By Key Points
- SKALE price jumps 145% in August, hitting $0.054
- Daily trading volume skyrockets to $905M from $10M average
- CTO warns that bots may be inflating volume
- Launch of “It Remains” project triggers speculative activity
SKALE (SKL) has suddenly become one of the most talked-about tokens in August, after an unexpected 145% price surge, taking it to $0.054, the highest level since February 2025.
But what’s catching more attention than the price is the SKALE trading volume, which has ballooned from an average of $10 million to an astonishing $905 million in a single day.
This massive movement is tied to the launch of It Remains, a dystopian transmedia franchise built on the SKALE Network. The project lets fans immerse themselves in a gas-free, Hollywood-level interactive universe, and the crypto crowd took notice.
SKALE (SKL) Price Performance. Source: Techtoken
The SKALE Network, a gasless, modular blockchain composed of independent Layer 1 SKALE Chains, is specifically designed for high-speed, high-performance use cases like gaming, AI, and DeFi.
The successful deployment of It Remains seems to be a turning point after months of price decline in 2025.
This kind of strong movement isn’t unique in the crypto world. Earlier this year, other big moves were driven by AI-related deals with Bitcoin miners (read more) and by shifting sentiments around macro events like the gold-to-Bitcoin correlation (read more).
🫴Some coins are choosing to defy gravity today.
Top coins with leading combined social and market activity today…
1 SKALE $SKL
2 REVOX $REX
3 Omni $OMNI
4 USEFUL COIN $USEFUL
5 Cardano $ADA
6 TRWA $TRWA
7 The Spirit of Gambling $TOKABU
8 New XAI gork $GORK
9 ADAMANT Messenger… pic.twitter.com/wCbl3E1YUp— LunarCrush Social Analytics (@LunarCrush) August 14, 2025
But with SKALE, the excitement is now centered around its unique gas-free user experience, and the numbers are backing it up.
On August 14, SKL surged over 86% in one day, and trading volume crossed $900 million, with Binance and Bithumb contributing a significant share.
Experts Warn of Bots, Unsustainable Momentum
While the rally looks impressive on the surface, SKALE’s CTO, Stan Kladko, isn’t celebrating just yet. He publicly raised concerns that much of this trading activity may be the work of bots, automated systems executing trades at high frequency to create the illusion of demand.
“This isn’t the kind of healthy growth we want to see long term,” Kladko cautioned.
Lots of people today bought SKL to immediately sell it to other people
These other people bought it to sell to yet other people.
Or bots
I hope people and bots had fun in the process :))#crypto #ethereum @FAIR_Blockchain #skale pic.twitter.com/wGZniTHMBe
— Stan Kladko 🇺🇦 🇺🇸 🇵🇹 ☮️ (@Stan_Kladko) August 13, 2025
He’s not alone. Analysts have seen similar flash rallies in altcoins in the past, often followed by steep pullbacks once the speculative interest fades. This creates price instability, and in many cases, small retail investors get burned when bots exit at the top.
The situation is reminiscent of other market events where volume didn’t reflect genuine user activity, such as when state-sponsored hacker groups manipulated on-chain flows to confuse market trends, as seen in recent North Korean crypto operations (see details).
Currently, SKALE’s trading volume remains high — around $856 million at press time. But with no fundamental change in tokenomics or protocol updates besides It Remains, some fear this could be a short-lived pump.
Still, the network’s momentum might not end here. The team is gearing up for the launch of FAIR, a MEV-resistant Layer 1 blockchain built under the SKALE ecosystem. FAIR is now accepting waitlist applications and could become a next-gen blockchain model if it gains traction.
The success or failure of these developments may decide whether SKALE’s growth is organic or artificial.
I got a lot of good questions today about how SKALE plans to win. Here are some thoughts:
1 – We have to keep working our hardest, be positive, and control what we can. I can personally attest that everyone in the core team, validator community, and general SKALE dev ecosystem…
— Jack O’Holleran (@jackoholleran) August 11, 2025
What This Means for SKALE Holders
If you’re holding SKL or considering getting in, it’s essential to look beyond the price chart.
SKALE has real potential. Its gas-free infrastructure, strong positioning in Web3 gaming, and now a foothold in entertainment via It Remains all contribute to a solid foundation. But what matters most is whether these partnerships lead to sustained user adoption, not just volume pumped by bots.
In fact, market behavior like this has recently come under scrutiny by governments and regulators.
In the U.S., Trump’s crypto stance and his calls for clearer enforcement policies have been a topic of debate, especially when it comes to market manipulation (more on that here).
If SKALE’s rally turns out to be mostly driven by automated systems, regulators might take notice.
Meanwhile, traders are advised to stay cautious. Much like how Bitcoin and Ethereum options provide insight into institutional sentiment (read more), volume spikes like SKALE’s need to be dissected for genuine market depth.
SKALE might be building the future of gasless, entertainment-powered blockchain networks, but whether this price jump is the start of a new trend or a temporary bubble, that’s the billion-dollar question.
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