TurtleDex, a decentralized Binance Smart Chain protocol, went through a rug pull. The protocol drained 9000 BNB, approximately $2.5 million. The owners immediately deleted TurtleDex’s telegram, the official website, and the Twitter page.
A “rug pull” is a popular term in the DeFi space. In essence, the team behind the project pulls out the liquidity of the tokens being traded and makes off with the money, nowhere to be seen.
Jet Fuel Finance, a yield farming protocol that partnered with TurtleDex, confirmed the scam today on Twitter. A user informed about the diversion of the liquidity pools on PancakeSwap and ApeSwap. Both protocols lacked liquidity as users desperately sold TTDX tokens at levels nearly to zero.
The rug pull happened just after their anticipated launch today. After stealing the funds, the protocol traded the tokens for ETH in Binance hot wallets. Now users are demanding Binance to freeze all wallets until they find the owners.
The event caused great controversy in the DeFi space, raising concerns about the usefulness of contract audits. TechRate, an analytical agency that focuses on blockchain-based platforms, audited the protocol. The analysts did not found severe security issues, and the project was supposedly safe. The community was outraged when they found out about the audit.
Now, users are demanding Binance to sent funds to help affected users and pressuring the exchange to freeze all wallets. But Binance has not made any comments regarding the issue at the time of this writing.
On the other hand, Colin Wu, a Chinese journalist, posted a conversation with the admin of TurtleDex, talking about rug pulls before. The admin seemed to joke about why turtles can’t rug pull.
TurtleDex is not the first project launched on Binance Smart Chain to rugpull. As reported by CryptoPotato, another incident took place on March 5, when Meerkat Finance stole over $30 million worths of crypto-assets. The farming protocol took 13.96 million in BUSD and over 73,000 BNB.
The project, as well as TurtleDex, shut down the official website and deleted all communicational channels after.