Половина победителей розыгрыша PancakeSwap связана с мошеннической схемой Translation: Half of PancakeSwaps prize winners linked to fraudulent scheme

Approximately half of the 1,700 wallets that won in the recent PancakeSwap lottery are interconnected and are believed to have colluded. This conclusion was reached by Cointelegraph.

At the beginning of July, the DEX announced a competition that involved projects launched on the Binance Alpha platform. Each project contributed $50,000 to the prize pool.

To qualify for the rewards, traders needed to achieve a specified trading volume with the sponsoring tokens on PancakeSwap. The total prize pool was divided into three categories: $2,000, $5,000, and $10,000. A single participant could win prizes for all five tokens, but only once for each token. The maximum reward a single wallet could receive was capped at $2,500.

Initially, the competition was scheduled to conclude on July 27, but it was extended until August 5.

It turns out that at least 800 of the «randomly» selected addresses were actively interacting with one another. They were transferring BNB between each other to artificially inflate the volume needed for the lottery conditions.

Right after their «victory,» the wallets transferred remaining tokens to the next participant in the scheme.

«The wallets are directly connected, and all of them won. The likelihood of such occurrences is nearly zero,» stated a representative from the League of Traders project, one of the lottery sponsors.

For instance, a wallet recognized as a winner, receiving 21,730 LOT, engaged in cycling buying and selling operations of tokens using WBNB on PancakeSwap. Once the required trading volume was reached, it converted all tokens back to BNB and immediately transferred them to the next «winner.»

To fund the sham transactions, the trader used 2.7 BNB ($2,130), which arrived at their account less than a minute before the trading activities started from another address. The latter also appeared on the winners list but under the MORE token category.

Despite requests for comment, PancakeSwap representatives have not provided an update on the situation. Meanwhile, the largest DEX in the BNB Chain network has completed its third competition, with a total prize pool of $300,000, announcing 2,040 «random» winners.

Recall that in August, the trading platform launched perpetual swaps based on shares of Apple, Tesla, and Amazon.