1
Another rug pull incident has been flagged by a blockchain security firm, this time, it's a Bitcoin bridge project. Bybit/flickr.com

KEY POINTS

  • The project's website is down as of Wednesday, and its X account has since been deleted
  • CertiK said project held around $1.4 million in ETH across three wallets
  • RiskOnBlast rug pulled on the Blast ecosystem late last month

Bitcoin project OrdiZK, which was supposed to bridge the Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and Solana (SOL) blockchains, has gone dark – taking with it in an apparent rug pull some $1.4 million worth in Ether, and marking only the second crypto rug pull project in less than two weeks.

Blockchain security and monitoring firm CertiK on Tuesday alerted cryptocurrency users about the "exit scam on @OrdiZK_." It said the blockchain project's website and social media accounts have since been deleted. It initially said that OrdiZK held $1 million worth of ETH "from dumping tokens, removing ETH from project contracts and taxes from sales."

CertiK later said the project's three wallets held approximately $1.4 million worth in ETH, including some $263,000 in ETH on the OrdiZK Treasury.

On X (formerly Twitter), the @ordiZK_ account no longer exists and its website displays an error notice that the site can't be reached as of writing.

The project was initially designed to allow for the transfer for BRC-20 tokens to ERC-20 and vice versa. It gained traction in December when the token hit an all-time high of $0.0107, as per Cointelegraph. Following CertiK's flagging of the project, the token has crashed to zero.

A "rug pull" is a common cryptocurrency scam wherein a development team or creator promotes a project such as a new token or nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and vanish with the hopeful investors' money.

Several users have since taken to X to reveal they lost money on the OrdiZK project.

One user claims to have lost $500 on the project, while another said the developer has already taken investors' funds. "I have lost everything, and I don't feel good at all. This is all my investment," one user said. Another user said he lost $6,000 in the exit scam.

This comes just days after Blast ecosystem project RiskOnBlast disappeared after raising some $1.25 million worth of ETH. The project was marketed as a gambling and exchange platform, gaining interest from investors who dished out more than 420 ETH to see the project succeed.

As was the case with OrdiZK, RiskOnBlast's social media accounts were deleted and its website vanished. It is known as the first rug pull incident on the Blast ecosystem after the Ethereum layer-2 platform tagged the project's potential as "undeniable" when it announced RiskOnBlast as a competitor in its Big Bang developer contest.

Read more