The blockchain security field has recently caused another wave of turmoil. Four.Meme, a memecoin issuance platform based on BNB Chain, announced the resumption of operations after suffering a “sandwich attack” worth about $120,000. This is the second time the platform has suffered a major security vulnerability attack in two months, exposing the technical vulnerability and regulatory gaps of emerging projects in the memecoin ecosystem. Although the Four.Meme team quickly patched the vulnerability and promised to compensate users, this incident once again triggered deep doubts in the market about the security of the memecoin project.
Attack incident review: Liquidity hijacking under pre-calculation vulnerability
On March 18, Four.Meme issued a statement through its official social platform X, saying that its token issuance function has been reopened after completing a security review. Previously, the platform urgently suspended services due to the detection of abnormal trading activities and confirmed that the system was “under attack.” Blockchain security company ExVul later disclosed that the attacker used a technical loophole before Four.Meme went online, bypassed the platform’s token transfer restrictions by pre-calculating the addresses of the liquidity pool trading pairs, and carried out a carefully planned “sandwich attack”.
According to ExVul’s analysis, the attacker first predicted the liquidity pool address that Four.Meme was about to create, and injected a small amount of unissued tokens into the address in advance. When the platform officially launched the token and injected liquidity, the attacker manipulated the market price by sandwiching the buying and selling operations before and after the liquidity addition transaction, and finally arbitraged about 192 BNB (worth $120,000) in a short period of time. Another security agency CertiK further pointed out that the attacker took the SBL token as an example, transferred the token to the pre-calculated address in advance, and then profited 21.1 BNB through sandwich transactions during liquidity injection, and then transferred the funds to the decentralized exchange FixedFloat to complete the money laundering.
This type of attack method is not an isolated case in the field of meme coins. Since most meme coin projects rely on automated liquidity pool mechanisms, have short development cycles, and insufficient security audits, attackers often use the time difference of smart contracts and price fluctuations to implement arbitrage. The “pre-calculated address vulnerability” exposed by Four.Meme this time highlights the lack of risk control in the transaction pair generation link in the code design of emerging platforms.
Memecoin Ecosystem: Security Dilemma Behind High Growth
Four.Meme’s experience is just the tip of the iceberg of the security crisis in the memecoin track. Data shows that in February 2024 alone, the crypto industry suffered losses of up to $1.53 billion due to fraud, vulnerability exploits and hacker attacks, of which the $1.4 billion stolen from the Bybit exchange dominated. The Chainalysis annual report further pointed out that the scale of global illegal crypto transactions reached $51 billion in the past year. The rise of AI-driven fraud, stablecoin money laundering and professional hacker groups has made high-volatility assets such as memecoins a key target for criminals.
It is worth noting that Four.Meme lost $183,000 worth of crypto assets due to a security vulnerability two months ago (February 11). Frequent security incidents not only weaken user trust, but also reflect the survival paradox that meme coin projects generally face: on the one hand, the market’s hype demand for themes such as “animal coins” and “meme coins” has spawned a large number of short-term projects; on the other hand, developers are forced to compress code audit cycles under competitive pressure, and even directly copy open source protocol templates, leaving opportunities for attackers.
Take the recently hotly debated Pump.fun platform as an example. Among the meme coin projects it launched, only less than 1% survived for more than a week, and a large number of tokens quickly returned to zero after liquidity was exhausted. Although this “flash issuance” model meets the market’s speculative needs, it further amplifies the risk exposure of technical vulnerabilities. As an infrastructure focusing on the issuance of meme coins, Four.Meme should have assumed higher security responsibilities, but two consecutive attacks showed that the defense capabilities of its technical team have not kept up with the pace of business expansion.
Industry reflection: the dual challenges of security reinforcement and regulatory intervention
Faced with the increasingly severe security crisis, participants in the meme coin ecosystem began to explore solutions. Some platforms have introduced a “delayed start” mechanism, requiring project parties to complete multiple rounds of simulated trading tests before liquidity injection; other teams have cooperated with on-chain monitoring agencies to track suspicious address behaviors in real time. For example, CertiK recommends that project parties adopt a dynamic address generation algorithm to prevent attackers from predicting trading pair parameters through fixed patterns.
However, in addition to technology upgrades, the meme coin field is more in urgent need of establishing industry-level security standards. At present, most decentralized platforms rely on community autonomy and lack mandatory code audit requirements. Although Four.Meme promised to “enhance system security”, it did not disclose specific measures, and its compensation plan has not yet clarified the arrival time. This fuzzy treatment may exacerbate users’ doubts about the centralized governance model.
At the regulatory level, countries still have different positions on meme coins. The US SEC has recently increased its enforcement of “unregistered security tokens”, but most meme coins are in a regulatory gray area due to the lack of clear use cases. Although the European Union’s proposed “Markets in Crypto-Assets Act” (MiCA) requires project parties to disclose technical risks, it has limited binding force on decentralized protocols. How to strike a balance between encouraging innovation and protecting investors has become a core problem for policymakers.
Future Outlook: Can Memecoins Get Out of the “Security Curse”?
Despite the shadow of security, the popularity of the memecoin market has not diminished. According to CoinGecko data, the overall market value of the memecoin sector will increase by more than 300% in 2023, and old tokens such as DOGE and SHIB and emerging projects will jointly support an ecosystem of nearly $60 billion. This contradictory situation reveals the deep logic of crypto culture: the value of memecoins not only comes from technical practicality, but also depends on the resonance of community consensus and popular culture.
For Four.Meme, short-term bug fixes may win back some users, but long-term survival depends on whether it can build a real moat. If the platform can introduce third-party auditing agencies, establish a bug bounty program, and develop a liquidity mechanism that resists manipulation, it may be able to rebuild market confidence. On the contrary, if it continues to walk the tightrope between security and efficiency, it may be difficult to escape the fate of being replaced by more compliant competitors.
The wild growth history of memecoins is essentially a microcosm of innovation and risk game in the crypto industry. When the speculative bubble gradually recedes, only projects that put safety above growth will survive the next wave. The two attacks on Four.Meme may be the turning point in this evolutionary race.
