Kokomo Finance
Summary
Kokomo Finance was a purported non-custodial lending and borrowing protocol launched on the Optimism blockchain on March 25, 2023. Within approximately 24 hours of launch, its developers executed a deliberate exit scam, stealing approximately $4 to $4.5 million in user funds through smart contract manipulation. The project was subsequently linked by on-chain investigator ZachXBT to a serial scam ring responsible for over $20 million in losses across multiple DeFi protocols.
Connected Entities
1 entitiesTimeline(6 events)
2023-03-25
Kokomo Finance launches on Optimism, offering non-custodial lending and borrowing of WBTC, ETH, USDT, USDC, DAI, and native KOKO token.
2023-03-26
Developers execute exit scam: deployer address 0x41be deploys malicious cBTC contract, manipulates reward functions, drains approximately $4–4.5 million in user funds across Optimism, Arbitrum, and BSC. KOKO token crashes ~97%. Website and all social media accounts deleted.
2023-03-26
CertiK publicly flags the incident via its alert system, identifying the attack as an exit scam and the largest rug pull observed on Optimism at that time.
2023-03-31
CertiK publishes full post-mortem analysis, documenting technical attack flow, wallet addresses, and fund distribution across chains.
2023-11-01
ZachXBT issues warning about Lendora Protocol on Scroll network, connecting it to the same scam group behind Kokomo Finance, Magnate, and Solfire.
2024-04-14
ZachXBT publicly exposes Leaper Finance on Blast as the scam ring's latest operation, seeded with ~$1 million laundered from prior scams. Total ring losses identified exceed $20 million. Scammers taunt ZachXBT on X before deactivating accounts.
Decision Log
- hash: J52DtyrvidVCPrACaeaoupiG68szBZyftRrieZ7Pd2Db
This investigation is cryptographically anchored to the Solana blockchain and source URLs are archived via the Internet Archive.
model: claude-sonnet-4-6
generated: 5/4/2026, 2:54:43 AM
last updated: 5/28/2026, 3:34:40 AM
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