coming from the team? Or perhaps internal disagreements within the organization? Most investors in the market are currently taking a wait-and-see approach. Only an official statement from the ENS team will reveal the truth. Until then, we must wait.
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