Avalanche-Based Dogecoin Knockoff Coin Ends in A Massive Rug Pull

Avalanche AVAX/USD-based meme coin Snowdog SDOG/USD, themed after Dogecoin DOGE/USD, which was meant to last only eight days has ended in a rug pull.

What Happened: As per a tweet from the project’s handle, on the eighth day after the launch of the coin, a “massive buyback” was to be orchestrated.

3/ Day 8: All assets from the Treasury (except the SDOG-MIM LP) are sold for MIM. At a random time during day 8, all the MIM is spent to orchestrate a massive buyback of $SDOG from the SDOG-MIM liquidity pool. $SDOG bought will be burnt. Staking rewards will be paused.
— Snowdog (@SnowdogDAO) November 14, 2021

The buyback was not successful and a single address rugged over $10 million by swapping SDOG for other cryptocurrencies.

So $SDOG @SnowdogDAO just rugged $10.392+ Million in $MIM. https://t.co/jhmkeYMTHx pic.twitter.com/I5owBGO9Jw
— James (@JamesCliffyz) November 26, 2021

The same address purchased nearly $190,000 worth of SDOG with Magic Internet Money MIM/USD in a span of three hours. Then, the person(s) controling the address staked those SDOG and executed the pull of nearly $10 million a day later. Two other wallets took $7.7 and $3.397 million through a similar methodology, as per Twitter handle “James.”

So $SDOG @SnowdogDAO just rugged $10.392+ Million in $MIM. https://t.co/jhmkeYMTHx pic.twitter.com/I5owBGO9Jw
— James (@JamesCliffyz) November 26, 2021

SDOG declined 97.14% over a seven day period and was trading 11.11% lower over 24-hours at $57.59.

The token touched an all-time high of $6,031.98, registering an eye-popping 99.04% fall in value since those levels.

Why It Matters: The project's team published a blog on Medium giving an explanation, which is no longer available as the account is “under investigation” by the publishing platform.

An archived copy available here states that Sunday’s events were a “game theory experiment.” The blog offered a “postmortem.”

The authors of the blog claimed that, for the SDOG price to be above market price before buyback (approx $1,200), sellers needed their SDOG to be part of the first 7% of the supply being sold.

“Awesome community members created tools to entertain this outcome while remaining cautious regarding the possibility for every holder to sell at buyback price,” the blog said.

“In order to avoid bots, we introduced a simple mathematical challenge that was only available from the Snowbank front-end."

Users on Twitter noted that there was no way to solve such a challenge.

@SnowdogDAO $SDOG rugpulled. Here's how:
1. Promised a 40M buyback happening on its own DEX Snowswap and migrated all liquidity from Joe
2. Snowswap contract requires a "challengeKey" to trade which only insiders knew it beforehand
3. Insiders backran the buyback and made 10M pic.twitter.com/tfKDqA4t4I
— TechnoArtoria (,) (@artoriamaster) November 25, 2021

Last month, a cryptocurrency themed on “Squid Game,” a hit Korean language series on Netflix Inc NFLX plunged to almost zero in value from $2,861 after a rug pull.