The Shadows of the Crypto Assets World: The Rampant Rug Pull Eyewash and Prevention

In the Crypto Assets market, some investors have gained huge returns by seizing opportunities, but many others have suffered heavy losses due to malicious withdrawals by project parties. Recently, the price of Aura (AURA) token soared 800% within just a few hours, with trading volume surging over 115,000%. However, a well-known Crypto Assets analyst warned that this could be a carefully orchestrated eyewash—this type of fraud, known as "Rug Pull," is sweeping across the entire Crypto Assets field in an industrialized manner.

The Astonishing Scale of Rug Pull Projects

Through the analysis of smart contracts on major public chains, the data shows that over 300,000 tokens have encountered varying degrees of Rug Pull, with hundreds of "trap coins" being set up on average every day. On the Ethereum network, approximately 266,000 unique addresses are active in creating and promoting fraudulent tokens.

These "developers" exploit low-threshold coin issuance tools and a large user base to precisely set traps. Although the average profit of a single scam project on Ethereum is about $1.65 million, its massive scale has led to a total revenue reaching an astronomical figure of $502 billion.

Other public chains such as Polygon and Linea have not been spared either. Polygon has recorded 530 Rug Pull incidents, with total profits exceeding $10,000, involving 7,680 tokens and 4,640 fraudulent deployers. The emerging Linea chain, although with a smaller data volume, has already had 4 contracts completely drained of liquidity.

Data shows that over 7.05 million investors have become direct victims of Rug Pull eyewash, meaning that the wealth of millions of individuals and families has vanished into thin air in these traps.

Diversified Tactics of Rug Pull

Hard Rug Pull: Complete Eyewash

Hard Rug Pull is a merciless heist where scammers actively withdraw all liquidity from a project by pre-setting malicious code or vulnerabilities. For example, on Avalanche and Polygon, certain addresses are associated with a large number of Rug Pull tokens and drained liquidity pools, with a ratio as high as 1466.67%.

Some scam gangs have demonstrated the ability to commit crimes across chains, leaving traces of criminal activity on multiple public blockchains, using the characteristics of different networks to carry out scams and evade tracking. This has led to token prices plummeting to zero in an instant, leaving investors with nothing.

Many scam addresses exhibit a very high frequency of criminal activity. For example, some addresses are associated with dozens of Rug Pull tokens and drained liquidity pools, demonstrating a highly specialized mode of operation. These addresses are like locusts, deploying tokens in bulk, quickly draining them, and then disappearing or changing identities to start over.

A large number of hard Rug Pull tokens have a very short lifecycle, as short as 0 days or a few days. This verifies the eyewash model of "Pixiu Plate" and similar scams – the tokens complete the fraud in a short period after going online, giving investors no time to react or exit.

Soft Rug Pull: Boiling Frogs in Warm Water

Compared to the violent nature of a hard Rug Pull, a soft Rug Pull is more covert and insidious. It does not cause the token price to plummet to zero instantly, but instead creates the illusion of a "slow decline" or "temporary adjustments by the project team." Scammers may fabricate various excuses such as "contract migration," "system upgrade," or "responding to market volatility." Some investors may fail to escape in time due to a sense of complacency or delayed reactions, ultimately suffering significant losses in the continued downtrend.

2023: The Peak of Rug Pull Token Deployments

On-chain data from 2020 to 2025 shows that Ethereum reached a historical peak of 125,759 fraudulent token deployments in 2023, accounting for 42.3% of the total over five years. However, the deployment volume plummeted to 69,154 in 2024, a year-on-year decrease of 45%. Fraudulent activities exhibit significant cyclicality, with an average annual deployment volume of 48,721 across the four major public chains from 2021 to 2023. Notably, the average lifespan of fraudulent contracts shortened from 356 days in 2021 to just 3.8 days in 2025, which poses higher demands on risk control models that must be capable of identifying inter-chain coordinated attack patterns.

Preventive Measures and Conclusion

The large number of eyewash tokens and deployers indicates that Rug Pull has evolved into a mature black industrial chain with clear division of labor, tooling, and streamlined processes. The cost of fraud is extremely low, while the potential "profits" are enormous.

Investors need to understand the common tactics of Rug Pulls, such as promises of high returns, anonymous teams, lack of audits, suspicious liquidity locks, excessive social media hype, and abnormal price surges in a short time. Before investing, one should carefully check key information such as whether the contract is open-source, if it has been audited by a reputable auditing firm, whether the team background is verifiable, and the status of liquidity locks.

The data on Rug Pulls is alarming: hundreds of thousands of fraudulent tokens, hundreds of thousands of scam deployers, trillions of dollars in illegal gains, and over seven million victims. This is not just a case of accumulated investment losses, but a systemic attack on the trust foundation that supports the entire blockchain and Crypto Assets industry. Uncovering the truth about Rug Pulls is not only to warn of risks but also to promote the establishment of a more完善 regulatory system in the industry, protect investors' rights, and maintain market order.