Rug Pull eyecwash: The Black Hole of the Crypto Assets World

In the field of Crypto Assets, some investors have become overnight millionaires by choosing the right projects, but many others have suffered heavy losses due to scams. Recently, a token named Aura saw its price soar by 800% in just a few hours, raising alarm among industry experts. This scam model, known as "Rug Pull," is rampaging through the Crypto Assets market on an industrial scale.

The Astonishing Scale of Rug Pull Projects

By analyzing the contracts of major public chains, the data shows that over 300,000 tokens have experienced varying degrees of Rug Pull, with hundreds of "trap tokens" being deployed on average every day. On the Ethereum network, about 260,000 independent addresses are specifically engaged in the creation and promotion of such fraudulent tokens.

These eyewash artists exploit convenient coin issuance tools and a massive user base to meticulously design scam traps. Although the average profit of a single scam project on Ethereum is about 1.65 million dollars, the overall illegal income has reached an astounding 502 billion dollars due to the sheer volume.

There are also numerous Rug Pull incidents on other public chains. For example, a certain public chain recorded 530 cases, with total profits exceeding 10,000 USD, involving 7,680 tokens and 4,640 active fraudulent deployers. Another emerging public chain, although with a smaller data volume, has already seen 4 contracts completely drained of liquidity.

According to statistics, over 7.05 million investors have become direct victims of Rug Pull eyegash, which means that the wealth of millions of individuals and families has vanished into thin air in these traps.

Types and Characteristics of Rug Pulls

Hard Rug Pull: Total Eyewash

Hard Rug Pull is an extreme fraudulent act where scammers directly plunder the entire liquidity of a project by pre-setting malicious code or vulnerabilities. Some addresses have a record of criminal activity on multiple public chains, indicating that these gangs possess the ability to operate across chains and can utilize the characteristics of different chains to commit crimes and evade tracking.

Some scam addresses exhibit astonishing crime rates. For example, an address on a certain public chain is associated with 45 Rug Pull tokens and 37 drained liquidity pools. Another address is linked to 17 Rug tokens and 18 liquidity pools, with a ratio close to 95%, showcasing a highly specialized modus operandi.

Most hard Rug Pull tokens have a very short lifespan, ranging from 0 days to 3 days. This confirms the characteristics of eyewash patterns such as "Pixiu Disk" — the tokens complete the scam shortly after going online, giving investors no opportunity to react or exit.

Soft Rug Pull: Boiling Frogs in Warm Water

Compared to the violent methods of hard Rug Pulls, soft Rug Pulls are more covert and cunning. It typically refers to withdrawing about 50% of the liquidity, which does not cause the token price to drop to zero instantly, but instead creates an illusion of a slow decline or temporary project adjustments. Scammers may fabricate various reasons, such as upgrading the system or responding to market fluctuations, leading some investors to fail to withdraw in time due to a sense of luck or delayed reactions, ultimately suffering significant losses in the continued price decline.

Development Trends of Rug Pulls

According to on-chain data analysis, the deployment of fraud tokens on the Ethereum network reached a historical peak in 2023, with approximately 125,000, accounting for nearly 42.3% of the total over the past five years. However, the deployment volume significantly decreased in 2024, down 45% year-on-year. Fraudulent activities show a clear cyclicality, with an average annual deployment of nearly 50,000 for major public chains from 2021 to 2023.

It is worth noting that the average lifespan of scam contracts has sharply decreased from 356 days in 2021 to only 3.8 days in 2025, which poses higher demands on risk control models, requiring the ability to identify cross-chain collaborative attack patterns.

Conclusion

Rug Pull has evolved from sporadic small-scale fraud into a mature black industry chain with clear division of labor, tool-based approaches, and streamlined processes. The cost of scams is extremely low, but the potential "returns" are huge. Investors need to remain vigilant and understand common techniques of Rug Pull, such as promises of high returns, anonymous teams, lack of audits, suspicious liquidity locks, and social media hype. Before investing, carefully check whether the contract is open-source, whether it has been audited by reputable institutions, whether the team's background can be verified, and the status of liquidity locks, which should become essential due diligence steps.

The scale of Rug Pull eyeglasses is shocking: 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 an accumulation of individual investment mistakes, but a systematic attack on the trust foundation that the entire blockchain and Crypto Assets industry relies on. Exposing the truth about Rug Pulls is not only to remind the public to pay attention to risks, but also to promote the establishment of a more完善 regulatory system for the entire industry.