ETHTrustFund rug pulls on Base, leading to $2m in investor losses

Developers have rug pulled the ETHTrustFund project on the Base network, leading to investor losses amounting to $2 million worth of Ethereum.

The fraudulent project abruptly moved these funds from its treasury to a new wallet. Notably, crypto community figure Octoshi first called attention to the scam. He disclosed a series of suspicious funds transfers and the project’s sudden inactivity.

RUG ALERT 🚨

Yesterday, the project known as ETHTrustFund (@ethtrustfund_ now deleted) sent +$2M from the treasury to a new wallet, after months of intentional inactivity by the dev, it seems that he has decided to steal the funds 👇 pic.twitter.com/YcswifyHmQ

— Octoshi.eth (@0ctoshi) July 21, 2024

According to Octoshi, the project’s developer, known only as “Peng,” had been unresponsive for the past three months. This period of silence followed months of building trust and raising over $2 million for ETHTrustFund’s treasury. The project’s website has since gone offline, and its social media accounts have been deleted.

ETHTrustFund marketed itself as a type of OHM fork, capitalizing on the interest within the Base network community. It attracted substantial investment by leveraging the excitement surrounding the network, memes, and ETFs. The project’s documentation remains available, but all other traces have vanished.

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Blockchain security firm PeckShield confirmed the rug pull, revealing that the scammers had already laundered the stolen funds.

#PeckShieldAlert #rugpull @0ctoshi reported that @ethtrustfund_ rugged ~$2m worth of cryptos on #Base.
The scammers have already bridged the stolen funds to #Ethereum & laundered them via #Tornadocash & #Railgun https://t.co/jmKVgiQb8C pic.twitter.com/MzJsvQ1pyV

— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) July 22, 2024

The perpetrators bridged the funds from the Base network to Ethereum (ETH) and then used Tornado Cash and Railgun, both known for their privacy features, to obscure the trail of the stolen assets.

Etherscan data confirms these findings, showing that the developer siphoned exactly 607 ETH, equivalent to $2.1 million.

Detailed transaction logs from Etherscan indicate that one of the developer’s primary addresses moved 200 ETH to Railgun at 13:27 UTC. Shortly after, this address transferred another 200 ETH to Tornado Cash in two separate transactions. An additional 56.9 ETH was then funneled back to Railgun.

Base has been a hotbed for rug pulls in recent times, as market participants seek to ride on the growing FOMO surrounding the network.

Last August, Magnet Finance, a protocol on Base, was rug-pulled for $6.4 million.
Solana has also had its fair share of rug pulls, with one involving the URF meme coin and another connected to the CONDOM meme coin project. Both of these rug pulls occurred in April.

Read more: SOL, ZK, BRETT: Top cryptocurrencies to watch this week

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