DEFI

Repeat Offender! Magnate Finance on Base Chain Exposed for the Third Time, Runs off with 6.5 Million Euros

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Repeat Offender! Magnate Finance on Base Chain Exposed for the Third Time, Runs off with 6.5 Million Euros

The L2 coinless public chain Base launched by Coinbase has recently attracted much attention, but of course, phishing links and RugPull incidents are also emerging constantly. Blockchain expert ZachXBT warned of concerns about the DeFi protocol Magnate Finance on the chain just this morning. The team shut down the official website and performed a Rug within an hour, even publicly calling out to Zach: 50-50 profit split?

Rampant RugPulls on Base Chain

Benefiting from the meme coin craze and the skyrocketing popularity of the decentralized social app Friend.tech, the TVL (Total Value Locked) of Base, a Layer 2 network based on Optimism launched by Coinbase, has doubled in the past month, attracting the attention of many scammers and unscrupulous individuals.

Zach Discovers Risks in Magnate Finance

Online detective ZachXBT issued a warning this morning, stating that the creation address of the DeFi protocol Magnate Finance on Base Chain is directly linked to the address of SolFire, a RugPull DeFi project built on Solana last year, thus posing a RugPull risk.

Zach urged users to be cautious of the risks and expressed concerns about the TVL totaling up to $6.4 million locked in the protocol.

Reportedly, the SolFire team had absconded with around $4.8 million at that time.

Magnate Finance Shuts Down Website, Responds: Equal Profit Sharing?

Just an hour after the news was released, the official website of Magnate Finance was shut down, and the Telegram group was also deleted. Zach pointed out that the team's address seems to be related to the lending protocol Kokomo Finance, which experienced a RugPull event in March.

According to the cybersecurity team CertiK, Kokomo Finance illicitly profited about $4 million at that time.

Interestingly, Zach's in-depth investigation seemed to upset the Magnate Finance team, as they changed their Twitter bio to "Zach violates and disrupts contracts" and left a comment under Zach's tweet "Equal profit sharing?" before promptly deleting their official Twitter account.

Successful RugPull

Following this, the Magnate Finance team conducted a RugPull by manipulating oracle prices, transferring all assets in the protocol, causing the official token $MAG to plummet over 80% in a single day. The team estimated a profit of about $6.5 million.

According to PeckShieldAlert tracking, the team had transferred over 1.34 million DAI to a new address 0x0664.