- On-chain sleuth ZachXBT warned that the Magnate Finance team could disappear with $6.4 million in total value locked (TVL).
- The team scrubbed their digital presence a few hours later in an apparent rug pull, Peckshield reported.
- Zach noted that MagnateFi is linked to Solfire’s $4.8 million exit scam, another rug pull from earlier in January.
- MagnateFi is the latest DeFi scam to occur on Coinbase’s burgeoning L2 network Base.
The team behind Magnate Finance pulled off an exit scam, rugging users of millions in crypto previously locked on the platform.
Blockchain security provider Peckshield said the team stole funds by manipulating a price oracle. Magnate’s TVL stood at $6.4 million before the rug pull, DeFiLlama data showed. The compromised price oracle allows the scammer to steal all user deposits.
Magnate Finance launched as a decentralized finance lender on Base, the first blockchain released by an American publicly traded company.
Magnate Finance Users Warned In Advance
Base users of the DeFi lending service MagnateFi were alerted to a possible exit scam early on Friday by on-chain Sleuth ZachXBT. The blockchain Sherlock pointed to links between Magnate’s deployer address and another exit scam from January 2023, Solfire. Per reports, Solfire users lost at least $4 million in crypto.
At the time of writing, the team has scrubbed their digital presence from social media networks like X (formerly Twitter) and Telegram. The Magnate Finance website is also unavailable.
Not long after Zach again warned users of the exit scam, the team responded in Bizzare fashion. As tweeted by the on-chain sleuth, the team changed their X bio to “contract breached by Zach”. The exit scammer also replied to Zach’s thread with “We stick to the plan? 50-50?”.
The X account was subsequently deactivated and the team has made no public contact since then. Magnate Finance is the latest rug pull – the term assigned to crypto projects that steal user assets and disappear – to happen on Base and the broader DeFi ecosystem.
Base also suffered nearly half a million dollars after SwirLend vanished with user funds earlier in August.
