​Xirtam DeFi platform creators accused of stealing $3,6 million

What’s new? The founders of the educational blockchain project Xirtam were accused of scamming and stealing 1909 ETH (over $3,6 million at the exchange rate on May 4) immediately after completing a 2000 ETH (~3,78 million) funding round. According to Twitter user Cryptoenth20, the Xirtam team made an exit scam. The Binance team froze the project’s funds placed on the exchange.

https://t.co/w0MHh4XFah@cz_binance @binance please freeze this amount till investigation. This is an exit scam by the Xirtam team. — Cultist 🩸🩸🩸 (@Cryptoenth20) May 3, 2023

What else is known? The stolen funds were initially tried to be laundered through 1inch, a decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator, and then withdrawn to a wallet on Binance.

Twitter user ali_7 reported that more than 4000 users who participated in the presale of the asset were affected by the actions of Xirtam. He, like Cryptoenth20, called on the Binance team to block the stolen funds to investigate.

25 minutes later, journalist and analyst Colin Wu wrote that Binance had frozen Xirtam’s assets. He also stressed that investors should be cautious about meme coin security.

XIRTAM rugpulled, an educational project that raised 2,000 ETH recently. The project was previously funded by CultDAO. AscendEX exchange also announced the launch of XIRTAM spot trading. Binance has frozen the funds transferred to Binance by the project. Investors need to be… — Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) May 3, 2023

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About Xirtam. The project positions itself as a decentralized reputation system based on the Arbitrum sidechain, which does not require a know your customer (KYC) procedure. Instead, a digital anonymous reputation can be created and earned on the platform, as well as rewards, by participating in the project’s ecosystem activities.

The platform was previously supported by the decentralized autonomous organization CultDAO, which invested 13 ETH (approximately $24 500) in Xirtam. In a recent publication, CultDAO wrote that it was extremely disappointed in the way Xirtam was doing business.

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Amid allegations of fraud, the price of the Xirtam platform’s native token fell by 55% overnight, hitting $0,003424 (according to CoinMarketCap).

The total damage from hackers and scammers in the crypto sphere in April was $103,6 million. Exit scams accounted for $9,4 million, a 5,3% increase from the previous month. The total damage from attacks on crypto projects since the beginning of the year amounted to $429,7 million.

Earlier, the founders of the DeFi project Kokomo Finance were accused of a $4 million exit scam. The cybersecurity company CertiK reported that the protocol’s team made changes to the smart contract and withdrew user funds.