PancakeSwap claimed that the winners of its trading competition in July were selected randomly, but blockchain records show that about half of the 1,700 winning wallets belonged to a cluster of interconnected wallets.

The competition, the second of its kind hosted by PancakeSwap, allowed investors to earn points by trading five Binance Alpha project tokens: League of Traders (LOT), Bedrock DAO (BR), MilkyWay (MILK), NodeOps (NODE), and Moonveil (MORE). The prize pool was worth $250,000.

A Cointelegraph investigation revealed that at least 850 winning wallets were funded by other winning wallets, which transferred BNB to each other for wash trading to meet the threshold. A representative from the League of Traders stated that these wallets were directly linked to each other and were all selected, making the probability of this happening in a row close to zero. The prize distribution was unfair, and the winners appeared to be "hand-picked" rather than randomly selected. (Cointelegraph)