Incident Overview
On September 9, 2025, Solana-based project Aqua executed a rug pull involving approximately 21,770 SOL ($4.65 million) despite having received endorsements from reputable entities including Meteora, Quill Audits, Helius, SYMMIO, and Dialect. The project appeared legitimate with a functional Telegram trading bot and code audits, making this a particularly sophisticated exit scam that caught many investors and partners off guard.
Aqua presented itself as a legitimate project with substantial credibility markers including partnerships with established protocols, security audits by Quill Audits, and endorsements from multiple key opinion leaders. The project operated a functional Telegram trading bot that generated approximately $137 million in trading volume over 30 days with $2.83 million in product revenue according to DeFiLlama data. Despite this apparent legitimacy, the team executed a coordinated exit scam by draining the raised funds totaling 21,770 SOL from their presale, which was significantly larger than their initial token liquidity pool of only 860 SOL ($184,000).
The stolen funds were systematically split into four parts and transferred through intermediary addresses before being sent to multiple instant exchanges for liquidation. Following the rug pull, the team disabled comments on all their social media posts. Investigation by blockchain analyst @ReaperOfChains revealed potential connections to previous scams, suggesting the involvement of the same actors behind the $20+ million IBXTrade $artic scam from the previous year.
Presale address:
4Ea23VxEGAgfbtauQZz11aKNtzHJwb84ppsg3Cz14u6q
Incident Report
Protocol Information
Market Context at Time of Hack
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.
What Auditors Should Check
If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Aqua, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (September 2025).
- 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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