Sahara AI’s SAHARA token took a sharp dive on June 9, falling from about $0.034 to $0.014, according to CoinGecko data cited by Crypto Potato. The move reportedly triggered more than $23 million in liquidations. The timing also got attention because it hit near another high-profile token incident involving Humanity.
The immediate claim: no security issues
After the sudden selloff, Sahara’s team posted on X saying it was “aware of unusual market volatility” and that it found no security issues in the platform’s token contracts or products, Crypto Potato reports.
The team also promised more updates while an internal investigation continued. That’s the standard language after volatility spikes. But in this case, on-chain observers weren’t just reacting to the chart.
The 600M-token transfer dispute
Crypto Potato says community scrutiny focused on a transfer of 600 million SAHARA tokens. Some observers suggested the transfer could have driven the price movement.
Sahara’s follow-up response offered a specific explanation. The team said the large transfer was a pre-planned fill of a Chainlink CCIP bridge contract intended to provide liquidity for a recently launched cross-chain bridge. They also said team and investor wallet allocations were not touched on-chain.
Most importantly, Sahara stated that “no team and investor tokens have been sold or moved.” The team added an Etherscan link so others could verify the flow, while it continued investigating the actual cause of the market move separate from the bridge transfer, according to Crypto Potato.
That separation matters. A liquidity provision can still correlate with price action, even if it isn’t a direct sell. But the team’s claim is narrow: no team or investor tokens moved.
What traders got hit by
The market response looked brutal on the derivatives side. Crypto Potato cites CoinGlass data showing that over the last 12 hours, $22.9 million in long positions were liquidated versus only $354,000 in shorts. In other words, the blow fell mostly on traders positioned for price strength.
That doesn’t prove manipulation. It does show how quickly leverage can turn volatility into forced exits.
Context from the broader token mess
Sahara’s event sits inside a wider cluster of token shocks.
Crypto Potato says SAHARA was listed on Binance in June 2025 and later reached an all-time high of $0.1605 in the following month. At the time of writing, it traded almost 90% below that peak. The same article reports SAHARA was down over 50% in the last seven days and almost 54% over the past month.
Crypto Potato also points to a different recent incident. A week earlier, edgeX’s native EDGE token dropped by 71% to a new all-time low. The edgeX team also denied a security breach and claimed external manipulation. Crypto Potato notes that on-chain investigator ZachXBT publicly disputed that characterization.
edgeX later said some centralized exchanges blamed the EDGE collapse partly on thin liquidity rather than team selling, according to Crypto Potato.
The throughline here is familiar. After sharp token declines, teams usually reach for one of two explanations: no breach, plus external market forces or contract-level mechanics that the public may not immediately interpret.
The part that still needs proof
Sahara gave a concrete on-chain story for the 600 million token transfer, tied to a Chainlink CCIP bridge liquidity fill. Crypto Potato also reports the team provided an Etherscan address for verification.
But whether that fully explains the timing and magnitude of the crash remains the open question. Crypto Potato frames this as a separate investigation into the actual cause of the market movement.
In crypto, “we found no security issues” can be true and still miss the mechanism that traders experienced. This time the key detail is the claimed distinction between bridge liquidity operations and any movement of team or investor holdings.
Key facts from the incident (as reported by Crypto Potato)
| Item | Reported detail |
|---|---|
| SAHARA price move | From about $0.034 to $0.014 |
| Estimated crash size | Roughly 60% |
| Liquidations triggered | Over $23 million |
| Bridge-related transfer | 600 million SAHARA tokens, claimed as a pre-planned CCIP liquidity fill |
| Wallet claims | Team and investor allocations “not touched” on-chain, and “no team and investor tokens have been sold or moved” |
| Derivatives impact (12h) | $22.9M long liquidations vs $354K short liquidations |
For now, the immediate battleground shifts from “was there a breach” to “did the bridge mechanics and timing line up with the market’s panic.” Community scrutiny will likely focus on the specific transfers, contract interactions, and whether any other on-chain events occurred around the plunge that Sahara hasn’t tied to the bridge transfer yet.