Summary
CoinTelegraph coverage of the same Solidus Labs data as the CoinDesk piece: 15 new scam smart contracts deployed per hour, 188,525 scam contracts detected across 12 blockchains in two weeks, with BNB Chain having the highest concentration (12% of tokens). Also notes October 2022 was possibly the biggest month ever for crypto hacking activity according to Chainalysis.
Key Points
- 15 new scam smart contracts deployed per hour (average across 12 blockchains).
- 188,525 scam contracts detected in two weeks (October 10-28, 2022).
- BNB Chain: 12% of BEP-20 tokens are scams.
- Ethereum: 8% of ERC-20 tokens are scams.
- ~$910M in scam-related Ether flowed through centralized exchanges.
- Chainalysis: October 2022 on track for all-time high in crypto hacking; majority targeting DeFi.
- “Scam token smart contracts are automatically deployed and easily repeated.”
Newsletter Angles
- “Automatically deployed and easily repeated” is the key phrase — crypto fraud is industrialized and scripted. This is not individual bad actors; it’s a fraud supply chain.
- The DeFi attack concentration: Chainalysis calling October 2022 a potential all-time high for crypto hacking, with majority in DeFi — suggests the decentralized architecture creates attack surface that centralized systems don’t have.
Concepts Mentioned
- Tokenomics — scam contract design exploits token launch mechanics
- DePIN — DeFi security failures are directly relevant to DePIN trust model
Notes
Companion to the CoinDesk piece on the same data release. CoinTelegraph version adds the Chainalysis hacking data. The two pieces together represent the same Solidus Labs report from October 2022.