This article was inspired by an interesting trading experience with a meme coin called Grokcoin yesterday afternoon.

Unfortunately, I missed the initial surge while occupied with other matters, missing out on significant gains. However, I caught the second wave rebound around a $7 million market cap, profiting even though I didn’t sell at the peak.

Why did we confidently add positions around the $7 million valuation? Because we noticed something unusual — a major liquidity provider from the largest Meotera pool suddenly withdrew over 500,000 USDT worth of liquidity. This abnormal action convinced us to expect a second rally.

Quick shout-out to the Ave.ai platform, seemingly the only mainstream meme trading platform offering comprehensive DEX liquidity pool visibility:

• It shows all LP pool distributions for every trading pair on all DEXs.
• Real-time tracking of pool liquidity additions and removals.
• Detailed views of the transaction routing on each DEX.

Understanding liquidity pool changes is essential to identifying market maker manipulations.

This article will explore the mathematical relationship between liquidity pools and manipulative market moves using a simplified model:

Imagine a token named MEME launched via PumpFun, initially supplied with 1 billion tokens, with a starting liquidity pool of 200 million MEME and 79 SOL on Raydium. For calculation simplicity, assume 1 SOL = $150.

Scenario 1: No Liquidity Changes — Target Market Cap $100M

Constant product: k = 200M MEME × 79 SOL = 15,800,000,000

Target MEME valuation: $100M, price per MEME = $0.1 = 0.0006667 SOL

Solving the equations:

• Final MEME amount (x): approx. 4,868,145 MEME
• Final SOL amount (y): approx. 3,245 SOL
• Required SOL added: 3,245–79 = 3,166 SOL
• Equivalent USD: 3,166 × $150 = $474,900

Surprisingly, pushing MEME to a $100M market cap costs just around $475k.

Scenario 2: No Liquidity Changes — Target Market Cap of m × $100M

Target MEME price: (0.1 × m) USD/MEME, equivalent in SOL = 0.0006667 × m SOL

Calculations yield:

• Final MEME (x): approx. 4,868,145 / √m
• Final SOL (y): approx. 3,245 × √m
• Required funds ≈ 486,750 × √m — 11,850 USD

The cost scales roughly with √m, meaning rapid price hikes (e.g., $300–400M market caps) could be engineered with under $2M by entities holding 99.9% supply.

Scenario 3: Initial Liquidity Expanded by Factor t — Target Market Cap $100M

Initial pool multiplied by t:

• MEME: 200M × t
• SOL: 79 × t

New constant product k = 15,800,000,000 × t²

To reach the same $100M market cap, required liquidity scales linearly:

• MEME final: 4,868,145 × t
• SOL final: 3,245 × t
• SOL required: (3,245 × t — 79 × t) = 3,166 × t
• USD required: 474,900 × t

Thus, increasing initial liquidity proportionally increases the difficulty and cost of pumping the token by a factor of t. This explains why manipulators often reduce pool sizes early on to make pump easier and cheaper.

Scenario 4: Single-Sided Liquidity Addition After Pumping to $100M Market Cap

After reaching $100M:

• MEME: 4,868,145, SOL: 3,245, price per MEME: $0.1

Adding n-times more MEME tokens unilaterally into the pool:

• New MEME quantity: 4,868,145 × (1 + n)
• SOL unchanged: 3,245
• New price = original price ÷ (1 + n)

Single-sided liquidity additions drastically drop prices, a classic “dump” signal. Detecting this action early is crucial for timely exits.

Summary and Advanced Techniques

The scenarios provided demonstrate how liquidity pool behavior reveals manipulative market intentions. Many advanced techniques, such as multi-pool arbitrage, transaction bots, and MEV attacks, further complicate market behavior. The presented mathematical model simplifies complex real-world scenarios that also involve multiple liquidity pools, varied transaction fees, and multi-party trading dynamics, alongside market sentiment, narratives, influencer impact, and community momentum.

These liquidity monitoring strategies are particularly suited for short-term trades of meme coins valued above $1 million market cap, emphasizing liquidity dynamics and market maker intentions.

Make good use of Ave.ai liquidity monitoring tools to trade smarter and profit more effectively.