The rapid growth of friend.tech's popularity attracted many scammers looking for ways to exploit the success of the new social tokenization protocol. One of the recent warnings regarding the frauds evolving the prominent project came from blockchain cybersecurity firm AegisWeb3, which reported the launch of a rug pull posing as the friend.tech token project.
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AegisWeb3 claims that the fake FRIEND token "was created by a CoinFactory that has created over 50 scam tokens." AegisWeb3 emphasizes that the creator "has a history of executing multiple rug pulls in the past."
CoinFactory, a suite of tools and white-label platforms designed to accelerate the launch of blockchain projects, has become a favorite solution abused by malicious actors who can leverage its features to create numerous fake tokens for rug pulls in a short period of time.
AegisWeb3 has noticed recently increased activity from CoinFactory contracts involved in the rug pull scams. Just a month ago, AegisWeb3's blockchain analysts reported a deployer using CoinFactory to create a total of 87 tokens. Most of these tokens were used for rug pulls.
AegisWeb3 explained, "The scammer employs a tactic where they create tokens and distribute them to numerous associated addresses through a contract. This creates a false impression of a large number of token holders."
The cybersecurity experts also emphasized that the fraudster uses an additional contract specifically for token transactions to "create the illusion of substantial user participation in buying and selling activities."
One of the most recent scam tokens uncovered by AegisWeb3 was G2, reported by the firm on August 23. Then, the token had an impressive market cap of about $11.4 million and liquidity totaling nearly $1 million.
The day before this report, AegiWeb3 also warned its X followers about a scammer actively deploying tokens for rug pulls on the Base chain using CoinFactory.
Meanwhile, some crypto users claim that the fake FRIEND token project has already been rugged, while the loot amounted to nearly $450,000.
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In the meantime, cybersecurity firms advise crypto users to exercise extreme caution when participating in friend.tech airdrops.
So far, the app offers Friday airdrops of friend.tech points which are recorded off-chain. These points "will have a special purpose once the beta period ends."
Yet, instead of providing points, most fake friend.tech airdrops pretend to distribute fake FRIEND tokens.
One such airdrop was reported by cybersecurity firm CertiK over a week ago. The company shared the phishing link to avoid: hxxps://claims-friend.tech/.
