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Safereum plunges 95% after $1.3 mln ‘exit scam’
An alert by leading blockchain security firm CertiK has revealed that Safereum developers have executed a $1.3 million rug pull.
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The news of the rug pull led to the project’s native token plunging by 95% within 24 hours.
- Several crypto influencers were found to be promoting the scam project.
The crypto community suffered a major shock on 24 October as blockchain security analysts drew their attention to an “exit scam” at Safereum.
CertiK, a leading blockchain security firm, alerted the users to a rug pull executed by the team’s developers.
We can confirm that @Safereumio has conducted an exit scam for ~$1.3m
Eth: 0xb504035a11E672e12a099F32B1672b9C4a78b22f
safereum.eth unlocked Safereum tokens and sold. Additionally ~$597k was raised for the project’s SAFEPAD token.https://t.co/aAxjcEmdcH
— CertiK Alert (@CertiKAlert) October 23, 2023
A memecoin crypto project, Safereum was launched on the Ethereum [ETH] blockchain early in October.
As per CertiK, the project’s developers unlocked the supply of the token, using the token deployment address safereum.eth. Thereafter, they drained more than 600 ETH.
These illicit transactions occurred only hours after the team had finalized a fundraise of $597,000 for a derivative token, Safepad. CertiK remarked these funds constituted part of the total stolen sum, totaling 720 ETH worth $1.27 million.
The team soon routed the sum through a series of wallets, muddling the tracking process.
When we tried accessing the project’s X (formerly Twitter) page, we found it didn’t exist anymore.
The news of the rug pull led to the project’s native token, SAFEREUM, plunging by 95% within the last 24 hours. It was trading at $0.000000654436 at the time of writing.
Source: Coingecko/SAFEREUM/USD
Crypto influencers promoting scams without check
The scam brought attention to crypto influencers promoting “shill coins” without any diligent checks.
Blockchain sleuth ZachXBT underlined the role of a leading anonymous influencer on X who officially promoted the Safereum project. The user had promoted similar scam projects earlier as well.
It seems the influencer ProTheDoge is back at it promoting scams as an official partner of the project.
This time it was Safereum which just rug pulled with 730+ ETH ($1.2M).
0x67c8423a7709aDB8ED31c04DcbB0C161637b807F pic.twitter.com/o5qi9rmC3e
— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) October 23, 2023
A leading crypto influencer, GEM DETECTER, revealed that they had also received an offer to promote the project. In the end, they sighed with relief that they didn’t put their followers in danger.
Another influencer, CryptoBit had already alerted GEM DETECTER about the nature of the project.
#SAFEREUM SCAMMED ⚠️
Actually I used to regret ignoring their offer at first, but after all it was a correct opinion and did not put my followers in danger.
Although the chart has grown very steadily, this is still a sophisticated scam. They can still locksell after renounced… pic.twitter.com/h1a15UbckY
— ?️GEM DETECTER?️ (@gem_detecter) October 24, 2023
Another X user criticized a leading handle with a significant follower count for promoting such scams to deceive their followers.
It would be a real shame if @Goku_Research accidentally deleted their #SAFEREUM tweets.
Oh they did?
Don’t worry. It’s screenshot here.
You don’t get paid to shill rug pulls and then just delete it like it didn’t happen. @zachxbt @cryptoShields pic.twitter.com/AaWwyVrz2s
— Sam Stratten | SPACE NEEDLES (@SamStratten) October 24, 2023
Immunefi, a Web3 bug bounty platform, had reported that hacks and rug pulls cost the crypto industry $1.24 billion from January to August 2023. This loss was attributed to 211 separate incidents.
