Study Claims 98% Of Crypto Projects Listed On Uniswap Between 2018 And 2021 Were Rugpulls

A new report claims that 98% of all tokens listed between 2018 and 2021 on decentralized cryptocurrency exchange Uniswap were scam-related, otherwise known as rug pulls.

A typical rug pull scam takes place when developers lure investors into putting their money into new crypto projects created only for them to pull out prematurely. 

According to the study, Uniswap’s simplicity and lack of regulation make it a target for malicious actors to efficiently conduct initial coin offering (ICO) scams by listing non-valuable tokens on the platform.

Researchers from the University of Barcelona conducted the study. They reviewed 27,588 tokens, of which 631 were classified as non-malicious and 26,957 were identified as malicious. 

Also Read: This Instagram Influencer Pleads Guilty To Scramming His Fans Out Of $2.5M In Bitcoin

A total of 24,870 tokens marked as malicious were quick pulls, while the remaining 2,087 were not LP burns.

Talking more about Uniswap, the researchers said, “To obtain the state of the Uniswap exchange and the tokens, we used the events produced by their respective smart contracts. Any node connected to Ethereum JSON-RPC API can observe these events and act accordingly. Events can also be indexed so that the event history is searchable later.”

With that being said, Uniswap has become one of the most significant DeFi protocols in the industry.