The team allegedly behind the cross-chain bridging protocol OrdiZK (OZK) has been accused of orchestrating an exit scam that resulted in the disappearance of approximately $1.4 million worth of investor cryptocurrency, as reported by blockchain security platform CertiK.
According to CertiK's findings, on March 4, a deployer account associated with the protocol purportedly offloaded 489 million OZK tokens on a decentralized exchange, yielding $132,000 in return. This massive sell-off triggered a staggering 98% decline in the token's price. Subsequently, on March 5, another approximately $214,000 worth of OZK was sold off, leading to an additional 99% slippage in value.
Blockchain data corroborates these claims, indicating that on March 4, the OZK deployers executed the "execution" function on Uniswap's universal router contract, resulting in the exchange of approximately 489 million OZK tokens for 35.65 ether coins (ETH). Further, on March 5, an additional 121 million OZK tokens were exchanged via the execution function, transferring an additional 0.93 ETH from Uniswap's OZK/ETH liquidity pool into deployer accounts.
Moreover, the deployer withdrew 57.68 ETH (valued at approximately $197,000 at current prices) from the OZKStake contract by invoking the "emergencyWithdraw" function. CertiK's investigation also revealed that the project held $263,000 in a "marketing wallet" and $174,000 in a "financial wallet," suggesting that the project had amassed funds in these wallets before allegedly embarking on the exit scam, amounting to over $1.4 million in total.
As a consequence of the alleged exit scam, the project's X account, as well as its Telegram group and associated documents, have been deleted. The incident adds to a string of cryptocurrency scams and hacking incidents that have plagued the industry in the early months of 2024, resulting in losses exceeding $200 million thus far, according to blockchain security firm Immunefi. Notably, on February 26, the gambling protocol RiskOnBlast experienced the first blacklist event on the new Blast network, leading to the loss of $1 million in investor funds.
