Author: Joel Khalili, Wired

Translated by: BlockBeats

Image source: WIRED Editorial Department / Getty Images

Editor's note: The highly anticipated pump.fun platform coin PUMP rose to around $0.007 after it went online on July 15, and then started a unilateral decline. The public sale price of $0.004 did not effectively stop the decline. PUMP fell below $0.003 today, which hit investors' confidence in PUMP. Although the PUMP public sale explicitly prohibits American users from participating, it does not affect American Meme players who are also broken because of losses in Meme transactions. Burwick Law, a well-known law firm that has initiated Meme coin investment lawsuits many times, announced yesterday that it would expand the scope of the lawsuit against the Pump platform and include the Solana Foundation, Solana Labs and Jito in the list of defendants. In addition, the "average age" of the Pump.fun team has also become a hotly discussed point in the crypto community. According to a previous report by the New York Times, Pump.fun is headquartered in London, UK, and is led by three entrepreneurs in their early 20s: Noah Tweedale, Alon Cohen and Dylan Kerler. The three have registered a physical company, Baton Corporation, with Noah Tweedale as CEO and all three as directors of the company. They met in Oxford, England, and have years of experience in trading meme coins such as Dogecoin. This is an article from WIRED in April this year, which may help readers understand the Pump.fun platform and the people behind it.

Pump.Fun, the world's largest Memecoin factory, allows anyone to create their own cryptocurrency. However, years before the platform was launched, a person with the same name as co-founder Dylan Kerler had made a small fortune by issuing and selling his own tokens.

According to WIRED's investigation, an individual named Dylan Kerler issued eight tokens in 2017. At the time, Pump.Fun co-founder Dylan Kerler was only 16 years old. Two of the tokens - eBitcoinCash and EthereumCash - had attracted attention on crypto forums, and then their prices plummeted, and investors accused the developers of a rug pull.

According to an analysis by blockchain security firm CertiK, the developer who uses the name Dylan Kerler earned as much as $75,000 in cryptocurrency in 2017 from the sales of eBitcoinCash and EthereumCash alone—an amount that could be worth $400,000 at today’s prices.

“After waiting for market share and prices to rise, they quickly cashed out,” said CertiK Chief Security Officer Tielei Wang. “We strongly suspect that EthereumCash is a tool designed by developers for Rug Pull.”

The purpose of Pump.Fun, according to its co-founder, is to protect investors from unethical actors by standardizing the way tokens are issued. But there is evidence that Dylan Kerler was exactly the kind of developer the platform was trying to protect against in its early days.

As of press time, neither Pump.Fun nor Dylan Kerler responded to multiple requests for comment.

The rise of Pump.Fun and its mysterious founder

Pump.Fun was founded in January 2024 by three twenty-something entrepreneurs, Noah Tweedale, Alon Cohen and Dylan Kerler. The platform quickly became the preferred incubator and trading venue for Memecoin.

This type of cryptocurrency is highly volatile and is mainly created for speculation. According to third-party statistics, in just 15 months, Pump.Fun has generated more than $600 million in revenue through a 1% trading commission.

The three co-founders rarely disclose their identities, locations, or company structure. Tweedale told WIRED last year that this anonymity was for "personal safety" considerations to prevent the huge crypto assets managed by Pump.Fun from triggering blackmail or attacks.

Of the three, Kerler has the least public information about him. Aside from listing him as a director in documents at Companies House, the UK company registry, he has almost no public connection to Pump.Fun. Tweedale told WIRED that Kerler was responsible for leading the development team to write platform code and iterate features. Aside from an X (original Twitter) account named @outdoteth, Kerler has almost zero online footprints.

However, a series of "digital clues" left in corners of the network such as GitHub, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Medium still link this name to the suspected rug pull operation of eBitcoinCash and EthereumCash.

