WanderVerse NFT Rug Pull

Reported loss $485K
Rugpull

What happened

WanderVerse was a 7,777-piece NFT collection on Ethereum (contract 0xA95d69F2…35E173) minted at 0.07 ETH. On 2022-03-08 the deployer address 0xB9542fc0…5D1ead called the contract's owner-only withdraw() in transaction 0x7cdb35a1…440414, moving 155.29 ETH (about $421.7K by Etherscan's price at the time) from the contract to itself. A second transaction De.Fi lists, 0x5b75f9bd…dfad79, is the same address unwrapping 6.16 WETH, not a call to the collection contract.

On 2022-03-10 PeckShield reported about 188 ETH from accounts linked to the project going to Tornado Cash and tagged it an NFT rug pull; De.Fi's listing records 484,887 USD lost and says the funds went into Tornado Cash (source: Bloxy list of transfers from 0xb9542fc0…5d1ead). Separately, ArkDev (HYTOPIA co-founder) alleged on X that the project had copied content from another game to look legitimate.

How it happened

  1. The deployer deployed WanderVerse as an Ownable ERC-721 collection. The constructor sets only the name and symbol (ERC721("WanderVerse", "WV")); the owner is the deploying address.
  2. The owner opens the sale with flipSaleActiveState(), and anyone can then call mint(uint256 amount) with msg.value == amount * price, where price = 0.07 ether by default. Every mint payment stays in the contract balance.
  3. Nothing in the contract limits what happens to that balance: function withdraw() external onlyOwner { payable(owner()).transfer(address(this).balance); } sends the whole balance to the owner in one call, at any time, with no vesting, cap or minimum mint requirement.
  4. On 2022-03-08, the deployer address called withdraw() and Etherscan shows 155.29 ETH moving from the collection contract to that address (tx 0x7cdb35a1…440414).
  5. PeckShield reported on 2022-03-10 that about 188 ETH linked to the project was sent to Tornado Cash; De.Fi describes the funds as deposited into the mixer.

Protocol details

Classification NFT
Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull
Affected asset / contract WV
Protocol links @WanderVerseNFT

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