Interest in Telegram trading bots, which enable automated crypto trading through the platform, spiked this summer after the launch of Unibot. The project quickly gained traction, and the native token's market cap has soared to $200 million in just a few months, pulling in many investors.
Many have tried to mirror Unibot's success. Among the most notable, the Banana Gun bot captured a significant market share and user base.
Following time-honored tradition, the Banana Gun team decided to launch their own token, although unfortunately, things quickly took a turn for the worse. In less than two hours, the token price first rose to almost $9 and then abruptly fell to $0.02.
According to the team, even though the project's token contract underwent two audits, there was a bug that allowed holders to sell tokens with zero tax. In essence, the 4% sale transaction tax that should have gone to the protocol's treasury remained in the transaction initiator's wallet.
Unable to fix the bug quickly, the team drained the liquidity pool.
The issue has raised many questions from the community. Some users doubted whether there were any audits on the token contract. Remarkably, even the free version of ChatGPT was able to detect the bug.
Worryingly, the team did not disclose their auditing companies. Typically, projects openly share their auditing firms and even the audit reports with their users.
Moreover, it is important to understand that hundreds of new tokens are launched on Ethereum daily. Over the years, these token contracts have become fairly standard, leaving little to audit. Such glaring bugs could indicate the team and project's immaturity.
Security firms have also been warning people against using Telegram bots. These bots present several risks to their users. Firstly, they are centralized and can access your private keys. Additionally, the bot software isn't open-sourced, and the founders of these projects are anonymous.
There's no assurance that, one day, your wallet won't be drained due to the bot software's security flaws, or because the team decides to scam all its users.
Despite the challenges, the Banana Gun team is planning a relaunch and has announced a detailed compensation plan for investors. Whether this attempt will turn out to be successful is yet to be seen. We continue to Observe.
