Sakura DeFi Hack

TOTAL LOST $76K
Low Rugpull ethereum

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain ethereum Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #1610 By amount stolen
Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull Target category

Incident Overview

The contract deployer created a presale and transferred tokens to the presale smart contract at:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x0998d9c8…7070f5

103.11 ETH were added to the initial liquidity while 44.19 ETH were transferred to the contract deployer's address:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x7ce4b606…0ed3a1

The stolen funds were transferred through different external wallets and finally deposited to Binance exchange:

https://bloxy.info/ru/graphs/0xbc971cea…e7a5d6

39.96 ETH still remains on the liquidity pair at the moment:

https://etherscan.io/address/0xbc365f6c…8977fb

450 SKRG tokens are locked till 13.01.2022 and belong to the contract deployer:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x002bd17c…aef7b0

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Sakura DeFi
Date of Incident
Affected Chain(s) ethereum
Attack Technique Rugpull
Classification Borrowing and Lending
Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull
Affected Token SKRG
Official Website sakuradefi.com/
Protocol Twitter/X @SakuraDefi

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
AI & Big Data Collectibles & NFTs DeFi Gaming DAO Insurance Ethereum Ecosystem Avalanche Ecosystem
Protocol Links
GitHub Reddit

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.

Technical Knowledge Deep understanding of rugpull and Solidity and EVM internals
Capital Required Seed capital to cover gas and initial position setup
On-Chain Access Ability to interact with ethereum smart contracts and deploy a custom exploit contract
Protocol Analysis Identification of the exploitable vulnerability in Sakura DeFi's contract logic - root cause: borrowing and lending
Execution Speed Precise transaction ordering and timing to exploit the vulnerability within a single atomic block
Obfuscation Plan A strategy to launder and move stolen funds - typically through mixers, cross-chain bridges, or decentralized DEX swaps to resist tracing

What Auditors Should Check

Could this have been caught in audit? Hard to catch — private key / OpSec failures are outside smart contract audit scope

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Sakura DeFi, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (February 2021).

  • 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.

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Sources & References

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