Sahara AI’s SAHARA token fell about 55% on June 9 as a sudden sell-off pushed the price close to its record low.
- SAHARA fell about 55% as trading volume surged and Sahara AI opened an internal investigation.
- The team denied insider selling, saying 600 million tokens funded its newly launched Chainlink bridge.
- On-chain records identify the cited address as a verified lock-and-release pool contract for cross-chain liquidity.
Meanwhile, the project said its contracts and products remained secure while it investigated the cause.
SAHARA traded near $0.01718 at the time of writing. Its 24-hour range stretched from $0.01452 to $0.03957, while trading volume rose above $300 million.
Sahara AI denies security breach and insider selling
“There are no security issues on our token contracts or products,” Sahara AI said in its first update. The team said it had started an internal review and was monitoring the market in real time.
A later statement addressed claims that team or investor wallets had contributed to the fall. “No team or investor tokens have been sold or moved,” the project said. Sahara AI has not identified the source of the selling pressure.
Sahara AI said a transfer of 600 million SAHARA tokens was a planned deposit into its Chainlink CCIP bridge contract. The tokens were intended to provide liquidity for the cross-chain bridge between Ethereum and BNB Chain.
The team said another 150 million SAHARA remained scheduled for bridge liquidity. It rejected claims that the 600 million-token movement caused the decline, but said its wider investigation was still active.
The cited Etherscan address is a verified LockReleaseTokenPool contract created by the Sahara AI deployer. The contract supports the project’s explanation that the address serves a bridge function. However, the on-chain record does not establish what caused traders to sell.
SAHARA price approaches its record low
SAHARA’s intraday low of $0.01452 placed the token close to its record low near $0.01355, according to crypto.news data. The price also remained almost 90% below the July 2025 peak of about $0.1605. Its market value fell to roughly $58.5 million.
Trading volume increased more than 340% from the previous day. The rise does not show whether one holder, several large accounts, liquidations, or broader selling drove the move.
Sahara AI raised $43 million in a 2024 funding round co-led by Binance Labs, now YZi Labs, Pantera Capital, and Polychain Capital. As previously reported by crypto.news, the token also fell about 60% after its Binance, Bitget, Upbit, and Bithumb listings in June 2025.
The project has a maximum supply of 10 billion tokens, with about 3.4 billion circulating. Market data also shows a planned unlock of about 1.03 billion SAHARA on June 26. No public evidence connects that release to the June 9 sell-off.
Sahara AI said it would publish another update once it had information it could confirm. Until then, the cause of the decline remains unresolved.
