Uniswap developer AzFlin has been accused of rug-pulling 14 ETH, roughly $26,000, from the FrensTech project on Base within 4 hours of its launch.
UPDATE 13 Aug (08:00UTC): Uniswap CEO Hayden Adams has announced on Twitter that the developer involved in the rugpull no longer works for the company. Adams stated:
“Wanted to let people know this person is no longer with the company. Not behavior we support or condone.”
However, the developer denied these accusations, stating that he only removed the 1 ETH liquidity he added to the project.
The Accusations
UniswapVillain alleged AzFlin, the deployer of FrensTech, rugged the project a few hours after its launch. FrensTech is a memecoin project that riffs off the popular Friend.Tech social network dApp on Base.
According to UniswapVillain, AzFlin removed the ETH from the Base network using HOP. The 14 ETH represents liquidity from fees.
“He sold the tokens he removed from the liquidity even. This is wild to me that someone who is doxxed and works for Uniswap would do this lol,” the allegations added.
Meanwhile, UniswapVillain linked the developer to Uniswap by analyzing the number of employees from the decentralized exchange who followed the project on X.
AzFlin Denies Rugpull Allegation, Calls it FUD
However, AzFlin denied rugging the project despite admitting to creating the token. According to him, he only removed 1 ETH worth of liquidity from the project, which was what he initially contributed.
“Liquidity was locked from the start. I removed 1ETH worth of liquidity that I provided with funds from my own dev wallet,” AzFlin tweeted.
The developer conceded to selling a portion of FRENS tokens extracted from the liquidity pool. AzFlin justified this action by asserting that the original acquisition of the sold tokens was made with personal funds.
“I bought that FRENS used to provide the LP with my OWN money from the dev wallet, so I am entitled to do as I please with it. This FUD is outrageous.”
Calls for Uniswap to Act
However, on-chain transactions suggest that there was a rug pull. After withdrawing the 1 ETH initially, the developer also sold shares before bridging 14 ETH off-chain.
Several crypto community members are calling on Uniswap to act on the issue. Some even pointed to his earlier deleted tweet where he asked whether team members selling coins is technically a rug. But the small amount of stolen funds has led some people to question the developer’s motive.
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Uniswap did not respond to BeInCrypto’s request for comment as of press time.
Meanwhile, this is not the first time a project would be rug pulled on the Coinbase-backed new layer2 network, Base. In July, the BALD memecoin generated high interest and reached a market cap of $85 million before being rug-pulled by its deployer.
However, Base continues to enjoy usage by the community despite the actions of the bad players. The total value of assets locked on the network is gradually approaching $200 million, according to L2Beat data.
Additionally, its active users reached as high as 136,000 on Aug. 11, according to Dune Analytics data.
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