The Base ecosystem DEX protocol, Aerodrome Finance, has suspended two accounts on charges of crypto insider trading involving Venice tokens (VVV).
Aerodrome suspends Venice token Insider Traders
A note on the $VVV launch.
Projects often launch tokens on Aerodrome and launches are closely monitored.
The timing of a small percentage of the trading activity around the $VVV launch was flagged by internal monitoring in less than 30 minutes – triggering an internal…
— Aerodrome (@AerodromeFi) January 28, 2025
Aerodrome announced that, before and after the VVV release, its internal monitoring flagged a small amount of suspicious trading activity within a span of less than 30 minutes—prompting an internal investigation.
This investigation led to the suspension of two contributors within three hours of the release. The protocol further stated, “We are continuing the investigation and will take all appropriate further action.”
The Aerodrome team also clarified that the announcement referred solely to Aerodrome contributors and not to any other teams.
Venice Tokens (VVV) Market Trends
VVV tokens are currently trading at $10.44 after a surge of over 26%. The market cap has reached $259.59 million, following a 24-hour trading volume of $139.57 million. VVV has quickly gained prominence, especially amid the hype surrounding DeepSeek.
Venice AI, a privacy-focused artificial intelligence platform founded by Bitcoin advocate Erik Voorhees, launched VVV on Ethereum’s layer-2 network, Base.
VVV token holders receive free ongoing inference access to its API for private and uncensored generative text, images, and code that leverage AI models, including the newly released DeepSeek R-1. The token gained significant traction after DeepSeek faced scrutiny over allegations that its model collected user data to send to China. However, Voorhees clarified that when R-1 is used through Venice, “none of it is going anywhere.”