Astrology-themed NFT project Lucky Star Currency (LSC) carried out an exit scam of over $1 million, according to a report by blockchain security firm Certik on October 9.
The project's deployer account mined over $1 million in LSC by calling the 'withdrawToken' function in the NFTMerge and AdwardCenter contracts. These tokens were then converted to Binance USD (BUSD) stablecoin and sent to another account.
Lucky Star Currency is a project that focuses on NFTs and claims to be founded by astrologers. It includes contracts, a Rewards Hub, and NFT Marketplace. It is marketed towards the Chinese crypto investment market. The team promotes the project on X (formerly Twitter) under the username @AstrAstrol75591. There is also a Telegram channel. As of October 9, the project's website and user interface are offline.
Ahead of the ambitious rug, Lucky Star Currency was heavily promoted on Chinese news app Toutiao and Q&A platform Zhihu.
According to CertiK, the vacated contracts are listed on Telegram as official contracts of the project.
Additionally, blockchain data shows that the attacker account is the deployer for the AwardCenter contract.
He claimed that the company promoting the project had an office in Shenzhen, China.
Rug-pulls from Chinese projects have become a recurring problem in the Web3 space. It is illegal to operate a centralized cryptocurrency exchange in the country. Therefore, users who deposit funds into a Chinese protocol with centralized elements may face the risk of having their funds confiscated by the police.
In July, the China-based Multichain protocol transferred all of its users' funds to an attacker's account, causing a loss of over $100 million. Although the team claims that their CEO has been arrested by the police, victims are still seeking answers to find out what their funds are and how they can be compensated.