Prior rug/exit-scam affiliation
A dev identity & insider risk factor in the v1.7.0 rubric. Measured per protocol on a s cadence.
Methodology how we score#
What this measures
This factor records whether any team member is linked via verified OSINT to a prior rug pull or exit-scam-labeled protocol — specifically, a protocol where curator rug lists, post-mortem analysis, or law enforcement records attribute deliberate team-orchestrated theft. Measurement is manual curator OSINT cross-referencing team handles, wallet addresses, and social accounts against maintained rug databases (rekt.news, DeFiYield, Chainalysis labels, and curator-maintained lists). Category 7 context: prior rug affiliation is the most direct insider-risk signal available for protocols where no exploit has yet occurred.
Why it matters
Exit scams are rarely isolated incidents — teams that successfully rug one protocol often attempt to launch another under a new identity, leveraging the proceeds of the prior scam to seed credibility. The Hope Finance incident ($1.86M) showed all three multisig signers coordinating a drain. Merlin DEX demonstrated how a nominally "audited" protocol with a backdoor-embedded privileged EOA constitutes a planned insider exit. The curator rug database is the primary mechanism for detecting serial bad actors before they acquire new user funds.
Green / Yellow / Red
Green is scored when OSINT confirms no team member has any association with a prior rug-labeled protocol across all discoverable handles, wallet addresses, and social accounts. Yellow applies when a team member has a distant or unconfirmed association — for instance, they contributed code to a protocol that was later rugged but are not attributed as a principal. Red is scored when any verified OSINT trail links a core team member (founder, lead developer, multisig signer) to a prior confirmed rug or exit scam.
Common gray cases
Gray is assigned when the team is fully pseudonymous and OSINT cannot progress beyond handles that cannot be cross-referenced against rug databases, or when a potential match exists but curator confidence falls below the attribution threshold.
Notable historical examples
No cross-hacked incidents currently linked in database for this factor.
Measurement what to look for#
Determine whether any team member is linked via verified OSINT to a prior rug or exit-scam-labeled protocol.