The recently launched Candy (CANDY) token of liquidity protocol Lena Network experienced a significant decline of over 87% following a rug pull that resulted in the loss of 753 Ether, equivalent to $2.9 million. Dexscreener data revealed that the Candy token dropped to $0.38 at 12:48 am UTC, down from its daily high of $3.08 recorded at 5:45 am. The on-chain data indicated that the deployer address of Lena Network transferred 753.11 Ether to an address associated with OKX exchange at 2:30 am on March 6, according to Etherscan. The rug pull occurred just a few hours before Lena Network announced the official renouncement of ownership of the token contract, as stated in a March 6 X post. At the time of publication, the protocol had not yet responded to the incident. Lena Network had raised a total of over 850 ETH ($3.2 million) for its Candy initial farm offering, which concluded on March 3. The Candy token was launched on March 6 but experienced a sharp decline shortly after. The increasing prevalence of rug pulls and hacks is a growing concern in the cryptocurrency space. As of February 29, a total of over $200 million worth of cryptocurrency had been lost to 32 individual incidents of hacks and rug pulls in the year-to-date (YTD) of 2024, according to a research report by blockchain security firm Immunefi. This figure represents a 15.4% increase compared to the $173 million lost in January and February 2023. In February alone, over $67 million worth of crypto was stolen across 12 hack and fraud incidents, marking a nearly 50% decrease from January’s $133 million. Furthermore, a report by Immunefi stated that $1.8 billion was lost to crypto hacks and scammers in 2023, with 17% attributed to the North Korean Lazarus Group.
Lena Network's Candy token experiences an 87% drop following a $2.9M rug pull.