Extrochain: How a ‘Sold-Out’ Token Presale Drained $61,400 in Minutes
Extrochain looked like a real Layer-2 project — an ‘audited’ badge, a countdown, a busy Telegram. Minutes after the presale filled, the contract was drained and the team was gone. A Denver engineer lost $61,400.
Point of Entry
The client found Extrochain in a crypto thread: a polished launchpad, a two-year ‘liquidity lock’ screenshot, an ‘audited’ badge, and a countdown nearly at zero. The Telegram was loud and confident.
He bought into the presale in two transactions — ETH from a hardware wallet, USDC from an exchange — sure he was early to a real project.
Where Custody Broke
Extrochain’s presale contract held an owner-only withdrawal and an uncapped mint. The moment the raise filled, the operators drained the pool, dumped minted tokens against the thin liquidity, and renamed every channel.
The ‘vesting dashboard’ was a static page connected to nothing on-chain. There was never a token to claim.
“I watched the vesting page for two days before I accepted there was no token and no vesting — just a screenshot.”— Marcus T., Denver
The Recovery Ledger
- L01Intake & capture. We logged every transaction hash, the Extrochain presale contract, and the two wallets that funded it.
- L02On-chain trace. The contract’s withdrawals led to a deployer wallet that fanned proceeds across four hops within the hour the liquidity vanished.
- L03Off-ramp identification. Two hops ended at deposit addresses we attributed to compliant exchanges; the rest crossed a bridge into a mixer.
- L04Attestation & freeze. We filed a documented trace and freeze request with both exchanges, tying the deposits to the Extrochain drain.
- L05Recovery. One exchange froze the funds still in custody and, after the client’s identity was verified, released the recoverable tranche.
A partial result. The funds bridged through a mixer were beyond reach; we recovered the tranche the operators left sitting inside a compliant exchange.
Breach Signatures
- A countdown timer pushing you to deposit before you can verify anything.
- An anonymous team and an ‘audit’ badge with no link to a real report.
- A liquidity-lock ‘screenshot’ instead of a verifiable on-chain lock.
- Guaranteed listing and fixed returns no real token can promise.
- A vesting dashboard that shows numbers but never settles a transaction.
Bought into a presale that vanished?
The faster a rug-pull is traced, the more of it sits still long enough to freeze. Bring us the contract and the transactions.
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