From viral jokes to a billion-dollar phenomenon, meme coins have become one of the most popular segments in cryptocurrency markets. Unlike utility-focused crypto assets like Bitcoin, meme coins derive value primarily from community sentiment, making them vulnerable to manipulation. This study presents an unprecedented cross-chain analysis of the meme coin ecosystem, examining 34,988 tokens across Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain, Solana, and Base. We characterize their tokenomics and track their growth in a three-month longitudinal analysis. We discover that among high-return tokens (>100%), an alarming 82.8% show evidence of artificial growth strategies designed to create a misleading appearance of market interest. These include wash trading and a new form of manipulation we define as Liquidity Pool-Based Price Inflation (LPI), where small strategic purchases trigger dramatic price increases. We find that profit extraction schemes, such as pump and dumps and rug pulls, typically follow initial manipulations like wash trading or LPI, indicating how early manipulations create the foundation for later exploitation. We quantify the economic impact of these schemes, identifying over 17,000 victimized addresses with realized losses exceeding $9.3 million. These findings reveal that combined manipulations are widespread among high-performing meme coins, suggesting that their dramatic gains are often driven by coordinated efforts rather than natural market dynamics.

翻译：从病毒式笑话到价值数十亿美元的现象，迷因币已成为加密货币市场中最受欢迎的板块之一。与比特币等注重实用性的加密资产不同，迷因币的价值主要源于社区情绪，这使得它们容易受到操纵。本研究对迷因币生态系统进行了前所未有的跨链分析，涵盖了以太坊、BNB智能链、Solana和Base链上的34,988种代币。我们通过为期三个月的纵向分析，刻画了这些代币的代币经济学特征并追踪其增长轨迹。研究发现，在高回报代币（>100%）中，高达82.8%的代币显示出人为增长策略的证据，这些策略旨在制造市场兴趣的误导性表象。这些策略包括洗售交易以及一种新型操纵手段——我们将其定义为基于流动性池的价格通胀（LPI），即通过少量战略性购买触发价格的急剧上涨。我们发现，诸如拉高出货和撤池跑路等利润提取方案，通常发生在洗售交易或LPI等初始操纵之后，这表明早期操纵为后续剥削奠定了基础。我们量化了这些方案的经济影响，识别出超过17,000个受害地址，实际损失超过930万美元。这些发现揭示，组合操纵在高表现迷因币中普遍存在，表明其惊人的收益往往由协同操纵驱动，而非自然市场动态。