Federico Cernera, Massimo La Morgia, Alessandro Mei, and Francesco Sassi, Sapienza University of Rome
In this work, we perform a longitudinal analysis of the BNB Smart Chain and Ethereum blockchain from their inception to March 2022. We study the ecosystem of the tokens and liquidity pools, highlighting analogies and differences between the two blockchains. We discover that about 60% of tokens are active for less than one day. Moreover, we find that 1% of addresses create an anomalous number of tokens (between 20% and 25%). We discover that these tokens are used as disposable tokens to perform a particular type of rug pull, which we call 1-day rug pull. We quantify the presence of this operation on both blockchains discovering its prevalence on the BNB Smart Chain. We estimate that 1-day rug pulls generated $240 million in profits. Finally, we present sniper bots, a new kind of trader bot involved in these activities, and we detect their presence and quantify their activity in the rug pull operations.
Open Access Media
USENIX is committed to Open Access to the research presented at our events. Papers and proceedings are freely available to everyone once the event begins. Any video, audio, and/or slides that are posted after the event are also free and open to everyone. Support USENIX and our commitment to Open Access.
author = {Federico Cernera and Massimo La Morgia and Alessandro Mei and Francesco Sassi},
title = {Token Spammers, Rug Pulls, and Sniper Bots: An Analysis of the Ecosystem of Tokens in Ethereum and in the Binance Smart Chain ({{{{{BNB}}}}})},
booktitle = {32nd USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security 23)},
year = {2023},
isbn = {978-1-939133-37-3},
address = {Anaheim, CA},
pages = {3349--3366},
url = {https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity23/presentation/cernera},
publisher = {USENIX Association},
month = aug
}
