Scammers Take Advantage of Upcoming Shibarium Launch with Fake Token

Scammers have started targeting the Shiba Inu community after news of the impending release of the eagerly anticipated layer-2 solution led them to recently construct a fake SHIBARIUM token.

According to a tweet from the blockchain security site PeckShield today, the parties responsible for the fraudulent behavior had previously produced a fake BLUR token.

#PeckShieldAlert Scammers pretend as @blur_io Deployer to deploy fake $Blur and airdrop to Coinbase, Justinsun, and Yuga Labs, in an attempt to trick folks into thinking it's the official #Blur #Airdrop. After removing liquidity, they created a fake $SHIBARIUM. Be alert! #DOGE pic.twitter.com/Lrs1v60g5c
— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) February 15, 2023

PeckShield claims that in an effort to lead people to believe that the phony token is actually from Blur, they airdropped these fake BLUR tokens to wallets owned by Yuga Labs, Justin Sun, and Coinbase. Yesterday, Blur launched its native governance token for its NFT marketplace. It is important to note that Blur has an official ongoing airdrop and has cautioned investors against malicious airdrops.

The scammers subsequently removed liquidity from the false BLUR token and produced a fake SHIBARIUM token through swaps and transfers. This action was taken shortly after Shiba Inu’s principal developer Shytoshi Kusama announced yesterday that Shibarium is now ready and that he will be releasing a series of Medium articles beginning today to introduce the L2 network to the general public

The motivations behind the fraudulent SHIBARIUM coin are still unknown as of the time of publication, but PeckShield has cautioned investors that they may be malicious.

The Shiba Inu ecosystem now only contains three tokens: Shiba Inu (SHIB), Bone ShibaSwap (BONE), and Doge Killer (LEASH). Investors should refrain from dealing with any unusual tokens moving forward. Notably, a recent article on DappRadar discusses how to spot bogus tokens like this one.
This occurrence takes place in the midst of a rising trend of producing bogus tokens to deceive unwary investors. Following the FTX disaster last month, a fake FTX 2 token was created. In addition, a fraudulent Uniswap (UNI) coin was developed in July of last year and utilized in a phishing attack to take advantage of investors. Losses from the exploit were at least $4.7M.

Olasunkanmi Abudu

Olasunkanmi Abudu is a Web3 content writer with over five years of experience covering blockchain, decentralized finance, and digital assets. He specializes in producing well-researched and accessible content that explains complex technologies and market trends to both general readers and industry professionals.

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