- The founders of Ordinals Finance have pulled off an exit scam and deleted the platform’s social media accounts
- The protocol users and investors have lost approximately $1 million
- Withdrawn funds were deposited into coin mixing platform Tornado Cash
The founders of DeFi platform Ordinals Finance have pulled off an exit scam and deleted the platform’s social media accounts on their way out. According to an analysis by blockchain security firm CertiK, the protocol’s users and investors lost approximately $1 million, some of which was channeled through coin mixing service Tornado Cash. The occurrence comes nine months after the founders of Teddydoge pocketed $5 million in a similar scenario.
From $2 Million to $150,000
According to CertiK, the Ordinal Finance founders withdrew close to 270 million of the protocol’s native token OFI using different functions baked in the platform’s code. The withdrawal caused the token’s market capitalization to plummet from above $2 million to below $150,000.
We can confirm that the @ordinalsfinance exit scam has resulted in a loss of $1 million.
All social media accounts have been deleted as well as the project’s website.
Funds have been consolidated into EOA 0x34e…25cCFhttps://t.co/0Pwlt3yibm https://t.co/RA7vSjNajI
— CertiK Alert (@CertiKAlert) April 24, 2023
An analysis of the happenings around the rug pull shows that Ordinals Finance developers deposited 256 million tokens to an Ethereum address in separate transactions. The receiving address then exchanged some of the tokens for ETH before moving the funds through Tornado Cash.
Further investigations indicated that the protocol contained lines of code giving its developers the freedom to solely move users’ funds
Nowhere to be Found
As is common with most rug pulls, the protocol’s developers have also pulled down the platform’s website and social media accounts including Twitter. Some of the platform’s users have taken to Twitter to air their grievances, noting that they hope the founders “will be brought to justice,” while others wondered “who’s next.”
According to a report by blockchain firm Elliptic, DeFi users have lost over $12 billion through the years with 2021 accounting for over $10 billion of that amount. Although rug pulls aren’t unique to the DeFi world as they also manifest in the NFT space, the feds are making strides in stopping crypto scammers on their tracks.
Unfortunately, without a central authority to police the DeFi world, rug pulls, Ponzi schemes and other scams are likely to continue happening.
