Wrapped AMC Honeypot

Reported loss Not disclosed
Ethereum
Honeypot

What happened

Wrapped AMC (AMC) is an ERC-20 token deployed on Ethereum on 5 June 2021 at 0x71b7ecd7…c27637. It has no link to AMC Entertainment. Its verified code routes every transfer and transferFrom through a modifier, burnTokenCheck, that lets the owner and one owner-chosen address (_safeOwner) move tokens freely but makes ordinary holders' sales fail with a fake "ERC20: transfer amount exceeds balance" error.

The owner-only functions that control this are disguised with standard ERC-20 names: increaseAllowance(address[]) whitelists wallets, addApprove(address[]) blacklists them, and decreaseAllowance(address) sets _safeOwner. A public _mint lets the owner add unlimited tokens to its own balance. De.Fi's REKT database lists the token as an exit scam/honeypot.

How it happened

  1. The constructor sets _owner and _safeOwner to the owner argument and mints the initial supply to it. The contract has no function that changes _owner.
  2. The owner's first outgoing transfer runs if (_owner == _safeOwner && sender == _owner){_safeOwner = recipient;_;}, so whoever first receives tokens from the owner (typically the Uniswap pair when liquidity is added) becomes _safeOwner. The owner can also set it directly with decreaseAllowance(address safeOwner).
  3. Transfers from _owner or _safeOwner, or to _owner, always pass. If _safeOwner is the pair, buys go through normally.
  4. A holder who is not whitelisted can only send an amount below _sellAmount, which starts at 0 and is set by the owner transferring tokens to itself (if (sender == _owner && sender == recipient){_sellAmount = amount;}). Otherwise the transfer must come from _safeOwner or go to the Uniswap router (recipient == _unirouter); a normal Uniswap V2 sale sends tokens to the pair, so it reverts with "ERC20: transfer amount exceeds balance".
  5. Even when _sellAmount allows a small transfer, sending it to _safeOwner blacklists the seller (_blackAddress[sender] = true), and blacklisted wallets hit the same revert. Only wallets the owner whitelists, for example through multiTransfer, can sell.

Protocol details

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

Evidence

Same attack technique

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