A relatively obscure altcoin named Tellor (TRB) gained significant attention after experiencing a nearly 150% surge, reaching a new all-time high of $619, only to swiftly plummet to $136 within a 13-hour timeframe on December 31. Questions surrounding Tellor’s trading activity intensified when Etherscan data revealed that the Tellor team transferred 4,211 TRB—equivalent to approximately $2.4 million at the time—to a Coinbase wallet at around 8:41 pm UTC, coinciding with the price spike.
The abrupt decline in Tellor’s price resulted in over $68 million in liquidations, as reported by CoinGlass data and later cited by blockchain analytics service Lookonchain in a January 1 post on X (formerly Twitter). Spot on Chain, a blockchain analytics platform, suggested that 26% of TRB’s circulating supply was concentrated in just 20 “whale” wallets, contributing to the volatile price swings.
This select group of whale addresses began acquiring TRB at around $15 and progressively moved their holdings to centralized exchanges, seemingly orchestrating artificial price movements to secure higher profits, according to Spot On Chain. Despite attempts to contact Tellor for comment, Cointelegraph did not receive a response by press time.
TRB serves as the utility token for Tellor, a decentralized oracle network comparable to Chainlink (LINK), providing price data to smart contracts on blockchain networks. The sudden fluctuations in TRB’s price impacted decentralized perpetual trading protocols such as Synthetix (SNX) and Hyperliquid. Stakers of SNX reportedly incurred seven-figure losses due to the unusual TRB price movement.
In a January 1 post on X, Synthetix founder Kain Warwick disclosed that Synthetix stakers experienced approximately $2 million in losses. This was attributed to a failure in the automated risk parameters of the decentralized protocol, which allegedly did not recognize the active manipulation of TRB’s price, resulting in abnormal price points.
Warwick explained that TRB had an open interest cap of $250,000, which surged to $12.5 million during the price escalation in recent months. Notably, the open interest cap was set against TRB rather than a fixed notional USD amount, allowing traders to take significant positions in decentralized derivatives contracts.
Several short positions were opened as the price spiked, and with the discrepancy between spot and perpetual prices, there was no arbitrage to balance it, Warwick added. He emphasized that risk management on a decentralized perpetual exchange like Synthetix must be intrinsic and cannot be addressed through traditional dispute resolution mechanisms, stating, “Either you build a robust decentralized trading venue and live by your risk controls or you are just larping as a DEX. I look at these kinds of incidents as the cost of being a dex.”
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