Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev’s X account was recently hacked and used to promote the fake memecoin Vladhood (VLAD), with the hacker making $1.2 million in trading fees.
On July 23, a malicious actor launched the VLAD memecoin on the debuting Robinhood chain (Ethereum Layer-2 network). He then promoted her on the CEO’s X page, calling her the “official mascot of the Robinhood franchise.”
Within hours, the token’s trading volume rose to $22 million. Its price rose by more than 90,000% to trade at around $0.0026. The contract collected 5,266 holders and 137,000 transfers on the Robinhood chain.
In a typical rug pull, the hacker would have absconded with all the liquidity, leaving buyers holding worthless tokens. However, in this scenario, the attacker launched a memecoin using the Pons launchpad. The platform locked in all liquidity but allowed any token creator to withdraw trading fees, which is what this hacker did. By repeatedly calling the fee function, he was able to obtain 650 ETH (worth about $1.2 to $1.3 million at the time).
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Robinhood Communications Users beware From himself. Shortly after, X deleted the post on Vlad’s account and a Robinhood blockchain explorer called the project a potential scam. By then, many fake VLAD tokens had been released by copycat thieves.
source: Robinhood Blockchain Explorer
Notably, Robinhood was recently noted for including memecoins into its ecosystem alongside real world assets (RWAs).
Yesterday’s attack took advantage of this announcement, combined with the memcoin craze and the platform’s low fees, to perform this exploit. It also matched the July 12 hack of Starlink and SpaceX
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