HOPE Honeypot

Reported loss Not disclosed
Ethereum
Honeypot

What happened

HOPE ($HOPE) is an Ethereum token deployed on 31 March 2021 at 0xf2bb8bc4…818ba8 by 0x1a92b9dd…3c1861. Every transfer and transferFrom runs the burnTokenCheck modifier, which lets the fixed _owner, a stored _safeOwner address and whitelisted wallets move tokens but makes every other holder's transfer revert unless it is sent to the Uniswap V2 router address. A Uniswap sale moves tokens into the pair, not the router, so ordinary holders can buy but not sell, and the revert shows the misleading message "ERC20: transfer amount exceeds balance".

The constructor also emits five mint events naming 0x88faAC16…1d7129, but the mint function credits every one of them to the owner, so event-based holder lists show a second large holder that has no balance. De.Fi's REKT database lists HOPE as an exit scam/honeypot.

How it happened

  1. The constructor sets _owner and _safeOwner to its owner argument and calls the public _mint six times. _mint requires msg.sender == _owner, so deployment only succeeds when owner is the deploying account.
  2. _mint runs _balances[_owner] = _balances[_owner].add(amount) but emits Transfer(address(0), account, amount). The five calls to _mint(0x88faAC1678c864d080d592BC15d1CdAdf01d7129, ...) therefore add supply to the owner while the event log shows it going to 0x88faAC....
  3. In burnTokenCheck, while _owner == _safeOwner, the owner's first outgoing transfer runs _safeOwner = recipient. If that first transfer is the liquidity deposit into the Uniswap pair, the pair becomes _safeOwner; the owner can also set it directly with decreaseAllowance(address safeOwner).
  4. Transfers where the sender is _owner or _safeOwner, or the recipient is _owner, always pass, so buys out of a pair set as _safeOwner go through. Senders whitelisted by increaseAllowance(address[]) or by the owner's multiTransfer also pass.
  5. Every other sender hits require((sender == _safeOwner)||(recipient == _unirouter), "ERC20: transfer amount exceeds balance"). _unirouter is 0x7a250d56…F2488D, the Uniswap V2 router, but a sale transfers the holder's tokens to the pair, so it reverts. Senders on the addApprove(address[]) blacklist are always held to this check.
  6. An unlisted sender passes only if amount < _sellAmount, which starts at 0 and which the owner can raise by transferring to itself; a transfer under the limit into _safeOwner then blacklists the seller. The public owner-only _mint remains callable after deployment.

Protocol details

Classification Exchange (DEX)
Protocol Type Exit Scam/Honeypot
Affected asset / contract HOPE

Evidence

Same attack technique

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