PolyButterfly Flies Away

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PolyButterfly

PolyButterfly was great at marketing, and produced a great smart contract with a backdoor that allowed them to drain liquidity from all investors. After executing their new functionality, they then decided to disappear.

There did not appear to have been any resolution, so it would appear that investors are just out by the funds they participated with.

This is a global/international case not involving a specific country.

About PolyButterfly

PolyButterfly aimed "to be a self-sustaining DeFi protocol consisting of Yield Aggregators, Swap, Lending/Borrowing, Structured Products and even Games." It was an "autonomous #Defi protocol on $MATIC. Just enter the #ETH address and 40 #airdrops will be sent to the first 500 people. * Only accounts that have been created for more than 3 months." "PolyButterfly - A next evolution DeFi on Polygon. The most popular AMM on Polygon by user count! Earn POLLEN through yield farming, then stake it in pools to earn more tokens!" "@PolyButterflyFi aims to be a DeFi protocol consisting of Yield Aggregators, Swap, Lending/Borrowing, Structured Products and even Games. Stake your $GEN to earn $POLLEN!"

"While the net amount of losses is nowhere near that of the largest DeFi rug pulls on Ethereum (ETH) and Binance Smart Chain (BSC), the activity of malefactors on Polygon has gained traction in Q2, 2021."

"[T]he PolyButterfly code had a dangerous backdoor that allows the product team to remove customers' liquidity." "Earlier this morning our scanners noticed that a function to adjust the weight of a pool could also change the token of that pool. Our beloved dev Carlos quickly pointed out the dangers of doing this." "Just one extra parameter allows the owner to steal all funds. This happens often and our scanners almost always find it, but this project looked promising so we wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt."

"(1) Create pool with a token only you own and deposit a bazzilion tokens. (2) Update the new pool's token to MATIC. (3) Withdraw the matic with your existing balance. (4) Repeat 3,4 for all tokens."

"We proposed a solution: Give ownership to a proxy contract that does not allow to change the token of an existing pool." "After some words they deployed it but with this extra line of code, what does it do: It allows the Proxy to give the ownership to another wallet. Thus the proxy solution we provided them can be circumvented completely." "At this point we were pretty certain they were playing with us, but we wanted to make sure so we hinted at this functionality in the hopes that they would explain why they added it."

On "June 5, 2021, Polygon-based decentralized financial protocol PolyButterfly vanished." "After users noticed that PolyButterfly had disappeared, nearly all social media platforms also disappeared. Specifically, the website was shut down and the Twitter account and Telegram chat series were deleted."

"According to RugDoc DeFi transparency enthusiasts, scammers stole more than 600 Ethers, or over $1,500,000."

"And that’s how scammers are getting ahold of investor’s money."

This is a global/international case not involving a specific country.

The background of the exchange platform, service, or individuals involved, as it would have been seen or understood at the time of the events.

Include:

• Known history of when and how the service was started.
• What problems does the company or service claim to solve?
• What marketing materials were used by the firm or business?
• Audits performed, and excerpts that may have been included.
• Business registration documents shown (fake or legitimate).
• How were people recruited to participate?
• Public warnings and announcements prior to the event.

Don't Include:

• Any wording which directly states or implies that the business is/was illegitimate, or that a vulnerability existed.
• Anything that wasn't reasonably knowable at the time of the event.

There could be more than one section here. If the same platform is involved with multiple incidents, then it can be linked to a main article page.

The Reality

This sections is included if a case involved deception or information that was unknown at the time. Examples include:

• When the service was actually started (if different than the "official story").
• Who actually ran a service and their own personal history.
• How the service was structured behind the scenes. (For example, there was no "trading bot".)
• Details of what audits reported and how vulnerabilities were missed during auditing.

What Happened

The specific events of the loss and how it came about. What actually happened to cause the loss and some of the events leading up to it.

Key Event Timeline - PolyButterfly Flies Away

Date	Event	Description
June 4th, 2021 12:00:00 AM	Main Event	Expand this into a brief description of what happened and the impact. If multiple lines are necessary, add them here.

Total Amount Lost

The total amount lost has been estimated at $1,500,000 USD.

How much was lost and how was it calculated? If there are conflicting reports, which are accurate and where does the discrepancy lie?

Immediate Reactions

How did the various parties involved (firm, platform, management, and/or affected individual(s)) deal with the events? Were services shut down? Were announcements made? Were groups formed?

Ultimate Outcome

What was the end result? Was any investigation done? Were any individuals prosecuted? Was there a lawsuit? Was any tracing done?

Total Amount Recovered

There do not appear to have been any funds recovered in this case.

What funds were recovered? What funds were reimbursed for those affected users?

Ongoing Developments

What parts of this case are still remaining to be concluded?

Prevention Policies

One of the key challenges with an open system is that anyone can join and start a project.

Having all of the funds stored in a liquidity pool which can be accessed by a single anonymous person is never a good idea.

Were the expectations of regulators reasonable, there would be no reason that any platform would ever need to launch outside the system.