SiphonMoon: The Lie of Locked Liquidity and the Rise of Real DeFi
Founder of the SafeMoon Rug was featured on CNBC and many other shows that forwarded his mission to siphon the cash of everyday investors
John Karony wasn’t a rogue. He was a pattern.
For a time, SafeMoon looked like a beacon of safety in crypto. It promised locked liquidity, tokenomics that rewarded holding, and a charismatic leader who claimed to be ex-military with integrity to match. The project ballooned to a multi-billion-dollar market cap almost overnight, celebrated by influencers, plastered across social media, and endorsed by people who probably never read a line of code in their lives.
But underneath the surface, the design wasn’t about creating value. It was about extracting it.
Karony wasn’t building a protocol. He was building a siphon.
The core of SafeMoon’s promise was the liquidity pool. Supposedly “locked,” it gave investors a false sense of security that their funds were safe from rug pulls or misuse. But as prosecutors laid out in damning detail, this “locked” pool was anything but. Funds were quietly moved, diverted to wallets controlled by the inner circle, and ultimately used to purchase luxury homes, high-end cars, and more.
Liquidity wasn’t held for the project’s future.
It was harvested for personal gain.
Karony personally netted over $9 million through these schemes, while retail investors were left holding bags of empty promises. The tokenomics weren’t designed to protect holders. They were built to feed the siphon.
Here’s where I want to be very clear: The problem wasn’t that people looked for safety.
The problem is that they were told safety could be promised rather than earned.
In real DeFi, safety comes from architecture, not branding. That’s why I’ve been watching protocols like Morpho very closely. Morpho doesn’t ask you to believe in a personality. It invites you to inspect the code, the contracts, and the way it integrates into lending markets like Aave and Compound.
There are no magic tokens. Just well-built, auditable systems.
As of May 2025, Morpho has over $1.8 billion in Total Value Locked (TVL), making it one of the top DeFi protocols by capital efficiency. It's deployed on Ethereum mainnet and Base, with integrations that route user deposits into blue-chip lending markets while optimizing for higher yield. Its open architecture means capital never sits idle—it's working, transparently, for all participants.
In DeFi, safety isn’t something you advertise.
It’s something you design.
Compare that to the era of SafeMoon, which launched on Binance Smart Chain—a network flooded with meme tokens, dubious rug pulls, and barely-audited contracts. Back then, most retail investors were swapping tokens on PancakeSwap, an environment built more for gambling than for wealth preservation.
Today, we have the infrastructure to build safer systems without relying on trust. The shift is here. The tools are already live. You just have to know where to look.
What I’m Building
That’s why I’ve been quietly working on something new—a system that turns this broken narrative on its head.
Without naming it just yet, I’ll say this: it doesn’t rely on charisma. It doesn’t need to promise the moon. It connects directly to on-chain protocols like Morpho, where USDC can be put to work automatically in permissionless vaults. No middlemen. No special access. No drainable backdoors.
It’s structured for stability. Built for the long haul. And it’s aligned with the idea that if you’re going to Own The Economy, you need systems that don’t just protect capital but grow it.
Karony didn’t just run a scam. He poisoned the idea that safety was even possible in crypto. But that’s a lie, too.
Safe is possible. But it doesn’t come from locked liquidity promises or token tax gimmicks. It comes from open contracts, visible flows, and aligned incentives.
SiphonMoon is over.
What comes next are vaults, protocols, and stable systems that don’t need to hide. Systems that build. Systems that reward transparency.
If you’re tired of being exit liquidity, the shift is coming.
And I’ll be showing it to paid subscribers first.
This post is part of the Own The Economy stack. Subscribe for early access to what I’m building, how I’m structuring it, and why protocols like Morpho are the blueprint for what comes next.