Polylastic Honeypot

Reported loss Not disclosed
Ethereum
Honeypot

What happened

This Polylastic (POLX) token is an Ethereum contract deployed on 2 May 2021 at 0x06574cb3…c9cda6 by 0x4c299CA4…1Bef37, which the constructor sets as the fixed _owner. Every transfer and transferFrom runs the burnTokenCheck modifier, which lets the owner, a special _safeOwner address and whitelisted wallets move tokens but makes every other holder's transfer revert unless it is sent to the Uniswap 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 whitelist and blacklist setters hide behind ERC-20 names (increaseAllowance, addApprove, decreaseAllowance), and no function can change or renounce the owner. Etherscan labels the contract Fake_Phishing219378 and its creator Fake_Phishing189325 after GoPlusSecurity reports, and De.Fi's REKT database lists it as an exit scam/honeypot.

How it happened

  1. The constructor sets _owner and _safeOwner to msg.sender (0x4c299CA4…1Bef37) and mints 100000*1e6*(10**18), or 100,000,000,000 POLX, to it. No other code writes _owner.
  2. 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).
  3. 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 marked by increaseAllowance(address[]) (the whitelist) also pass.
  4. Every other sender hits require((sender == _safeOwner)||(recipient == _unirouter), "ERC20: transfer amount exceeds balance"). _unirouter is the Uniswap V2 router, but a sale transfers the holder's tokens to the pair, so it reverts. Senders marked by addApprove(address[]) (the blacklist) are always held to this check.
  5. An unlisted sender passes only if amount < _sellAmount. _sellAmount starts at 0, and the owner can raise it by transferring tokens to itself; a transfer under the limit into _safeOwner then puts the seller on the blacklist, so at most one small sale works.
  6. _mint(address,uint256) is public and owner-only and credits _balances[_owner] with any amount. The total supply read on 2026-09-30 equals the constructor mint, so the code allows extra minting but the current supply shows none.

Protocol details

Classification Token
Protocol Type Exit Scam/Honeypot
Affected asset / contract POLX

Evidence

Same attack technique

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