The team behind cross-chain bridging protocol OrdiZK appears to have stolen $1.4 million worth of ETH from users, after allegedly draining tokens from the project contract and deleting its website and social media accounts.

OrdiZK, a newly launched bridge between Bitcoin and Ethereum using zero-knowledge proofs, has been accused of an exit scam. 

In an X post on March. 4, blockchain security firm CertiK alerted users to the fact that the protocol’s deployer account had dumped a significant amount of its native token OZK on decentralized exchanges, earning $1 million from the sales. These token sales sent the price of OZK down 99% in a matter of minutes. 

#CertiKSkynetAlert 🚨

We have seen an exit scam on @OrdiZK_

Website and social media accounts have been deleted

The deployer holds ~$1m worth of ETH from dumping tokens, removing ETH from project contracts and taxes from sales pic.twitter.com/BzuvSd8oLo

— CertiK Alert (@CertiKAlert) March 5, 2024

CertiK found that the deployer contract removed ether from project contracts, and addresses belonging to the team now hold a total of $1.4 million ether between the deployer, treasury and marketing wallets.

Blockchain data shows that the OZK deployer called the “execute” function on Uniswap’s Universal Router contract, which executes commands in a predetermined input order. The deployer swapped 489 million OZK for ether on March. 4, and then an additional 121 million OXK on March. 4.

OrdiZK’s website has been deleted, along with its X and Telegram accounts, strongly implying that insiders did, in fact, pull off an exit scam. 

Last week, the OrdiZK team had supposedly asked users to migrate their tokens to a new contract ahead of the planned release of a new wallet. 

@OrdiZK_ why are you deleting all posts about the migration? What is going on? All devs just deleted their accounts on X

— Master Money (@M4STERMONEY) March 5, 2024

Since its launch, the project has earned ether by charging a sales tax on transactions that it promised to pay out to holders of the OZK token that staked their holdings with the protocol. 

In just the first two months of 2024, more than $200 million worth of crypto has been stolen through rugpulls and hacks, according to a Feb. 29 report from blockchain security firm Immunefi. The firm found that decentralized finance (DeFi) was the primary target of hackers in February, while centralized platforms did not see a single major attack during the month. 

🚨In February, the damage to crypto projects from hacks and scams decreased to $67 million

as a result of hacker attacks and fraud, the crypto industry lost approximately $67 million in February through 12 different incidents, according to a report by Immunefi

the amount of… pic.twitter.com/Ssy9iRV6H1

— Mazza (@MazzaProject) March 4, 2024