A LAB public sale participant who invested $5,000 in October last year saw the position's paper value surge to about $5.6 million, implying a roughly 1,120-fold increase, before the project's delayed token unlock erased nearly all of those gains. On-chain analyst ai_9684xtpa said the investor joined the LAB public sale in October last year and that the project team unilaterally postponed the token release even after the token had climbed sharply within nine months. The investor, identified on X as SKYLINE, only recently received the tokens, by which point their value had fallen to about $3,219, or 99.94% below the peak. LAB previously traded as high as $24.4 on Binance perpetual futures, implying a fully diluted valuation of up to $24.4 billion, and was cited as trading around $0.08543 after the unlock. The episode has intensified criticism in the crypto community over token lock-up practices, transparency in public sales and alleged price manipulation, while the project had not yet issued a public response.