Summary
Rivus DAO was a Bittensor-focused liquid staking protocol on Ethereum that raised approximately $4.23 million in an April 2024 IDO before suffering a rugpull classified by DefiLlama as a Third-party Dev Backdoor Exploit on September 16, 2024. The incident effectively drained protocol TVL from its operational peak to under $2,500, and the RIVUS governance token lost more than 99.8% of its all-time high value. On-chain investigator ZachXBT has flagged this entity; the project attempted a relaunch in October 2024 but is currently listed as inactive with no trading activity.
Connected Entities
1 entitiesTimeline(6 events)
2024-04-02
RIVUS token IDO begins on Fjord Foundry LBP, raising ~$4.23M at ~$0.0426/token.
2024-04-09
RIVUS token officially launches on-chain.
2024-04-12
RIVUS reaches all-time high of ~$0.1049–$0.1284, implying ~$57M FDV.
2024-09-16
DefiLlama records rugpull via Third-party Dev Backdoor Exploit. TVL collapses to ~$2,207.
2024-09-24
Official Rivus DAO X account announces V2 relaunch planned for October 1, 2024.
2026-04-28
RIVUS stops trading on all CoinGecko-listed exchanges. Website returns 404.
Decision Log
- hash: HDBezzumavKaR4kvn7dBozuQtKVyz1jypkBRUxrBBwK8
This investigation is cryptographically anchored to the Solana blockchain and source URLs are archived via the Internet Archive.
model: claude-sonnet-4-5
generated: 5/4/2026, 2:54:29 AM
last updated: 5/28/2026, 8:25:06 PM
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