What is a rug pull and how to avoid it?

• A rug pull is a scenario in the cryptocurrency world where developers abandon a project after raising assets, leaving participants with worthless tokens.

• Rug pulls can occur in various forms, including liquidity pulls, fake projects, pump and dump schemes, and team exits.

• To avoid rug pulls, thorough research, security audits, community engagement, and awareness of warning signs are crucial.

A rug pull is a scenario in the cryptocurrency space.

It involves a team raising assets from the public by selling a token, only to abruptly shut down the project or disappear, taking the raised assets with them. This leaves the participants, or rather, their victims, with worthless tokens.

Rug pulls can be extensively orchestrated, with bad actors leveraging various strategies to lure as many victims as possible. Some scams even use trusted figures to gain trust, while others promise extremely high returns or offer exclusive digital goods.

Rug pulls can generally be categorized into hard and soft rug pulls. Hard rug pulls are more acute and sudden, causing participants to lose all their assets within a short time. Soft rug pulls happen over a longer period, with the core development team giving participants a false sense of security while they quietly shut down.

Common types of rug pulls include:

• Liquidity Pulls: Malicious actors remove liquidity from a token pool, causing the token’s value to plummet due to a lack of buyers and sellers.

• Fake Projects: Scammers create seemingly legitimate projects, gather participation, and then disappear with the assets, leaving participants with worthless tokens.

• Pump and Dump: Fraudsters artificially inflate the price of a token through coordinated buying, only to sell their holdings at the peak and crash the value.

• Team Exit: The project’s team members suddenly disappear or exit, leaving participants with no support and a collapsing token.

Identifying and avoiding rug pulls requires a combination of diligence and caution. Here’s how you can protect yourself:

• Thorough research: Investigate the project’s team, technology, goals, and community before participating. Look for red flags such as unknown teams or lack of transparency.

• Security audits: Reputable projects often undergo third-party security audits. Check if the project has been audited and review the audit report for vulnerabilities.

• Community engagement: Engage with the project’s community on various platforms. A strong and active community can indicate a legitimate project.

• Warning signs: Be cautious of unrealistic returns and yields, excessive marketing, and pressure to participate quickly. Trust your instincts and avoid FOMO.

While rug pulls have always been a spectacle in the industry, some scams have left a significant mark. Some of the biggest rug pulls in history include OneCoin, Thodex, AnubisDAO, Uranium Finance, and Squid Game Token. These scams resulted in billions of dollars in losses for participants.