- Contrary to post, both the Telegram apps and the CryptoCars website were up and running
- Firm drew attention to an $80 million hack suffered by the protocol Qubit Finance
- A rug pull is a scheme, where people are duped into investing money in a fraudulent asset
Blockchain fans can be sensitive to the slightest abnormalities within projects they follow and sometimes suffer from delusional fear, especially in a period of market downturns, rumors of DeFi scams, or crypto bans. Leading cybersecurity firm CertiK issued a warning via Twitter about CryptoCars being a “rug pull.” The post emerged to be a false alarm and the team deleted it soon after.
Sources at CertiK made the following statement about the incident, as reported by Cointelegraph:
Incident reporting, although complex, is rapid in nature and is done in a manner to alert the community on up-to-date suspicious activity. In this situation, we noticed [their] Telegram went offline, funds dropping to zero, and the $CCARs website being unavailable. This created an alert of a possible rug pull.
At first, CertiK claimed the project’s site and Telegram were down. Users were quick to point out that both the Telegram apps and the CryptoCars website were up and running, due to which CertiK revoked the community alert.
They were on holiday
According to the Vietnam-based CryptoCars team, the project’s Telegram chat will be temporarily closed “until the end of the Lunar New Year from 27th Jan to 7th Feb.” The Lunar New Year holiday is celebrated in the Asian country.
Thankfully, CertiK isn’t always wrong. In fact, they have helped the blockchain community on multiple occasions. Yesterday, they drew attention to an $80 million hack suffered by the protocol Qubit Finance.
What is a rug pull?
A rug pull isa scheme, where people are duped into investing money in a fraudulent asset. In most cases, investors receive an offer for a deal that seems great and are tempted to invest cash, crypto, or another asset into a token.
Then, the token ‘suddenly’ loses its creators’ backing. The price of the asset drops to zero, resulting in losses for investors, which are sometimes not insignificant.
About CryptoCars
CryptoCars launched in September last year as an NFT-based car racing game. It requires players to buy an NFT car minted on the Binance Smart Chain as per its structure as a play-to-earn model. This happens via a blind box created by other users starting at 490 CCAR or by the developers of CryptoCars for 6,600 CCAR.
CryptoCars’ website informed the game had 582,666 NFT cars, 721,683 players, and 248.8 million in-game transactions at the time of writing. It also has almost 125,000 Twitter followers.
