Over the weekend, meme coin mania returned with new fervor as it reached the Coinbase-backed Ethereum layer-2 network Base.

On July 30, BALD, an obscure meme coin with no website, on the L2 solution gained wide attention after its value exploded by more than 10,000% on the decentralized exchange Leetswap to a peak of around $0.085, and its market capitalization soared above $85 million, according to Dexscreener data. The asset’s trading volume during the period was more than $100 million.

Some community members linked the meme coin to Coinbase insiders. One tweet noted that BALD’s deployer is a whale connected to a large supply of Coinbase liquid Ethereum token, cbETH. 

Rug pull fears emerge

On-chain data shows that its value sharply declined by more than 80% after its deployer removed millions of dollars worth of liquidity, prompting speculations of a rug pull.

The deployer stated on the project’s official Twitter account that he had not sold any tokens since the launch. He clarified that the transactions were to add two-sided liquidity to the token.