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The Web3 and cryptocurrency space is seeing a significant amount of smart contract scams proliferating, with blockchain risk monitoring firm Solidus Labs saying it has detected on average 15 newly deployed scams everyĀ hour.
Solidus Labs said on Oct. 27 that it had been monitoring 12 blockchains including Ethereum, Polygon and BNB Chain since Oct. 10, and in that time, had detected 188,525 smart contractĀ scams.
Former United States Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director Kathy Kraninger, who is now Solidusā vice president of regulatory affairs, said in the statement that āwhile some of the big rug pulls and scams make the news, [ā¦] the full picture stemming from our data shows the vast majority of these scams go unnoticed.ā
The firm also shed some light on the number of tokens that are scams, saying 12% of BEP-20 tokensāāāBNB Smart Chainās token standardāāāexhibit fraudulent characteristics marking it as the blockchain with the most cryptocurrency scams.
Ethereumās native ERC-20 token standard came second, with 8% of the blockchainsā tokens exhibiting scam-like characteristics, according to the company. It also estimated around $910 million worth of Ether related to scams had passed through centralized and regulated exchanges.
Solidus said these so-called āscam token smart contractsā are hard-wired to steal investorsā funds and fit alongside other abusive practices such as rug pulls, where the developer steals the invested funds and token impersonations that aim to trick people into investing by mimicking popular cryptocurrencies.
It said these types of contracts are āautomatically deployed and easily repeatedā with scammers able to quickly complete thousands of low-value attacks with exchanges, regulators and authorities none theĀ wiser.
Itās not only scamming cryptocurrencies that investors need to watch for, hacks are also on the rise, with October being possibly the biggest month ever for crypto hacking activity, according to analytics firm Chainalysis.
Chainalysis director of research Kim Grauer said in an interview with Cointelegraph that the amount of value stolen in crypto hacks is on track to hit all-time highs in 2022, with a vast majority targeting decentralized financeĀ (DeFi).
Disclaimer: The information set out herein should not be taken as financial advice or investment recommendations. All investments and trading involve risk and it is the responsibility of each individual to do their due diligence before making any investment decision.
Source: Cointelegraph
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