How much was lost in the Dragonswap hack?

The Dragonswap hack resulted in $29K in losses on March 16, 2021.

What attack technique was used in the Dragonswap exploit?

The Dragonswap exploit utilized Rugpull. Understanding this attack vector is critical for smart contract auditors and developers building secure DeFi protocols.

How can developers prevent similar smart contract attacks?

Preventing smart contract hacks requires a combination of secure coding practices, thorough security audits, and understanding common attack vectors like reentrancy, oracle manipulation, and access control flaws. Smart Contract Hacking (SCH) provides hands-on training to help developers and auditors identify and prevent vulnerabilities before deployment.

Dragonswap Hack

TOTAL LOST $29K

Low Mar 16, 2021 Rugpull binance

Affected Chain binance Incident surface

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #1839 By amount stolen

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull Target category

Incident Overview

The exit scam was performed during the pre-sale event. The project announced the pre-sale in this post:

https://archive.ph/z57Ow

In total, the address 0xc35feddc…c30683 has raised 176 BNB tokens. 35 BNB tokens were added to the initial liquidity at:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0xb60da2e0…cba9e1

The rest was distributed between unknown external wallets, which can be verified with the following token flow:

https://explorer.bitquery.io/bsc/address/0xc35feddc…c30683/graph

LP tokens and the project tokens were burnt in order to destruct the liquidity:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0x75b09ef6…5a90fa

https://bscscan.com/tx/0x66392a85…deae7d

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Dragonswap

Date of Incident March 16, 2021

Affected Chain(s) binance

Attack Technique Rugpull

Classification Exchange (DEX)

Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull

Affected Token DCASH

Official Website dragonswap.app/

Protocol Twitter/X @Dragonswap_app

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 binance smart contracts and deploy a custom exploit contract

Protocol Analysis Identification of the exploitable vulnerability in Dragonswap's contract logic - root cause: exchange (dex)

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 Dragonswap, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (March 2021).

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

Master these auditing techniques with hands-on labs and real exploit scenarios in the Smart Contract Hacking course.

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Sources & References

01
Source 1 https://t.me/rugsteemer/62
02
Web Archive https://web.archive.org/web/20210320135721/https://dragonswap.app/

Threat Assessment

Severity Level

LOW

Attack Vector Rugpull
Root Cause Exchange (DEX)
Year 2021

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