Solana Meme Coin Church Turns on Pastor After Scam Allegations Surface

Absurdist meme coin Smoking Chicken Fish (SCF), which evolved from a Solana token into a religion with plans to build a physical church, has ousted its de facto leader amid a flurry of “scammer” allegations. With this, the remaining team has retaken control of the project’s website and Telegram channel, and is currently fighting to get into the Twitter account.

Community and core team members of the SCF token claim that Pastor Kelby took payments from derivative projects without notifying the rest of the team, received “church donations” directly into his personal wallet, and has launched a number of “rug pulls.”

Pastor Kelby did not respond to Decrypt’s repeated requests for comment via Telegram or LinkedIn.

Smoking Chicken Fish is a meme coin that started with a weird photo. But things took a turn when contributors developed their own moral and philosophical laws, turning into a “church” that worshiped “Lord Fishnu” and registered as a nonprofit organization. Pastor Kelby led daily sermons where he read passages from his favorite self-help books.

While there had been murmurings to not trust Kelby from the get go, everything came to boiling point when he shilled a project during one of the church’s daily sermons.

An hour before the daily sermon, the project’s official Twitter account posted that a then-$2 million market cap meme coin called BigTittyChicken (BTC) was the project’s “little sister.”

According to a core team member, Kelby apparently stated in the now-deleted Twitter Spaces that he would host this project all week—but then did not host them again. Meraki Crypto, a BigTittyChicken team member, also said that this was to be a “long-term partnership,” but that Kelby did not keep his word.

The SCF team claims that Kelby used his access to the Twitter account and association with the church to be paid for this promotion, without consulting anyone else in the project. Meraki said that after they were “scammed” by Kelby, they were then contacted by “many other” projects that had the same experience.

in 30 mintes we are going to go on an adventure.

I want to see 50 NEW FACES in church tonight.

With an ath of 200 People in the space at once.

These are the metrics I worry about.

Today we go over 1 of the 21 irrefutable law of leadership by @JohnCMaxwell

Then we will read… pic.twitter.com/fgwOoUuNSB

— Church of the Smoking Chicken Fish (@ChurchOfTheSCF) September 9, 2024

Pastor Kelby said that he did not create the original Pump.fun token behind the meme religion, but was in touch with the deployer from the start. The original creator held onto tokens that Kelby would be paid for his work on the project.

Unfortunately, the founder of SCF purportedly “went rogue,” said Kelby, selling all the tokens and ghosting everyone. Despite having no tokens in his wallet, Kelby continued to push the project, leading daily Twitter Spaces where he pushed the gospel of the newly formed religion.

“I figured that something would work out near the end that I would end up making money too,” Pastor Kelby said in August during an episode of Decrypt’s podcast, “What’s the Meta?”

A wallet address provided by a core team member—who wished to remain anonymous due to fear of retaliation from Kelby—as well as the BigTittyChicken team received 10 million of the BTC meme tokens before the announcement, and sold this entire bag in three clips over the next four hours.

“For BigTittyChicken, this was a disaster,” a BigTittyChicken Telegram admin told Decrypt. “Our price tanked, trust was shattered, and we had to scramble to fix our reputation to keep the project alive.”

Pseudonymous SCF community team lead Benji.wif claims to have sent Kelby $9,200 in SCF tokens as payment for his work on the project. According to blockchain data, the wallet instantly sent these tokens to another wallet, then later forwarded a larger amount to a third wallet—the same wallet that BigTittyChicken paid into.

“He used the main account to ask for church donations which were just [sent to] his wallet,” Max Newton, co-founder of WallStreetBets and SCF community member, told Decrypt.

This wallet went on to dump multiple times in a row before sending out to a bunch of other wallets and dumping it there in an attempt to hide his actions. https://t.co/5DFoMokmoy

— Meraki Crypto (@merakicrypto_) September 10, 2024

This is why some supporters fear that Kelby, who claimed to have raised $130,000 to build a physical church, has been siphoning funds from his community while claiming it was for the church. Some believe that Kelby was also targeting big holders after sending out a Google Form to investors with a series of questions, including how many tokens they hold.

As these events were unfolding, a group of community members formed a Discord server to investigate Kelby. This is when the team found evidence that Kelby was could have been involved in a number of other earlier alleged “scams” and “rug pulls.” After he promoted BigTittyChicken on Twitter Spaces, the group confronted him about his actions.

“You are arrogant, and so out of touch with reality to think that a religion I MADE UP AND WROTE THE CHICKENMANDMENTS FOR, about an irl church THATS IN MY NAME AND ACTUALLY EXISTS, can be ran or built without me there,” Kelby ranted on Twitter.

Yea you’re right, i’ve gone absolutely bonkers.

To think that these people, who i carried for 2 months, who did little except make tweets and bitch and complain, would choose to have me step down vs take care of me is wild as fuck.

I hope you all go bankrupt and get seen for…

— Kelby (@PastorKelby) September 16, 2024

Following this, Kelby held the official Twitter account to a $100,000 ransom, according to Twitter DMs seen by Decrypt.

The team refused to pay this fee, and is currently working with Twitter to regain access. In these screenshots, Kelby also claims to own the trademark to Church of the Smoking Chicken Fish, suggesting that any community takeover would need to divert from that branding.

Fearing that the religion he’d helped form was turning its back on him, Kelby created a new token, referring to it as “the new testament,” and claimed that he would airdrop tokens to all old SCF holders—before deciding against it just 30 minutes later and burning the tokens instead.

“It’s like my child was taken away or some shit, and it’s maddening,” Kelby said in the same long Twitter post. “Know what fuck it ima just relaunch the shit with out YOU.”

His new coin shot up to a $2.6 million market cap in an hour before dropping 97% soon after. Someone then claimed to have reported Kelby to the SEC following this incident.

Life comes at you fast @russuddin pic.twitter.com/U6t7EG9kqm

— Jason A. Williams (@GoingParabolic) September 16, 2024

And then Kelby’s Twitter account disappeared. It is unclear if he was banned or deleted his account, but the account resurfaced two days later with a reworked bio stating he “was once the Pastor for the Church of the Smoking Chicken Fish.” He immediately began shilling new low market cap tokens, namely Leaned Out Chilly Willy.

“He is not a representation of the church, and the community and message are way bigger than any one person,” Benji.wif told Decrypt, adding that he and fellow team member Max Newton will oversee the church from now on.

While Pastor Kelby was the face of the church to many people, Benji claims that he was ultimately the one running things behind the scenes, handling token listings and marketing needs. He said that he has been “essentially elected” leader of the community takeover.

“But the focus is more on decentralization moving forward,” Benji.wif explained, “although we do still need a voice and someone to represent [us].”

Edited by Andrew Hayward and Stacy Elliott.

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