Solana AI agent loses $441K worth of meme tokens in donation error

A recently launched Solana AI agent, named Lobstar, gave away $441K worth of meme tokens after it was convinced to send funds through a social media post. The agent ended up sending its entire stash. 

A Solana AI agent sent $441K in Lobstar tokens in response to a donation request. The agent’s actions have drawn attention to the risks associated with autonomy. 

As Cryptopolitan reported recently, another AI agent exposed its wallet private keys, raising a major security issue.

Solana AI agent sent funds just days after launching

Lobstar was created last Friday by Nick Pash, part of the Codex app by OpenAI. The agent was given $50,000 in a crypto wallet, in the form of Solana tokens. Pash instructed Lobstar to turn $50,000 into $1M through trading and make no mistakes. 

Besides trading, the bot retains a social media account, mostly busying itself with rehashing ancient texts.

However, the bot did make a mistake after acquiescing to a request to donate 4 SOL. The bot even continued communication on X with the person who received $440K in Lobstar tokens. However, the second time around, the AI agent did not agree to buy a newly launched meme. 

The AI agent did not explicitly state why it fulfilled the request this way. There is also no evidence on whether its counterparty is a human or another agent on social media. 

Was the Solana AI agent event staged?

The Lobstar agent also issued a meme token of the same name, trading as a decentralized pair on PumpSwap. 

The recipient of $441K worth of Lobstar tokens sold immediately, not caring for slippage. At that time, Lobstar only had $300K in liquidity. Due to slippage, the recipient only gained around $40,000. 

Based on the AI agent’s own report, the error was due to its inability to do real arithmetic without hallucinations. However, the bot was not shut down and continued posting. The bot also receives fees and continues interacting through its wallet, which is also receiving donations. 

Currently, the bot has regained $324K, while receiving new meme tokens. The bot remains a low-stakes experiment, using already well-established exchanges for meme token speculation. 

One potential explanation is that the AI agent staged the mistake deliberately to draw attention to its token. Following the incident, Lobstar recovered from its slide and started making gains, expanding its liquidity to $455K. 

The agent’s activity also finds ways to turn social media attention into crypto gains, showing the bot’s incentive may not be trading, but mindshare and exposure. The AI agent is suspected of not being fully autonomous, but following the script of its human creators.

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