James Wynn Longs ZEUS Memecoin

Hyperliquid whale trader, James Wynn, has moved on from the perp markets, recently acquiring $90K of memecoin, ZEUS, via his public wallet, jwynn.eth. He swapped 39 ETH, worth just over $99.2K at the time,  over four transactions for 2.45T ZEUS tokens.. Unfortunately, he was the victim of a sandwich attack across all of his swaps, resulting in the final value of his tokens only totalling to $94.93K. He is still currently holding the tokens, which are now worth approximately $97.3K.

The ZEUS memecoin is named after the dog of famous internet frog meme, Pepe. The ZEUS memecoin project had previously acquired the intellectual property (IP) to the Zeus character and its illustration from its original artist and IP holder. That said, prominent internet sleuth, ZachXBT, has publicly highlighted the original IP holder and team member, Jon “Jagged” Eyrick, as a former founder of a pump-and-dump market making firm, Darkpool Ventures, warning new traders to exercise caution in trading this token.

A "sandwich attack" is a form of predatory trading on decentralized exchanges. This type of attack occurs when a bot detects a pending trade in the blockchain's public mempool. The bot then strategically places two of its own orders: one immediately before the victim's trade (front-running) and one immediately after (back-running). The initial front-running order pushes the asset's price up slightly, forcing the victim to execute their purchase at a less favorable rate. The bot then immediately sells the asset with its back-running trade, profiting from the temporary price difference it created.

The memecoin ecosystem itself is known for being a high-risk, high-reward environment driven more by social media hype and narrative than by technical fundamentals. The value of these tokens is often tied to the strength of their community and ability to capture the internet's attention. This speculative nature makes them a fertile ground for market manipulation. "Pump-and-dump" schemes involve insiders artificially inflating a token's price before selling their holdings en masse, causing a price crash and significant losses for later investors. This is why on-chain researchers often emphasize the importance of scrutinizing the backgrounds of a project's founders.