Digital footprints: tracing back early token promotion

In 2017, the two tokens, eBitcoinCash and EthereumCash, were initially promoted by two accounts on the crypto forum BitcoinTalk: DOMAINBROKER and ninjagod, both of which belonged to the same user. According to a forum message, after the DOMAINBROKER account was "suspected of being hacked", the user began to use the identity of ninjagod to communicate with investors.

In a forum post promoting eBitcoinCash, DOMAINBROKER provided an email address containing Dylan Kerler's name and called it a "personal email address"; in another EthereumCash thread initiated by ninjagod, many forum users directly called Dylan Kerler the developer of the project.

Meanwhile, there are multiple clues that Pump.Fun co-founder Dylan Kerler was in the same area as the developer of eBitcoinCash and EthereumCash, who once said in an old Telegram group that he was in Brighton, England.

Voter registration records reviewed by WIRED show that Kerler was still registered at an address in the Brighton and Hove area of England at least in 2024. When reporters visited the address on April 15, a resident who responded over the intercom refused to reveal his identity but said that Kerler "no longer lives here," which indirectly confirmed the accuracy of the voter registration.

Company registration documents show that an entity under Pump.Fun was once registered at the same property in Brighton and Hove. The address is also shared by two other companies, both of which list Kee Fatt Phoon, 62, as a director. In addition, Phoon is also registered as a voter at this address.

Aliases and connections: Dylan Kerler or Dylan Phoon?

Dylan Kerler appears to have used the alias "Dylan Phoon," the same last name as Kee Fatt Phoon, suggesting the two may be related.

Until recently, a GitHub account using the nickname "outdoteth" maintained an old code repository that contained a Gmail address named after Dylan Phoon; the avatar used for the email also appeared on a Medium account named DylanKerler1, as well as LinkedIn and YouTube accounts under Dylan Phoon's name.

The above YouTube account uploaded a video about the cryptocurrency Skycoin. Although the project was created by others, its project logo has also appeared in ninjagod's BitcoinTalk account, which can be regarded as an indirect clue that the two are from the same person.

Another YouTube account named @dylankerler4130 has posted a video about the "Equis" project, which is advertised as "completely transforming the gambling industry." Equis was also promoted by ninjagod on BitcoinTalk, and its code is exactly the same as eBitcoinCash and EthereumCash. (The project did not attract investor interest on the forum)

In summary, the two names used by the co-founders of Pump.Fun - Dylan Kerler and Dylan Phoon - can be traced back to accounts related to the promotion of EthereumCash and eBitcoinCash on BitcoinTalk.

ICO Bubble and Early Rug Pull Model

eBitcoinCash and EthereumCash were both launched by developers using the name Dylan Kerler during the peak of the ICO boom. During that period, hundreds of token projects raised billions of dollars from investors through the ICO model. ICOs are popular among crypto startups because they do not dilute equity.

Conducting an ICO usually involves a three-step process: deploying a contract on the Ethereum network to mint tokens, describing the project's vision on the official website, and soliciting external investment. "Many projects are just a white paper and a website with a countdown timer - the threshold is extremely low," said Wang.

Analysts point out that while some projects that raised funds through ICOs (such as Ethereum) are still operating, most ICOs were manipulated, exaggerated, or even outright fraudulent, which ultimately led to tighter regulation. Many developers exaggerated the purpose of the project, manipulated prices to create hype, and even fabricated returns.

"Developers are pushing the fantasy of high returns," said Nicolai Søndergaard, a research analyst at blockchain analysis company Nansen. "This is where FOMO comes from."

The hype of the ICO craze led to a large number of gullible investors who did little due diligence in the pursuit of profits, a phenomenon that is exactly the same as investing in suspicious meme coins today. "The meme craze has a lot in common with ICOs," Søndergaard pointed out. "It's very easy to sell a story to the public and then reap it quickly."

The craze and crash of EthereumCash

A developer named Dylan Kerler began promoting his most popular token, EthereumCash, in early October 2017.

