The amount of financial losses tied to crypto rug pulls has significantly increased in 2025 despite fewer reported incidents, according to market intelligence firm DappRadar.
Rug pulls are a deceptive scheme in the crypto space where insiders holding large amounts of tokens hype up a project to attract capital, only to suddenly sell all their holdings, essentially killing the token and rendering the project worthless.
In a new report, DappRadar says that the web3 ecosystem has already lost nearly $6 billion to rug pulls in 2025, up by 6,499% from just $90 million during the same period in 2024.
The increase in value lost is largely due to the incident involving the real-world asset (RWA) crypto project Mantra (OM), which accounts for 92% of the losses.
Earlier this month, the OM token plunged from a high of $6.35 to a low of $0.37 after at least 17 wallets transferred 43.6 million OM tokens ($227 million at the time) to crypto exchanges.
“Mantra Network, which presented itself as a legitimate DeFi platform, sits at the crossroads of these trends: a project that marketed utility, operated quietly on-chain, and ultimately collapsed in spectacular fashion.”
But while rug pulls caused more financial damage this year, their frequency has actually dropped. DappRadar says that there were 21 recorded incidents of the scheme in early 2024, but only 7 have so far been reported this year. The figure marks a 66% decrease in frequency year-over-year.
“This shift suggests that rugpulls are becoming less frequent, but far more devastating when they do occur. The scams are increasingly sophisticated, often orchestrated by teams with polished branding and well-planned narratives.”
In early 2024, most rug pulls originated from decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, non-fungible token (NFT) projects and memecoins, while this year, the majority of incidents occurred within the memecoin sector.
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