On-chain investigator ZachXBT published findings on May 14, in a report first covered by The Block, alleging that insiders control more than 95% of the total LAB token supply. LABtrade, the project behind the token, describes itself as a multi-chain AI-powered trading terminal supporting spot, futures, and perpetual contracts across Solana, Ethereum, and BNB Chain, with a revenue-sharing model through its native LAB token and a mobile app launched in May 2026. With a total supply of 1 billion tokens, the alleged insider concentration leaves retail investors with a free float of less than 5% of a project that briefly reached a fully diluted valuation of roughly $6 billion.

The investigation centers on a price surge in early May 2026 that took LAB from approximately $0.70 to a peak near $3.30, a gain of 350 to 500 percent, before a collapse of roughly 84% from that high. ZachXBT's report maps the movement of tokens from corporate Safe contracts through signer wallets, onto centralized exchanges, through OTC distributions and market maker intermediary addresses, and out to freshly created wallets, using a flow diagram produced with blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs.

The On-Chain Trail

The numbers behind the allegation are specific. Between March and April 2026, five insider wallets deposited a combined 226 million LAB tokens into Bitget. That figure represents 22.6% of the project's total supply of 1 billion tokens moving through a single exchange from a handful of wallets. Then, within a 12-hour window, 100 million LAB tokens worth approximately $480 million were withdrawn from Bitget into 10 newly created wallets, at amounts ranging from $41.5 to $52.92 million per wallet (8.6 to 10.8 million LAB each). That single withdrawal represented 32.26% of the 309.95 million tokens reported as circulating supply, a figure that is itself disputed across CoinGecko, RootData, and CoinMarketCap.

The TRM Labs flow diagram also identifies a RIVER-linked wallet that funded the LAB multisig with more than $12 million in RIVER tokens, a concrete on-chain cross-token link that supports ZachXBT's claim of a shared market maker connecting multiple alleged schemes.

Against a market cap of roughly $1.57 billion at the time, DEX liquidity sat at only about $4.75 million, a liquidity-to-market-cap ratio of 0.35%. That gap matters: it means even modest selling pressure from those fresh wallets would face almost no on-chain depth to absorb it.

ZachXBT also obtained loan documents showing the project's corporate entity, The Lab Management Ltd., a BVI-registered company directed by Vladimir Sadkov, borrowed USDC at 7.5% monthly interest (roughly 90% annualized). These are draft contracts from Q1 2026, and interest payments were reportedly made. The default clause in those contracts converts repayment into LAB tokens at market price, a structure that ZachXBT's investigation identifies as a means of distributing tokens into the open market through debt obligations.

Favorable Terms for Insiders, Worse Terms for Retail

The investigation documents a gap between the terms offered to connected buyers and those imposed on ordinary participants. Co-founder Mark X, operating under the handle @tokensaler and described in the report as a listing and marketing adviser, solicited buyers on Telegram with LAB offered at a 60% discount to market price, with a two-month cliff and two-month vest, and with pitches that included a guaranteed 25 to 33% profit in six months. A separate deal offered LAB to KOL Capital at an 80% discount when the token was trading near $5.

Retail investors, by contrast, had their vesting terms extended unilaterally. The original schedule called for a cliff of three months followed by an eight-month linear vest, with 0% distributed at the token generation event and tokens unlocking at month 11. The team later changed those terms to a nine-month cliff plus a six-month vest, pushing the first unlock to month 15.

One retail investor, @tigerweb3riji on X, described the team using "sweet talk" about the original schedule before changing it "on a dime."

ZachXBT called the arrangement "everything wrong with the current meta of retail extraction on major centralized exchanges." He also connected LAB's market maker to prior alleged manipulation schemes involving the tokens RIVER, RAVE, SIREN, MYX, and SKYAI, all said to follow the same pattern on Chinese centralized exchanges. The pattern has a documented track record: RAVE crashed 61% following ZachXBT's earlier exposure, a group controlling more than 90% of RAVE's supply was found to have coordinated trades, and RIVER shares a signer address with LAB's multisig. The LAB founders previously launched Eesee ($ESE) on the Blast chain in April 2024; that token is now down 93.2% from its all-time high.

Bitget Named Directly

ZachXBT's sharpest language was reserved for Bitget. He posted that "the Chinese CEX cartel has gone unchallenged for years and doesn't care as long as they benefit from the activity," and identified Bitget chairman Shawn Liu by name, writing: "Shawn Liu is the Bitget big boss who allows these scams to operate behind the scenes while Gracy Chen is only the face of it." Gracy Chen is Bitget's CEO; ZachXBT's framing explicitly distinguishes the roles of the chairman and the CEO, casting Liu as the behind-the-scenes decision-maker and Chen as the public representative. He further stated: "I think it is almost time to increase public attacks against Bitget." As of publication, Bitget has not responded publicly to these allegations.

Bitget had already drawn scrutiny in April 2026 after losing approximately $100 million in a manipulation incident involving the VOXEL token. ZachXBT has posted a $10,000 bounty for chat records, contracts, or insider documents related to LAB's market-making activity across Bitget, Bybit, Binance, and OKX.

Regional Stakes

The exchanges named in this investigation have been growing their retail user bases aggressively across South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa recorded more than $205 billion in on-chain transaction value between July 2024 and June 2025, a 52% year-on-year increase, and regulatory frameworks in most of those markets are still catching up. Kenya's VASP Act passed in late 2025 and Ghana has an advancing framework, but neither jurisdiction has the enforcement infrastructure to pursue a BVI-registered entity with UAE-based founders easily. Nigeria's Securities and Exchange Commission and South Africa's Financial Sector Conduct Authority both have jurisdiction over domestic users of the named exchanges and could become relevant if ZachXBT's claims about exchange-level enablement gain regulatory traction.

In South Asia, Indian platforms ZebPay and CoinDCX separately listed LAB-adjacent "top AI crypto coins" for 2026 without referencing the ZachXBT investigation, illustrating how the AI token narrative continued to reach retail investors through mainstream platforms without accompanying risk context.

Retail users in Nigeria, Kenya, India, and Pakistan who bought LAB during the May pump face both the price collapse and the prospect of further sell pressure from those 10 fresh wallets. Many such participants likely entered through Telegram-based KOL networks and community-driven promotion. Similar channels were used by Mark X to solicit discounted OTC deals, though whether the same specific groups overlapped has not been confirmed.

As of publication, the LAB team, Vladimir Sadkov, Mark X, Bitget, Binance, Bybit, and OKX have issued no public response. Some posts from @vsadkovv on X have reportedly been deleted. ZachXBT's bounty remains open.