Prior rug/exit-scam affiliation
Venus Protocol's assessment for RD-F-115 — scored yellow on the v1.7.0 rubric. The evidence below is the curator's reasoning for this score.
Evidence summary #
Unresolved 2021 XVS price-manipulation insider allegations. An anonymous account (@venus.insider on Medium, corroborated by coinfomania.com reporting) identified on-chain circumstantial evidence connecting: (a) the primary XVS manipulation wallet (0xef044206db68e40520bfa82d45419d498b4bc7bf) to the same Binance deposit address used by the Venus team for a $3.5M buy-back in April 2021; (b) the January 2021 Cannon Incident exploiter wallet to the same Binance deposit address; (c) Swipe's ecosystem reserves wallet to the same address. Venus official post-mortem stated 'no insider trading'; the Swipe team and Joselito Lizarondo subsequently departed from Venus. The allegations were never formally investigated by a third party and the shared-deposit-address evidence was not directly rebutted. This is unverified but rises above noise given the convergent on-chain evidence. Not a confirmed rug — scored yellow (elevated caution) rather than red (confirmed affiliation).
Sources #
- URLVenus.IO Exploit - An Inside Job | Medium (@venus.insider)Medium - Venus Insider anonymous allegationsretrieved 2026-04-28
- Blockchain Data Suggests Venus Protocol Team Behind $100M ExploitCoinfomania - Blockchain data suggests Venus team behind exploitretrieved 2026-04-28
- Binance Smart Chain Venus Protocol liquidations - possible price manipulation | The BlockThe Block - 2021 XVS liquidation eventretrieved 2026-04-28
Methodology #
Determine whether any team member is linked via verified OSINT to a prior rug or exit-scam-labeled protocol.
See the full factor methodology and distribution across all protocols →