Scammers have found a way to destroy tokens in Solana wallets just seconds after they’re bought, leaving users pretty shocked.
Solana scam
A Solana community member, known as Slorg in the social media, revealed that scammers are exploiting a feature within Solana’s system to wipe out users’ tokens.
This tool called the “Permanent Delegate” extension, which is part of Solana’s Token 2022 standard, and it’s designed to allow certain actions like retrieving misplaced tokens, is now being misused to burn tokens right after a transaction is made.
The scammers lure users into swapping for a token named RED, which includes this dangerous extension.
Just seven seconds after the transaction, all the purchased tokens vanish. Sh*t.
Solana self custody, but others can access to the wallets?
The ability to burn tokens has pretty serious implications. It was initially intended for legitimate uses, such as fixing mistakes or automating payments, but as Solana’s website itself warns, this tool can easily be turned against users.
Scammers might burn tokens simply to create chaos or to manipulate the token’s market value.
By reducing the number of tokens in circulation, they could pump prices, making it harder for others to sell and driving up their own profits.
Slorg shared that some scammers are content with small gains, but when repeated many times, these small profits add up to thousands of dollars each week. And small scams are still scams.
The Solana feature what shouldn’t exist?
This isn’t the first time such a tactic was used, and it’s likely that more users will fall victim if they aren’t careful.
Scammers continue to experiment with new strategies, always looking for ways to exploit the system.
Security experts from Beosin and PeckShield also weighed in, suggesting that these scammers may be trying to manipulate the supply of tokens to influence prices and take advantage of related DeFi protocols.
To help users protect themselves, platforms like Jupiter and RugCheck already introduced alerts for when the Permanent Delegate extension is active in a smart contract.
