Incident Overview
On January 21, 2025, a fake SOLAYER token crashed to nearly zero within three hours after a community alert was raised. Scammer's profit could be estimated as 1,938 WSOL (~$465,000).
The attacker leveraged a fake SOLAYER contract (LAYERruDbdbxZTT4cfFZPRLEoG4cGwn8HpwpgTToWDg) to mislead investors into purchasing worthless tokens. After artificially inflating the token’s perceived value, the attacker made a single significant “rug transaction,” liquidating 17 trillion of these fake tokens in exchange for nearly 2,000 WSOL. Once the attacker’s large sell order cleared, the token’s price plummeted by almost 100% in a matter of hours.
Malicious Address:
FU2cbiQea7mRX72BhPG716b1Q8eWu62pR2Ue5S9DC8jm
Fake Contract:
LAYERruDbdbxZTT4cfFZPRLEoG4cGwn8HpwpgTToWDg
Rug Transaction: https://solscan.io/tx/4Bio6okCE3qnLk5tEFnP9DQruihadB66vo51DkMBT9MRH6MCSwKSc88TiFJorxXkabb49oLSkgPTjvaHNyb7GRhW
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 Fake LAYER, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (January 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
Master these auditing techniques with hands-on labs and real exploit scenarios in the Smart Contract Hacking course.
Free TrialSources & References
Learn to Prevent the Next Fake LAYER
The Fake LAYER hack is one of many attacks that skilled auditors are trained to detect before deployment. Master real exploit patterns and defense techniques with hands-on Web3 security training.