Major red flags about upcoming DEXs ADAX and Solanax

9 min readOct 18, 2021

ADAX has recently popped up on my radar due to its promise of being the leading dex on the Cardano network. So I decided to do a little research and oh boy.

There is a lot to unpack here, TL;DR in the bottom.

The CEO Timo Trippler has no social media and very few traces of him online

I started off with the CEO of ADAX, Timo Trippler. And Right off the bat something was off.

I couldn’t find a Facebook or other social media profiles besides his LinkedIn.

The few mentions of him is all on various projects he’s been advisor for. But they are mostly minor projects and a lot of them are questionable and/or dead.

Searching Twitter for his name mostly returns posts from small projects introducing Timo as advisor.

The only other places he’s really mentioned is on deepbench.io and icobench.com and similar websites where he has created a profile.

I guess he could be a very private person and wish to remain anonymous. That’s not unusual in crypto.

I found this forum thread from 2018 where a scam called TokenDex used Timo’s picture under a different name. Perhaps his picture was stolen.

Timo’s involvement with Sugar Daddy Doge

If you Google Timo’s name and go to images it’s the same low quality picture he uses everywhere.

Except for one place. On a website for a meme coin called Sugar Daddy Doge (now rebranded to Sugarland).

Reverse image searching this picture gives no results so that led me to believe they must have gotten the picture from Timo himself.

So I started digging into Sugar Daddy Doge.

The Sugar Daddy Doge website was created on July 6 2021.

I brought it up in the ADAX TG group where someone directed me the the german ADAX TG group where Timo denies his involvement. Go to the group and search “fake”.

His handle @ TimoTrippler is the same handle as the one on the Sugar Daddy Doge website. Linking to the real Timo’s contact information is a really bold move if someone is using his picture. If it’s fake I’m also wondering how they got that specific picture since I can’t find it anywhere else.

So I contacted the CEO of Sugar Daddy Doge / Sugarland. She confirmed Timo’s involvement and showed me her recent conversations with Timo from an account with the same handle as the one posting in the ADAX group @ TimoTrippler.

From the following screenshots it appears that they have been working together at least since June. On august 28 they discussed an AMA and a $1500 payment. The day before that ADAX had just hit $1.6 and a market cap of ~$80 mill. From the screenshots Timo also claim his Twitter was hacked.

Here is the TX link form the screenshot: http://etherscan.io/tx/0xb016b31a3519da0fa69873656b9a231591fb7abf5dfd37be85cfbf207f2ceba8

This raises a lot of questions.

You would think he was too preoccupied by the $80 mill market cap project that he is CEO of and launching in a few weeks, to do $1500 consulting gigs for a meme coin. It’s also sketchy that he denies it.

And also… Sugar Daddy Doge? Come on now.

While researching Timo Trippler I noticed people talking about the exchange ADAX is traded on: ExMarkets.

ExMarkets and their CEO Tadas Kasputis

ADAX is only listed on an exchange called ExMarkets, but not officially affiliated with them other than their listing.

The CEO of ExMarket, Tadas Kasputis, is very supportive of the ADAX project and is active in the ADAX TG group which I find a bit odd.

When you look up reviews of ExMarkets they are very mixed. I found this one interesting, particularly the part about Tadas jumping into TG groups. I also took note of the “Coinstruction conglomerate” comment, which I will get into in a bit.

This one is also interesting because Afonso is the name of an admin in the ADAX TG group.

When you look into the CEO of ExMarkets, Tadas Kasputis, the red flags starts piling up.

According to this article from 2015 Tadas has been involved in crypto scams before. The article also claims Tadas has been involved in high yield investment programs and other ponzis before crypto.

Recently Tadas has engaged in some shady behavior towards a competitor of ADAX called YaySwap that was also listed on ExMarkets. Allegedly he started distributing YAY tokens to people in the ADAX TG group.

An entire new TG group called Yay Dump has also been created in order to distribute YAY tokens. The pinned post is Tadas (same handle as in ADAX and ExMarkets TG) saying he will set up a bot to “distribute the dumpable tokens”. I haven’t been able to verify if anyone has received tokens from this TG group.

Screenshots are from this Twitter comment.

So Tadas is definitely acting shady. Although he officially doesn’t have anything to do with ADAX, there are plenty connections between them.

The Coinstruction conglomerate

When I looked into the “Coinstruction conglomerate” that the negative ExMarkets review mentioned I found some interesting stuff and what appears to be a lot of connections between the same group of people and projects spearheaded by Tadas.

Coinstruction is a failed project that never made it to ICO. The Coinstruction website has since been deleted but Wayback machine has a snapshot of it. Obviously same design style as ADAX’s website.

When you go to Coinstruction’s team section you will see some familiar faces.

The backend senior developer of Coinstruction, Muhammad Furqan, is now the CTO of ADAX which explains the similar looks of the websites.

Arturas Svirskis who was Head of Strategic Partnerships of Coinstruction is now business advisor to ADAX.

The founder of Coinstruction is Tadas Kasputis, CEO of ExMarkets where ADAX is listed.

ExMarkets is presented as a product of Coinstruction along with something called Coinsupply, Coinam and Coinmargin.

