Half of Solana Presale Tokens Rolled Out Between November and February Were Malicious: Blockaid Study

Blockaid’s findings highlight the need for increased security measures in the Solana ecosystem, according to the cybersecurity firm’s co-founder Ido Ben-Natan.

Two key factors have helped scams proliferate throughout the Solana ecosystem, Blockaid said.

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Posted April 5, 2024 at 5:54 pm EST.

Solana’s rebound has not been without its woes, as the number of fraudulent scams and amount of malicious activity have seen a significant increase.

According to a study from cybersecurity firm Blockaid that was shared with Unchained, 50% of presale tokens launched between November and February were malicious. The data highlights two key factors that helped scams proliferate throughout the Solana ecosystem, said Ido Ben-Natan, co-founder of Blockaid, in an email to Unchained.

“Firstly, the exponential increase in pre-sale token uptake in February and March, fueled by the popularity of legitimate memecoins, has provided fertile ground for scammers,” wrote Ben-Natan.

“Additionally, scammers are adept at capitalizing on users’ fear of missing out (FOMO), employing sophisticated tactics such as mimicking legitimate transactions and creating deceptive websites,” Ben-Natan noted. Some of the identified scammers included X users Jared_eth and Bluekirbyftm.

The findings highlight the need for increased security measures in the Solana ecosystem, concluded Blockaid’s Ben-Natan.

The study comes at a time when the performance of Solana in processing transactions has suffered because of the increased trading volume driven by interest in memecoins and the heightened activity of programmatic trading bots spamming the blockchain network.