Welcome to the second episode of the Uniswap DeFi Rugs Chronicles. This episode is dedicated to crypto twitter influencer Eljaboom. I know you would be wondering why this episode is dedicated to him but you will find out soon…
Now back to the main matter of the day. These past weeks we have had so many rug pulls involving projects doing their presales, projects with unlocked & locked liquidity and also a project already in partnership with an established Blockchain startup. Imagine how far they went to look legit, crypto definitely needs some sort of regulation.
Crypto Twitter is one of the go to places for people looking for new DeFi projects to invest in and as a matter of fact, scam projects team now pay influencers on Crypto Twitter(CT) to shill their scam in order to lure investors. This was how Eljaboom got caught up and had an entire episode of DeFi Rugs Chronicles dedicated to him lol…
Which Uniswap DeFi Rug did Eljaboom shill?
Electriq Network ($ELEQ) were claiming to build a peer to peer platform that enables anyone to lend and borrow digital assets against collateral. Poised to be the Facebook marketplace of P2P loans.
Sadly these all turned out to be a scam because they were not building anything.
Eljaboom being a crypto twitter influencer was contacted by $ELEQ developer to promote the Electriq Network ($ELEQ) presale on twitter and I believe he was paid between 6 – 8 Ethereum (minimum of $2000 or more) for his tweet based off what the ELEQ dev told us in the telegram group that they’ve sold 8 Ethereum worth of tokens for soft marketing.
Electriq Network also went as far as sharing screenshots of completed test runs by testers and a screenshot of the platform user interface on their telegram announcement channel.
Presale price was 250k ELEQ for 1 Ethereum with a hard cap of 480 Ethereum. Due to the involvement of Eljaboom the presale was over subscribed and it ended in less than 24 hours.
What ensued next was when the developer would add liquidity on Uniswap so trading could commence but the telegram admin claimed the developer is base in Australia and as at that time they were still sleeping.
At this point it was clear to some people that have experienced a rug before that Electriq Network was definitely going to pull a rug. I waited and waited but ended up sleeping cos it was about 2 AM West African Time. I woke up in the morning to find out Electriq Network exit scammed.
How did Electriq Network pull the rug?
Based off conversations with those that were awake all through the night waiting for the developer to add liquidity. I was told liquidity was added but then the developer minted 45 Quadrillion ELEQ tokens. He claimed it was a mistake but clearly he did this to be able to drain the locked Ethereum liquidity on Uniswap.
Transaction hash: https://etherscan.io/tx/0x125d8c2a37d6dc0ff84bf633248cc765f839f593afec5bf9ca8644b5444fd176
Looking at this address transaction details you can see all the mint functions the scammer initiated minting new tokens in order to dump.
https://etherscan.io/address/0xb4d8f78a9e403e50016623ed11bec00b89411311#tokentxns
The ELEQ contract had a mint function unknowingly to the investors. The scammer made away with about 450 ETH (~$193,500) as at that time.
Conclusion
The Electriq Network rug pull was painful because people lost a fortune including me and my friend I told about the presale. What makes this more sinister is the involvement of Eljaboom in shilling a scam DeFi presale of which he later claimed he invested and lost money too. This is clearly a lie.
Below are screenshots of my tweet addressed to Eljaboom and his response. It’s important to note that Eljaboom deleted his tweet about the Electriq Network presale but I took screenshot of it for future reference.
@Eljaboom shilled $ELEQ now they have exit scammed after collecting presale Ethereum$EDI $KAI $LEND $PERX $VSN $GEAR $ETH pic.twitter.com/oai0IXvDwF
— Aniekan | QryptoCentral.com (@tequaneV) August 18, 2020
IMS wallet is another DeFi project that pulled the rug but guess who shilled the presale? the same crypto twitter influencer Eljaboom. Can we say these are all coincidences or he’s part of a network?
The IMS Wallet presale looked scammy when they contacted SpykeFast telegram group to help them raise the needed Ethereum left to complete their presale. I knew this was definitely going to be another Uniswap DeFi Rug in the making because SpykeFast will hold and promote just any presale as long as they get their commission.
IMS Wallet even went as far as having a partnership with FerrumNetwork to be integrated as a staking cryptocurrency in the Unifyre wallet. This made them look all legit only to pull the rug.
These past three weeks within the Uniswap DeFi space has been filled with exit scams from ELEQ to IMS Wallet to BlockClout to AUTEM to Nexeum, this list goes on and on…
My two cents is stay away from any new project presale, stick to the ones you have already invested in that seems legit.
It’s time for new DeFi projects to either air drop tokens to those willing to sign up for their air drop campaign or forget about it totally.