Serial Scammers and Attack of the Clones: How Scammers Coordinate Multiple Rug Pulls on Decentralized Exchanges

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Huynh, Phuong Duy, Dau, Son Hoang, Huppert, Nicholas, Cervenjak, Joshua, Sun, Hoonie, Tran, Hong Yen, Li, Xiaodong, Viterbo, Emanuele
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Huynh, Phuong Duy
Dau, Son Hoang
Huppert, Nicholas
Cervenjak, Joshua
Sun, Hoonie
Tran, Hong Yen
Li, Xiaodong
Viterbo, Emanuele
author_facet Huynh, Phuong Duy
Dau, Son Hoang
Huppert, Nicholas
Cervenjak, Joshua
Sun, Hoonie
Tran, Hong Yen
Li, Xiaodong
Viterbo, Emanuele
contents We explored the ubiquitous phenomenon of serial scammers, each of whom deployed dozens to thousands of addresses to conduct a series of similar Rug Pulls on popular decentralized exchanges. We first constructed two datasets of around 384,000 scammer addresses behind all one-day Simple Rug Pulls on Uniswap (Ethereum) and Pancakeswap (BSC), and identified distinctive scam patterns including star, chain, and major (scam-funding) flow. These patterns, which collectively cover about $40\%$ of all scammer addresses in our datasets, reveal typical ways scammers run multiple Rug Pulls and organize the money flow among different addresses. We then studied the more general concept of scam cluster, which comprises scammer addresses linked together via direct ETH/BNB transfers or behind the same scam pools. We found that scam token contracts are highly similar within each cluster (average similarities $>70\%$) and dissimilar across different clusters (average similarities $<30\%$), corroborating our view that each cluster belongs to the same scammer/scam organization. Lastly, we analyze the scam profit of individual scam pools and clusters, employing a novel cluster-aware profit formula that takes into account the important role of wash traders. The analysis shows that the existing formula inflates the profit by at least $32\%$ on Uniswap and $24\%$ on Pancakeswap.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2412_10993
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Serial Scammers and Attack of the Clones: How Scammers Coordinate Multiple Rug Pulls on Decentralized Exchanges
Huynh, Phuong Duy
Dau, Son Hoang
Huppert, Nicholas
Cervenjak, Joshua
Sun, Hoonie
Tran, Hong Yen
Li, Xiaodong
Viterbo, Emanuele
Cryptography and Security
We explored the ubiquitous phenomenon of serial scammers, each of whom deployed dozens to thousands of addresses to conduct a series of similar Rug Pulls on popular decentralized exchanges. We first constructed two datasets of around 384,000 scammer addresses behind all one-day Simple Rug Pulls on Uniswap (Ethereum) and Pancakeswap (BSC), and identified distinctive scam patterns including star, chain, and major (scam-funding) flow. These patterns, which collectively cover about $40\%$ of all scammer addresses in our datasets, reveal typical ways scammers run multiple Rug Pulls and organize the money flow among different addresses. We then studied the more general concept of scam cluster, which comprises scammer addresses linked together via direct ETH/BNB transfers or behind the same scam pools. We found that scam token contracts are highly similar within each cluster (average similarities $>70\%$) and dissimilar across different clusters (average similarities $<30\%$), corroborating our view that each cluster belongs to the same scammer/scam organization. Lastly, we analyze the scam profit of individual scam pools and clusters, employing a novel cluster-aware profit formula that takes into account the important role of wash traders. The analysis shows that the existing formula inflates the profit by at least $32\%$ on Uniswap and $24\%$ on Pancakeswap.
title Serial Scammers and Attack of the Clones: How Scammers Coordinate Multiple Rug Pulls on Decentralized Exchanges
topic Cryptography and Security
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.10993