Incident Overview
The $MODELPI token suffered an attack or rug pull on March 10, 2025, resulting in a loss of ~$107K. The issue stemmed from a burn mechanism affecting the swap pair's address, likely causing price manipulation or liquidity depletion.
The incident was identified by Tikkala Security, which pointed out that the token’s burn function improperly affected the swap pair’s address. This suggests:
1) Burn Mechanism Exploitation – The contract likely included a function that burns tokens from any address, including the liquidity pool.
2) Impact on K Constant – In AMM-based DEXs (e.g., PancakeSwap), the constant product formula (x * y = k) maintains price balance. If the LP’s balance is altered unnaturally (e.g., by burning tokens from the pair), it can severely impact price calculations.
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 ModelpiToken, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (March 2025).
- Verify all logic paths related to Other 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
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