Cabal
 Image: original illustration, memecoin.wiki | |
| part of speech | noun |
|---|---|
| scene | Solana trenches, crypto Twitter |
Trench slang for a coordinated insider group that controls a token launch, its supply, and its promotion, extracting profit from retail buyers.
Cabal is trench slang for a coordinated group of insiders who control a meme coin launch from behind the scenes: acquiring a large share of supply at or before launch, arranging promotion through kol networks and alpha group channels, and selling into the demand they manufacture. A token known or suspected to be run this way is called a "cabal coin," and a launch executed by one is a "cabal launch." The word borrows the older sense of a secret political faction and applies it to the small cliques that dominate onchain speculation.
Usage
In the trenches, calling a token a cabal coin is descriptive rather than automatically damning. Because cabals can push a chart higher than an organic launch, some traders deliberately buy suspected cabal coins early, hoping to front run the group's marketing push and exit before the insider wallets do. Others treat any sign of a cabal, such as bundle buys at launch or clustered sniper wallets, as a reason to avoid a token entirely, since late buyers become the cabal's exit liquidity. The term also appears as a collective noun for the scene's power brokers, as in "the cabal is in this one."
History
Accusations of coordinated insider rings are as old as pump and dump schemes, but the specific word became standard Solana vocabulary during the launchpad boom of 2024 and 2025, when wallet tracking tools made coordinated behavior visible on chain. In March 2025 Bloomberg reported that trading cabals on Solana had made the meme coin sector "feel like an insider marketplace," with connected traders securing the most lucrative entries while retail bore the losses. The term became self aware enough that in 2024 a Solana token literally named CABAL airdropped roughly 10,000 dollars of supply to influencers in a stated attempt to "force a cabal to form" around it, as reported by Decrypt. Glossaries of trench slang now list cabal alongside jeet and dev as core vocabulary.