Recently launched liquidity protocol Lena Network’s Candy (CANDY) token fell over 87% after the protocol suffered a rug pull of 753 Ether, worth $2.9 million at publication time.
The Candy token fell 87% to $0.38 as of 12:48 am UTC, from a daily high of $3.08, recorded at 5:45 am, according to Dexscreener data.
The Candy token fell after on-chain data showed that the Lena Network deployer address had transferred 753.11 Ether (ETH) to an address associated with OKX exchange on March 6, at 2:30 am, according to Etherscan.
The rug pull occurred a few hours before Lena Network announced that it had officially renounced the ownership of the token contract, according to a March 6 X post. The protocol has yet to respond to the incident at the time of publication.
Lena Network raised a total of over 850 ETH ($3.2 million) for its Candy initial farm offering, which ended on March 3, according to the protocol’s announcement. The Candy token went live earlier on March 6 before declining sharply.
Rug pulls and hacks are a growing concern in the crypto space. Over $200 million worth of cryptocurrency has been lost to hacks and rug pulls in 2024 year-to-date (YTD) across 32 individual incidents, according to a Feb. 29 research report by blockchain security firm Immunefi.
The over $200 million loss YTD represents a 15.4% increase compared to January and February 2023, when $173 million of digital assets were stolen.
February saw over $67 million worth of crypto stolen across 12 specific hack and fraud incidents. This represents a nearly 50% decrease from January, which recorded $133 million worth of stolen crypto.
A total of $1.8 billion was lost to crypto hacks and scammers in 2023, of which 17% can be attributed to the North Korean Lazarus Group, according to a Dec. 28, 2023, report by Immunefi.