Kizuna AI Rug Pull

Reported loss $135K
Rugpull

What happened

Kizuna AI (KIZUNA) was an ERC20 token on Ethereum, contract 0x15d5fed8…d7af1e, deployed on 29 August 2023. Its openTrading function creates the Uniswap pool and sends the resulting LP tokens to the owner's own wallet instead of locking or burning them, so the owner can withdraw the pool's ETH at any time. The owner can also add any address to a blacklist that blocks it from sending or receiving, and can raise the post-launch buy and sell taxes to any value; the sell tax already starts at 88% for the first 60 buys.

On 30 August 2023 De.Fi reported that the deployer, 0x1CAFE95d…d54763, removed about 78.5 ETH (about $135,000) of liquidity in many small transactions and moved the funds to EOAs. De.Fi's REKT database records the loss as $134,863; the earlier write-up cites liquidity removal transaction 0xbf29cf83…491c81 and funds transfer 0x7b5aefff…396ad5.

How it happened

  1. The constructor credits the whole 1,000,000,000 KIZUNA supply to the deployer, who is also the owner and the tax wallet.
  2. When the owner calls openTrading, the contract adds its tokens and ETH to a new Uniswap V2 pool with uniswapV2Router.addLiquidityETH{value: address(this).balance}(address(this),balanceOf(address(this)),0,0,owner(),block.timestamp);, so the LP tokens go to owner().
  3. Buyers face an 88% sell tax until more than 60 buys (_initialSellTax=88, _reduceSellTaxAt=60), and the owner can later set any final tax with reduceFee, which has no upper limit, or blacklist addresses with manageList. The owner is exempt from all of these checks.
  4. Because the owner holds the LP tokens, the owner can redeem them for the pool's WETH and KIZUNA at will. De.Fi reports the deployer removed about 78.5 ETH of liquidity in many small transactions and sent it to EOAs, leaving holders with tokens that could no longer be sold for meaningful value.

Protocol details

Classification Token
Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull
Affected asset / contract KIZUNA
Protocol links Website @kizunatoken

Build your security review skills

Work through hands-on labs covering real exploit mechanics, review techniques, and defensive patterns.