How to Use On-Chain Analysis to Track Smart Money Wallets and Spot Trending Tokens Early

In this guide, I’m going to show you how to leverage on-chain analysis to find smart money wallets that bought today’s trending tokens early and how you can track what they’re buying now.

Welcome back to Techincomehub! My name is Umar. As always, remember that nothing in this article constitutes financial advice—it’s purely educational. Now, let’s dive in.

Tools You’ll Need

To get started, we’ll be using the following tools:

1. CoinGecko – To identify tokens that are currently trending.
2. Dex Screener – This is the core tool for today. While many use it for charting on-chain tokens, it also has a powerful feature to find the wallets generating the highest PnL (profit and loss) for any given token.
3. DeBank – A powerful wallet-tracking tool.

Step 1: Find Trending Tokens

First, we want to identify tokens that are performing well. Specifically, we’re looking for tokens that meet these criteria:

• The token is gaining in value: There’s no point in analyzing a coin that’s trending downward.
• It’s traded on decentralized exchanges (DEXs): While it’s fine if it’s also traded on centralized exchanges, we need significant on-chain activity to track wallet behavior effectively.

Here’s how to find these tokens using CoinGecko:

1. Go to CoinGecko and hover over the “Cryptocurrencies” tab.
2. Click on “Gainers & Losers.”
3. Change the time frame to the past 30 days.

This will show you the tokens that have seen the biggest gains over the past month. For today’s example, I’ll use a token called Degen on Base (DGEN).

DGEN is a community token for the Forecaster social app and operates as a Layer 3 solution built on Base. It’s up 239% this month. While there are plenty of options, I picked DGEN because it has:

• A high market cap, increasing the likelihood of finding wallets with substantial PnLs.
• Significant trading volume on decentralized exchanges like Uniswap V3.

Step 2: Use Dex Screener to Identify Smart Money Wallets

Next, head over to Dex Screener.

1. Copy the contract address for DGEN from CoinGecko. Avoid searching for the token name directly to avoid fake or scam tokens.
2. Paste the contract address into Dex Screener to pull up the correct token.

Once the token page loads, you’ll notice two sections at the bottom:

• Transactions (default view): Shows recent buys and sells.
• Top Traders (switch to this tab): Displays the wallets with the highest PnL for this token.

This is where the real magic happens. For example, one wallet turned $30,000 into $8.1 million trading DGEN. The goal isn’t to buy this token now but to study the behavior of wallets that entered early and made massive profits.

Step 3: Analyze Smart Money Wallets

Here’s how to track smart money wallets:

1. Identify wallets with exponential returns (e.g., turning thousands into millions).
2. Click on the wallet address in the “Top Traders” tab to open it in a block explorer (e.g., BaseScan or Etherscan).
3. Copy the wallet address and search for it on DeBank.

DeBank will show:

• The wallet’s total holdings across multiple chains.
• The tokens they currently hold and their allocations.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Wallet 1

• This wallet turned $30,000 into $8.1 million.
• Currently holds $820,000 across Ethereum, Avalanche, Arbitrum, and other chains.
• Primarily holds ETH, stablecoins (USDT, USDC), and a small amount of Phantom.

Wallet 2

• Exclusively holds DGEN, indicating high confidence in the token.

Wallet 3

• Holds $3.5 million in assets, including DGEN, Metis, and other DeFi-related tokens.

Wallet 4

• Turned $141,000 into $855,000.
• Currently holds smaller tokens like Trump, Banana (Telegram bot token), and other meme/utility coins.

What Can We Learn?

By tracking these wallets, you can identify patterns and tokens they’re buying early. While you don’t want to blindly copy their trades, seeing where smart money flows can provide valuable insights. For instance, if a wallet with a history of massive gains starts accumulating a specific token, it may be worth researching further.

Bonus: Tools for Solana and Other Chains

If you’re analyzing wallets on Solana or chains not supported by DeBank, use Sonar Watch as an alternative. While Dex Screener works across chains, DeBank doesn’t support all of them.

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