MetaSwap Swapping Platform Got Rug Pulled, $600K BNB Is Stolen

DeFi’s MetaSwap swapping platform got rug pulled and reportedly $600,000 BNB was stolen as December continues seeing malicious activity in the crypto space so let’s read more in today’s cryptocurrency news.

The reports emerged earlier today and showed that the team behind MetaSwap which is an NFT swap enabling protocol for binance, Ethereum, and Polygon, got rug pulled, and more than 1000 BNB was stolen. The blockchain security company PeckShield detected some suspicious behavior coming from the team and suggested it was a rug pull. The company said the team behind the NFT platform had stolen 1100 BNB and transferred it to TornadoCash which is an ETH-based tool that is developed to break the on-chain connection between the recipient and destination address. PeckShield also noted that the MGAS native token of the platform was dumped by 50%.

#RugPull PeckShield has detected that @MetaSwapMGAS soft-rugged, the stolen funds (1,100 BNB) are transfered to @TornadoCash (#BSC). DO NOT STAKE in this contract and if you've approved it, REVOKE https://t.co/b7sSsMz3ZE

— PeckShield Inc. (@peckshield) December 27, 2021

While the allegations are not yet confirmed, MetaSwap’s team deleted all social media channels related to the protocol which even raised the suspicion higher. December still witnesses malicious activities in the Defi space especially. The reports show that Grim Finance was also exploited for more than $30 million worth of Fantom tokens. Previously, the crypto exchange AscendEX fell victim to a hack with up to $80 million swiped. At the start of the month, Bitmart got breached and more than $200 million was stolen.

As recently reported, Rug pulls are the go-to form of crypto-based crime by transaction volume according to a report by Chainalysis. This year’s crypto scam revenue reached $7.7 billion or an 81% increase compared to a year ago. Compared to 2020, this year’s crypto scam revenue increased dramatically but it still doesn’t top the all-time high reached in 2019. The report singled out the Finiko Ponzi Scheme that targeted Russian speakers in Eastern Europe and took in more than $1.1 billion from victims in 2021.

According to Chainalysis, this indicates that there were fewer individual scam victims while the average amount of each victim increased. The report noted that the scammer’s money laundering strategies are unchanged compared to other years since most crypto sent from scam addresses ended up in mainstream exchanges. In 2021, the rug pulls plagued the Defi ecosystem and garnered over $2.8 billion worth of crypto from victims. Rug pulls are the preferred method of scamming while still being a fairly new type of exit scam that orchestrated the project insiders that drain the funds from the liquidity pool causing the tokens’ price crash.