The team of the cryptocurrency project Gemholic was suspected of implementing a liquidity withdrawal scheme (rug pull) and stealing 921 ether worth $3.5 million from investors. The coins remained blocked for more than a year.

Gemholic experienced a major operational failure back in April 2023. Due to a bug in the zkSync smart contract, GemstoneIDO, 921 ETH was locked. The value of the assets at that time was $1.7 million. The Gemholic team turned to zkSync technical specialists for help, who confirmed the safety of the funds and pledged to correct the error.

On June 7, 2024, the zkSync team released update v24, which resolved the smart contract issue and the Gemholic team gained access to locked ethers. Now the value of the coins has grown to $3.5 million. Soon after unfreezing the crypto assets, the company transferred them to an address in Ethereum and deleted its accounts on all social networks.

The founder of Zkmarkets under the pseudonym NSerec criticized blockchain security specialists SolidProof. Gemholic carried out the Know Your Customer (KYC) procedure through the SolidProof service, so the silence of the KYC provider can be considered an attempt to prevent the spread of fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) among investors, the crypto enthusiast claims.

NSerec demanded that SolidProof publicly clarify the situation by admitting incompetence or reporting fraud to law enforcement. If SolidProof continues to ignore the incident, the service cannot be trusted, the founder of Zkmarkets is indignant. He advises victims of the alleged scam to contact crypto exchange Binance, as the initial funding for Gemholic came through that exchange.

Last year, former top manager of the OpenSea trading platform Kevin Pawlak was suspected of organizing a similar $60 million rugpull scheme.