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![](\"https:\/\/images.cointelegraph.com\/images\/840_aHR0cHM6Ly9zMy5jb2ludGVsZWdyYXBoLmNvbS91cGxvYWRzLzIwMjItMTAvNDA3NjU1Y2ItZTczZC00MGM0LTg2OTMtMDdmNmRiNDA2YzI0LmpwZw==.jpg\")
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The Web3 and cryptocurrency space is seeing a significant amount of smart contract scams proliferating, with blockchain risk monitoring firm Solidus Labs saying it has detected on average 15 newly deployed scams every hour.<\/p>\n
Solidus Labs said<\/a> on Oct. 27 that it had been monitoring 12 blockchains including Ethereum (ETH<\/a>), Polygon (MATIC<\/a>), and BNB Chain (BNB<\/a>) since Oct. 10 and in that time had detected 188,525 smart contract scams.<\/p>\n Former United States Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) director, Kathy Kraninger, who is now Solidus\u2019 VP of regulatory affairs, said in the statement that \u201cwhile some of the big rug pulls and scams make the news […] the full picture stemming from our data shows the vast majority of these scams go unnoticed.\u201d<\/p>\n The firm also shed some light on the number of tokens that are scams<\/a>, saying 12% of BEP-20 tokens \u2014 the BNB Chain\u2019s token standard<\/a> \u2014 exhibit fraudulent characteristics marking it as the blockchain with the most cryptocurrency scams.<\/p>\n Ethereum\u2019s native ERC-20 token standard came second with 8% of the blockchains\u2019 tokens exhibiting scam-like characteristics according to the company. It also estimated around $910 million worth of ETH related to scams had passed through centralized and regulated exchanges.<\/p>\n Solidus said these so-called \u201cscam token smart contracts\u201d are hard-wired to steal investors’ funds and fit alongside other abusive practices<\/a> such as rug pulls where the developer steals the invested funds and token impersonations that aim to trick people into investing by mimicking popular cryptocurrencies.<\/p>\n It said these types of contracts are \u201cautomatically deployed and easily repeated\u201d with scammers able to quickly complete thousands of low-value attacks with exchanges, regulators and authorities none the wiser.<\/p>\n Related: <\/em><\/strong>Google still promoting crypto phishing sites warns Binance boss<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n It\u2019s not only scamming cryptocurrencies investors need to watch for, hacks are also on the rise with October being possibly the biggest month<\/a> ever for crypto hacking activity according to analytics firm Chainalysis.<\/p>\n Chainalysis director of research, Kim Grauer, said in an interview with Cointelegraph that the amount of value stolen in crypto hacks is on track to hit all-time highs in 2022<\/a> with a vast majority targeting decentralized finance (DeFi).<\/p>\n The Web3 and cryptocurrency space is seeing a significant amount of smart contract scams proliferating, with blockchain risk monitoring firm Solidus Labs saying it has detected on average 15 newly deployed scams every hour.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n