PANews reported on February 18 that according to SolanaFloor, on February 17, 2025, Moty, the founder of DefiTuna, publicly announced through the X platform that DefiTuna had refunded Kelsier, an investor who invested $30,000 in the project on January 16, 2025, and severed all ties with him. This decision was made after Kelsier was suspected of participating in market manipulation, especially his association with LIBRA, MELANIA and the meme coin launchpad platform M3M3. Moty disclosed a series of suspected well-planned token manipulation behaviors that resulted in large-scale fund withdrawals for community members.
"After discovering Kelsier's activities, we have refunded Kelsier and cut all ties," Moty wrote. After announcing the decision, Moty detailed his concerns in a series of posts, claiming that: Kelsier was involved in an elaborate plan to extract a large amount of funds from the meme coin launchpad platform M3M3. Meteora's leadership, including Ben, facilitated a large number of influencers who benefited greatly at the expense of the community. Despite contacting Meteora's core contributors directly, they showed little accountability. Meteora co-founder Ben said he would resign after being questioned, but only issued a vague public response. "I have personally done everything I can, risking myself and everything we have built at DefiTuna, to try to get key people to speak up, start identifying these bad guys, and remove them," Moty said.
SolanaFloor contacted Moty to learn more about DefiTuna's interaction with Kelsier and gain insight into how the Meteora-powered M3M3 platform operates. Moty detailed DefiTuna's interaction with Kelsier, revealing that Kelsier approached them through a Lebanese employee, Thomas, to request assistance in providing liquidity for M3M3. Initially, M3M3 was advertised as an independent platform, but it was later revealed that Ben had become its owner. Kelsier's involvement required projects launched on M3M3 to allocate a certain percentage of the token supply to them. Vlad, the co-founder of DefiTuna, passively participated in believing that the collaboration was legal. Moty revealed that Kelsier personally asked them to provide liquidity for M3M3, and that Ben, the co-founder of Meteora, prohibited any trading outside of Meteora. When DefiTuna proposed a neutral liquidity allocation strategy, they were ignored.
Moty said that more than $200 million was stolen from multiple projects including AIAI, MATES, ENRON, Melania, and Libra. Screenshots show that Hayden shared the minting addresses of these tokens with a group of influencers in front of the official launchpad, enabling them to buy in advance and make a huge profit. When asked about Kelsier's total profit from M3M3, Moty replied: "If you count AIAI, MATES, ENRON, a bunch of other projects... Melania and LIBRA... over $200 million. There are a lot of other projects."
