Web3 Rugpulls Plummet in Number but Explode in Scale in 2025: Report

The crypto industry in 2025 has so far recorded fewer scams than 2024, but they’re costing users dramatically more.

Since the beginning of the year, nearly $6 billion has been lost to rugpulls across the web3 ecosystem, according to a new report by crypto analytics firm DappRadar. Around 92% of that — approximately $5.5 billion — is linked to the recent incident with Mantra’s OM token.

In contrast, losses during the same period in early 2024 totaled just $90 million — this marks a 6,499% increase in funds lost year-over-year, the report notes. This is despite a 66% drop in the number of rugpulls to 7 so far in 2025 from 21 incidents in early 2024.

This shift underscores an evolving risk landscape where fewer but more sophisticated scams are arising, the report argues. “Despite increasing awareness and more tools to detect suspicious behavior, rugpulls remain a recurring issue, particularly in DeFi and newly launched token ecosystems,” the report reads.

The case of Mantra

The Mantra Network, a Layer 1 blockchain for tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) has been under fire recently amid allegations of orchestrating what the report describes as one of the “largest individual scams recorded in recent years.”

On Sunday, April 13, the price of Mantra’s OM token decreased by more than 90% in a matter of minutes, for no obvious reason. OM plummeted from $5.5 to a low of $0.35.

OM has since rebounded slightly and is currently trading at $0.66 per token, down about 9% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko data.

The slight rebound is likely tied to the Mantra team’s widely covered token recovery plan, which CEO John Mullin outlined during an April 14 AMA with Cointelegraph. The plan includes a token buyback program and potential supply burns aimed at stabilizing the OM token.