AniMoon Hack

TOTAL LOST $6.3M
Medium Rugpull

Summarize with AI

Affected Chain 2022 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #392 By amount stolen
Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull Target category

Incident Overview

AniMoon, a play-to-earn NFT project has been rug pulled by its team, exploiting its investors and users for $6,3 million.

AniMoon is a P2E game based on the famous Pokemon cartoon series.

The NFT project AniMoon was a collection of 10k NFTs for 0.2 $ETH that was scammed by its team. The project claimed to have a cooperation with Pokémon, but in fact this was not the case.

Nevertheless, the project managed to raise funds from investors who were attracted by the appeal of the project.

Transactions of the $ETH theft from the collection to the scammer addresses can be seen here:

1) https://etherscan.io/tx/0x043ca640…670a75

2) https://etherscan.io/tx/0x9fc895ed…fa0149

Then all stolen funds were transferred to Binance Hot Wallet.

Example transactions:

1) https://etherscan.io/tx/0x12a6eb67…533422

2) https://etherscan.io/tx/0x9aecb0b6…ea6dad

3) https://etherscan.io/tx/0x4e31f03f…b2b9b2

Involved addresses:

- Scammer address (A), token creator: https://etherscan.io/address/0x81d3ec77…17fe3b

- Scammer address (B): https://etherscan.io/address/0x7c60e482…feb6eb

- Scammer address (C):

https://etherscan.io/address/0x2098145e…5605c7

0x81d3ec77438b4e99aa99ba25b1dbc3fea317fe3b0x81d3ec77438b4e99aa99ba25b1dbc3fea317fe3b

Incident Report

Protocol / Project AniMoon
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Rugpull
Classification NFT

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull
Affected Token ANI
Official Website www.animoon.io/
Protocol Twitter/X @Kangamoon_P2E
Team Anonymous
Source Code Unverified

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
Ethereum Ecosystem

What the Attacker Needed to Succeed

Understanding the prerequisites for this type of attack helps auditors identify protocols that are most at risk and helps developers build better defenses.

Technical Knowledge Deep understanding of rugpull and Solidity and EVM internals
Capital Required Seed capital to cover gas and initial position setup
On-Chain Access Ability to interact with smart contracts and deploy a custom exploit contract
Protocol Analysis Identification of the exploitable vulnerability in AniMoon's contract logic - root cause: nft
Execution Speed Precise transaction ordering and timing to exploit the vulnerability within a single atomic block
Obfuscation Plan A strategy to launder and move stolen funds - typically through mixers, cross-chain bridges, or decentralized DEX swaps to resist tracing

What Auditors Should Check

Could this have been caught in audit? Hard to catch — private key / OpSec failures are outside smart contract audit scope

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to AniMoon, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (June 2022).

  • Verify all logic paths related to Rugpull are guarded by proper access controls and input validation
  • Review privileged functions (owner, admin, governance) for potential abuse vectors - centralization risks should be documented and bounded with timelocks or multi-sigs

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Sources & References

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