Xai Hack

TOTAL LOST $581K
Low Rugpull

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2024 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #969 By amount stolen
Auditors 1 Prior security audit

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

XAI token was rugpulled on Jan 9, 2024, removing liquidity, total worth 580,959 USD from PancakeSwap pool.

Details of the Exploit

XAI is a BEP20 token trading on PancakeSwap. The deployer carried out an exit scam by removing liquidity from the LP pool in two separate transactions. Following the rugpull, the stolen funds were transferred to another EOA address and still remain in the scammer's address as BUSD as of Jan 13, 2024.

Block Data Reference

Deployer Address:

https://bscscan.com/address/0xB3Ff5538…0847DD

Scammer Address:

https://bscscan.com/address/0x484fd20d…6C1f6B

Funds Holder as of Jan 13, 2024:

https://bscscan.com/address/0x1e33e335…8B9FbA

Liquidity Removal Transactions:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0x19ba3032…a48f22

https://bscscan.com/tx/0xfa5454fc…6923fc

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Xai
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Rugpull
Classification Token
Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Dexs
Affected Token XAI
Official Website www.xfai.com
Protocol Twitter/X @xfai_official
Team Anonymous
Source Code Verified On-Chain

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
Platform Gaming Binance Launchpool CMS Holdings Portfolio Arbitrum Ecosystem Animoca Brands Portfolio Binance Ecosystem Binance Listing
Protocol Links
GitHub Discord 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 smart contracts and deploy a custom exploit contract
Protocol Analysis Identification of the exploitable vulnerability in Xai's contract logic - root cause: token
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
Audited by Audit Report 1 — still lost $581K. Prior audits don't guarantee safety, especially after post-audit code changes.

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Xai, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (January 2024).

  • 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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Security Audit History

Sources & References

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