After I created a token with PandaTool and opened trading, I observed some addresses selling tokens even though they have no obvious buy records. Why does this happen?
This is a common and important on-chain nuance — it does not necessarily mean anything malicious by itself. The short explanation: the address that appears to “sell” on a block explorer may be only the caller of a contract function, while the token balance actually came from a smart contract (or another address). In other words, buyer/recipient ≠ caller/initiator in many contract-driven flows.
Key points and common mechanisms:
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Tokens can be received by a smart contract rather than the EOA shown as the buyer. A user or bot (EOA A) can execute a purchase that causes tokens to be transferred into a contract D (a router, liquidity manager, or bot wallet), not into EOA A directly. Block explorers will still show that A initiated a transaction, but the token transfer recipient is contract D.
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A different EOA may later call the contract to sell. When B calls contract D to execute a sell, the explorer often lists B as the initiating address — so it looks like B “sold” tokens even if B never had a prior token transfer into its own wallet. The actual token movement came from contract D.
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Some analytics/price trackers attribute trades differently. Aggregators and some listing sites show the transaction caller as the “trader” even when the on-chain token Transfer event shows a contract or another address as the source/recipient. This causes apparent mismatches.
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Bots and aggregator/relay flows are normal. Many arbitrage bots, market-making bots, or wallet-aggregation services route trades through routers and proxy contracts; this is standard practice and explains most cases where “sellers” lack direct buy records.
How to verify / practical steps:
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Open the token’s page on a block explorer (BscScan / Etherscan / other). Look at the Token Transfers (Transfer events) tab — these show actual ERC20/BEP-20
Transferevents, i.e., who received or sent tokens. -
Check the Internal Txns and Transactions tabs for the involved addresses to see whether transfers were performed by a contract intermediary. Explorers document the difference between normal txns, internal txns and token transfers.
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Inspect the transaction details and input data: the
tofield and event logs reveal whether tokens were moved into a contract address and whether later sells were executed by that contract. Use the explorer’s “Token Transfers” and “Internal Txns” filters. -
If you need to prove there was no hidden minting, review the contract’s
totalSupply,Transferevents from the zero address (0x0…0) and the verified source code on the explorer. The token page and contract tabs provide supply/holders/transfer history.
Short summary you can share with users: “What the explorer calls the ‘seller’ may merely be the account that called a contract — the tokens themselves were held or transferred by a smart contract (e.g., a bot/router). To confirm, inspect token Transfer events and the contract’s internal transactions on the block explorer.”