Solanax and ProSwap

Another token that recently launched on ExMarkets is a DEX called Solanax. It’s not just the name that sounds similar, it’s basically the same concept as ADAX just on Solana. Website and white paper is very similar to ADAX’s. Like ADAX it’s also only listed on ExMarkets. ADAX team claims to not be affiliated with Solanax.

There is a couple of links though.

First of all most of both the ADAX and Solanax team are from Lithuania. Tadas from ExMarkets and most of the Coinstruction team is coincidentally also from Lithuania. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s an odd coincidence.

The CMO for Solanax was a social media manager for ExMarkets as recently as july 2021 (overlapping him being CMO for Solanax) according to his LinkedIn profile.

The CTO of Solanax was CTO of Coinsupply which is one of the Coinstruction products, led by Tadas. It’s also an exchange.

The CEO of Solanax was also project manager of a project called ProSwap and CFO for Coinmargin (yet another Tadas / Coinstruction product) according to his LinkedIn.

Head of Sales of Solanax has also worked for ProSwap and Coinmargin.

So most of the Solanax team has worked on either ProSwap, Coinmargin or Coinsupply. All Coinstruction / ExMarkets / Tadas products.

Like ADAX and Solanax, ProSwap was also launched on ExMarkets. It’s all very inbred.

According to an AMA about ProSwap held in the ExMarkets TG group on april 1, the CEO of ProSwap is Tadas Kasputis and the lead developper is Mohammad Furqan who is CTO of ADAX.

Michael Corkery who is also part of this ProSwap AMA is (former?) Head of Investor Relations for ADAX and Head of Sales of ExMarkets according to his LinkedIn.

So at least 2 ADAX team members worked on ProSwap alongside several members of the Solanax team just 5 months ago.

ProSwap seems abandoned now, at least their TG community is.

Ok, that was a lot of names, titles and projects. I’m starting to feel like a crazy conspiracy guy drawing lines on my whiteboard. Let me sum up the projects and people that keeps popping up:

Tadas Kasputis (CEO ExMarkets): ExMarkets, ProSwap, Coinstruction, Coinsupply, Coinmargin
Michael Corkery (Head of sales ExMarkets): ExMarkets, ProSwap, Coinsupply, Coinmargin, ADAX
Muhammad Furqan (ADAX CTO): ProSwap, Coinstruction, ADAX
Arturas Svirskis (ADAX advisor): Coinstruction, ADAX
Richard Olamijulo (CMO Solanax): ExMarkets, Solanax
Arvydas Kublickas (CEO Solanax): ProSwap, Solanax, Coinmargin
Matas Balnaitis (Head of sales Solanax): ProSwap, Coinmargin, Solanax
Mindaugas Butkus (CTO Solanax): Coinsupply, Solanax

So I wouldn’t say entirely no affiliation between ADAX and Solanax, both seems to be part of the “Coinstruction Conglomerate”.

Other concerns

ADAX’s team won’t show their code and won’t show any live demo of their platform despite supposedly launching soon.

If you watch their product demo video at 0.32 under the blue button it says “connet” instead of connect. It’s not criminal to be sloppy, but the red flags are adding up.

This reddit post raises some concerns about an airdrop. The concerns are adressed by CMO of ADAX here. Interestingly a r/cardano mod on that post commented that they have had to block mention of ADAX due to bot farm spam. CMO of ADAX explains that they had created a rule for the airdrop where you had to post about ADAX on the Cardano sub reddit to be elligible. I’m not sure if that makes it any better.

Some counter points

The major red flags are concerning Tadas who is not an official part of ADAX, but unfortunately seems to pop up everywhere and acts extremely shady.
Mate Tokay, co-founder of bitcoin.com has acknowledged his involvement in ADAX.
The CMO is pretty active doing interviews and talking about the project.
Roger Ver is supposedly an investor, although I guess that in itself is controversial to many people.

And I know, I know. I’m just a dumb motherfudder playing detective. It could very well be that it’s all 100% legit and everything is just a coincidence.

Certainly none of it is a smoking gun.

But the sheer amount of red flags, lies, overlapping teams and shady behavior that surrounds these projects is difficult to ignore.

TL;DR

There’s barely any information about the CEO Timo Trippler online.
His picture was used under a different name in a scam in 2018
He denies involvement in a project called Sugar Daddy Doge but the CEO has screenshots of them communicating about payment for consulting services as recent as august 28.
ADAX’s website is a slightly edited version of a failed project called Coinstruction.
The lead senior developer of Coinstruction is now the CTO of ADAX and the former´Head of Strategic Partnerships for Coinstruction is advisor for ADAX.
The founder of Coinstruction is now CEO of ExMarkets which is the only exchange ADAX is listed on.
There is an article about the CEO of ExMarkets being involved in elaborate scams and ponzis.
CEO of ExMarkets is active in ADAX TG group and has seemingly been dumping tokens of a competitor to ADAX that was listed on ExMarkets.
A near identical project for a dex on Solana called Solanax has recently been listed on ExMarkets. Similar website and white paper.
Members of ADAX and Solanax teams has worked together on multiple projects led by CEO of ExMarkets, most recently one called ProSwap in april this year.