Aqua Hack

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