The developer followed the standard playbook: minting tokens on Ethereum, building a website, and promoting it on BitcoinTalk, Twitter, and Telegram. To generate hype, they gave away free tokens through a so-called "airdrop" and promised to release a white paper. At the time, a white paper was seen as a symbol of legitimacy and could drive prices up.

"The release of a white paper can greatly increase traction. Even the promise of a release is enough to stir up market sentiment," Søndergaard noted.

A screenshot of the project's deleted website circulating on Telegram reveals how it was pitched to potential investors. "We are committed to making the transition from fiat to crypto as smooth as possible while still maintaining an air of integrity and class (original grammatical errors retained)" the page declared. At the bottom of the page, an image of an EthereumCash bank card that claims to be used for physical purchases is displayed.

A table obtained by WIRED shows that hundreds of people have signed up to participate in the EthereumCash airdrop in just a few days. Meanwhile, discussions on the BitcoinTalk forum were heated. One user wrote: "Let's spread the word and let more people notice this great token." As of October 19, the market value of EthereumCash has risen to about $1.3 million.

But just as early investors were full of expectations, a developer named Dylan Kerler began to secretly ship.

CertiK analysis shows that Dylan Kerler distributed millions of EthereumCash to wallets under his control a few days after the token was created. One of the wallets, beginning with 0x7f3E2, was then used to sell a large number of tokens to the market.

Between October 19 and 21, 0x7f3E2 sold hundreds of batches of EthereumCash on the peer-to-peer trading platform EtherDelta. The sales coincided with a catastrophic 87.9% plunge in the asset's price.

On Telegram and BitcoinTalk, panic spread. One user, presumably trying to have some fun, began dubbing the token "ECRASH." Others accused the developers of being solely responsible. "Everyone was furious," another Telegram user who participated in the EthereumCash airdrop told WIRED. "I think this is my first rug pull."

The much-anticipated white paper never appeared, and eventually the developer, named Dylan Kerler, disappeared from BitcoinTalk threads and Telegram groups. A few days earlier, he had written: "I can assure you that the project is making great progress."

In three transactions on October 20 and 21, the developer's wallet withdrew a total of 240 Ethereum (ETH) from EtherDelta - about $75,000 at the time. After each withdrawal, the ETH was immediately transferred to another wallet address (0xc8ae1), and then dispersed to three wallets: 0x7EAbb, 0x31728 and 0x952F3. Ultimately, the ETH was transferred to accounts on centralized trading platforms such as Binance, Bity and the now-closed Cryptopia - which are commonly used to exchange cryptocurrencies for fiat currencies.

WIRED has identified at least 20 wallets used by a developer calling himself Dylan Kerler that were used to issue, airdrop, or sell eBitcoinCash and EthereumCash, or to transfer related revenue to centralized exchanges.

“The effect of this layering is to obscure the flow of funds,” Søndergaard said. “If you have nothing to hide, there is actually no need to do it. This is suspicious in itself.”

Although some investors still have illusions about its return—on October 24, someone joked that “I smell the smell of the white paper”—all signs have long pointed to the final end.

In a BitcoinTalk post in early October, a developer wrote: "This will be like a Pump and Dump, a round of pumping and selling, and early investors can get their costs back." "I'm sorry to say it so bluntly, but it's the truth."

What is faster than getting rich is forgetting

To this day, Pump.Fun's surge has not stopped. According to third-party statistics, its platform has a daily revenue of up to $1 million. The founders' wealth has risen rapidly, far surpassing eBitcoinCash and EthereumCash. While this "wealth-making machine" continues to operate, Rug Pull, which goes against its original intention, is still being performed, and almost no one cares about it.

Last November, a teenager started a live broadcast on Pump.Fun, and created and sold a token in just a few minutes, making a net profit of $30,000. He shouted "Holy fuck! Holy fuck!" while raising his middle fingers to the camera - this moment may be the true footnote of this era.