ChainArgos Tracking: Polygon Pledge Contract Records a Shortfall of 400 Million MATIC, Flowing towards Suspicious Binance Addresses?
According to the blockchain intelligence company ChainArgos, it has been discovered that there is a significant discrepancy between the actual distribution of the MATIC token by Polygon Labs and the stated amount in the staking contract, with up to 400 million $MATIC (currently valued at approximately 340 million USD) missing. There are also suspicious fund flows pointing to addresses associated with the exchange Binance.
ChainArgos pointed out in a tweet yesterday (15th) that there seems to be a discrepancy between the token economics and unlocking period of Polygon Labs’ token MATIC and the actual unlocking situation.
The company also provided an official token unlocking plan chart and the calculated amount of tokens expected to unlock each time for reference.
Firstly, ChainArgos stated that through observation, it can be determined that MATIC is managed by a locking contract and a foundation contract, both of which are responsible for automatic unlocking and managing the circulation of all tokens. The former involves the release and circulation of over 10 billion tokens, while the latter participated in the listing of 1.2 billion MATIC tokens on Binance Launchpad.
However, the company analyzed the unlocking situation of the locking contract and noticed that the unlocking pattern of the locking contract is irregular and the size of the gaps is inconsistent, which is significantly different from the official planned chart.
Suspiciously, according to the token distribution chart, the expected circulating amount in the staking contract should have increased from 400 million MATIC to 1.2 billion MATIC since the deployment of the staking contract in June 2020. However, the observed actual flow does not match this expectation, as it only increased from 0 tokens to 800 million MATIC. In other words, there are 400 million MATIC tokens missing.
ChainArgos discovered that the missing 400 million tokens from the staking contract seem to have flowed to an address labeled as “Binance 33”, which is completely unrelated to staking. Subsequently, Binance 33 sent 300 million tokens to an address starting with “0x2f4”.
Interestingly, this 0x2f4 address also received 467 million tokens from the address “Matic: Market Marketing and Ecosystem” and sent them to Binance’s exchange wallet.
The company suspects that the Polygon Labs team may be collaborating with Binance to transfer tokens to the exchange for sale and questions the fund flows and motives, stating that this move may potentially affect market prices. Observing the fund flows of this address and comparing it with the price chart could be a good indicator of price tops and market declines.
Interestingly, another Twitter user, tmnxeq, also commented below, claiming to have discovered the suspicious activities of the team as early as June and July last year.
In summary, he pointed out that Polygon Labs stated in the Polygon 2.0 whitepaper that they would replace the existing MATIC token in the ecosystem with the POL token, which would have an average price higher than $5 over a 10-year period. He believes that this statement and assumption are extremely absurd, regardless of the fact that the current price of MATIC is consistently below $1. The description of this statement could even attract the attention of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), as it involves expectations of returns to investors.
ChainArgos, Matic, POL, Polygon, Polygon 2.0
