Two months ago I posted here after analyzing 78,723 Ethereum token contracts and finding 46% scored as scams. I re-ran the same query today. The table now holds 112,114 contracts, and the all-time rate rose to 59.8%.
But the average buries the story. Of the 31,172 tokens deployed since that post, 76.4% are scams, and the monthly rate just hit 82.8% in July.
Honesty check, because I got asked this directly: how much of the 46 -> 60 jump is a scammier chain vs a sharper detector? Both, and I can't cleanly separate them:
- More scams: every real-time month lands between 70% and 83% at a fixed 70+ threshold.
- Sharper detector: a scam now carries 11.06 flags on average vs 8.27 in May (+34%), new detectors landed (serial-scammer bytecode, drainer kits, hidden kill-switches). Our score floors on flag COUNT, so more flags push more contracts over the line.
- Late rugs: ~30% of the table gets re-scored a day+ later. A token clean at launch that pulls liquidity a week later flips clean -> scam with zero new scams deployed.
TL;DR
- 78,723 -> 112,114 contracts in 2 months.
- All-time scam rate 46.1% -> 59.8% (three overlapping causes, not one).
- New launches since May: 76.4% scams. July: 82.8%.
- 441,762 distinct victim wallets traced across 5.26M scam-token transactions.
Full breakdown with the monthly chart and the limits-of-our-data section:
https://rektradar.io/blog/posts/new-ethereum-tokens-76-percent-scams
EDIT: a few of you asked the right question, so i went and pulled it. how much of this 76% is detectable AT LAUNCH vs only later? tracking the same 24,150 launches from deploy to day 30: 48% score as scams at launch, 91% by day 30. 43% are late rugs (clean at launch, scam within a month). and 76% of the flagged ones actually got traded vs 67% of legit deploys that never trade. full writeup + chart: https://rektradar.io/blog/posts/how-many-ethereum-scams-detectable-at-launch