Worldcoin Rug Pull

Reported loss $330K
Rugpull

What happened

This "Worldcoin" (WLD) token on Ethereum is a copycat contract that borrowed the name of the Worldcoin project; it is not the official WLD token. Its code gives a hard-coded address the power to wipe any holder's balance through a function named Approve, lets the hard-coded _Owner mint without limit through setRule, and rewrites Transfer events so the owner's movements appear to come from a separate team address. Its renounceOwnership and lock functions have empty bodies and change nothing.

De.Fi's Artem reported on 2023-07-25 that the deployer, worldcoindeployer.eth, had removed 179 WETH (about $330,000) from the token's liquidity pool the day before.

How it happened

  1. _Owner is hard-coded to the deployer, 0x39903b7e…410902, and the contract has no function that changes it.
  2. The constructor calls setRule(team, initialSupply*(10**18)). setRule adds the amount to _totalSupply and to _balances[_Owner], but emits the mint Transfer to the team address, so explorers show the supply sitting in a different wallet from the one that holds it. setRule stays callable by _Owner, so the owner can mint more at any time.
  3. _transfer debits and credits real balances, then swaps _Owner for team in the emitted event, hiding the owner's own sells and transfers.
  4. Approve(address[] recipients) can only be called by 0x619be1Ec…Cea009. For each listed address it subtracts the full balance and adds it to _balances[address(0)], so a buyer on the list is left with zero tokens and nothing to sell.
  5. execute and claimAirdrop only emit Transfer events without moving balances, so they can fabricate airdrops or trades in explorer history.
  6. renounceOwnership() and lock() carry the _onlyOwner modifier but have empty bodies, so calling them leaves every privilege in place.
  7. Liquidity withdrawal is not a token-contract function; it depends on who holds the Uniswap V2 LP tokens. De.Fi's alert reports that 179 WETH (about $330,000) was removed from the pool by the deployer.

Protocol details

Classification Token
Protocol Type Chain
Affected asset / contract WLD
Protocol links Website @worldcoin

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