In an era dominated by digital financial ecosystems, BNB Chain has garnered the disreputable accolade of being the prime target for rug pulls, as highlighted by the bug bounty platform, Immunefi. The platform’s comprehensive report reveals a staggering $1.64 billion loss attributed to hacks and rug pulls since BNB Chain’s establishment seven years ago. Notably, $1.27 billion of this colossal sum resulted from hacks, while the remaining losses stemmed from rug pulls. For context, a rug pull is a fraudulent maneuver where developers create a project, amass investor funds, and then abruptly abandon the project, absconding with the invested capital.

Immunefi’s analysis encompasses 228 cases of rug pulls, culminating in a collective loss of $368 million. The most significant of these was the DeFiAI rug pull in November 2022, which alone accounted for $40 million in losses. Comparatively, Ethereum, the second-largest blockchain and the preeminent smart-contract platform, has suffered losses amounting to $3.6 billion. However, only 4.4% of Ethereum’s losses can be attributed to rug pulls.

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The predominant reason behind BNB Chain’s vulnerability to rug pulls, a title it has maintained for over a year, is the widespread use of forked code by developers, according to Immunefi. The report also suggests that the BNB Chain community is frequently enticed by promises of quick financial gains.

Nevertheless, there has been a notable decline in losses due to hard forks like ZhangHeng, Plato, and Hertz, which were implemented to mitigate network vulnerabilities. This year has seen further improvements, with losses reduced to $38 million year-to-date.

BNB Chain has also experienced numerous exploits and hacks. In 2021, $200 million was lost to price manipulation of the Venus Protocol’s native token. In 2022, DeFi protocol Qubit Finance endured an $80 million loss following a hack on the QBridge.

At the time of publication, BNB Chain had not responded to an email seeking comment.