- Developers depleted the LOOKS liquidity pool just six hours after it went live
- Crypto Twitter users had advised people not to invest in the Sudorare project
Developers behind Sudorare, an NFT platform and fork of LooksRare (LOOKS) and SudoSwap, scammed investors in a rug pull on Tuesday, August 23. They lost more than $800,000 in various cryptocurrencies.
The developers deleted the project’s site and social media soon after the rug pull was perpetrated, CoinDesk reported.
The background
Decentralized NFT marketplace SudoSwap was known for its low gas fees and liquidity pools for NFTs. LooksRare, another NFT marketplace, gave users rewards for participating. Both projects became very popular earlier this year, but LooksRare’s popularity began to decline in the summer.
Users of Sudorare who staked XMON, LOOKS, and wETH for the NFT platform’s tokens could take advantage of a yield farm.
Pool emptied hours after going live
On Tuesday morning, blockchain data showed the developers depleted the LOOKS liquidity pool just six hours after it went live. They exchanged more than a million LOOKS tokens for 60,000 USDC and 154 ether in one single transaction.
In total, they rugged investors of more than 514 ether, equivalent to around $815,000.
Rug pulls are a common DeFi scam
Rug pulls are a common scam in decentralized finance (DeFi), where developers of a project drain its liquidity pools, figuratively “pulling the rug” from under users and leading the value of the related token to plummet.
Investors didn’t heed Twitter warnings
Earlier, a number of Crypto Twitter users advised people against investing in the Sudorare project. They drew attention to the unrealistically high yields, the exorbitant number of fake online followers, and the suspicious tokenomics of the project.