The scam that doesn’t rug: How $VLAD farms its victims

When hackers hijacked Robinhood’s CEO’s X account, they did not run the usual smash-and-grab. They launched a token whose liquidity is locked forever, un-ruggable by design, and are collecting trading fees from it in perpetuity. The rug pull just evolved into a yield product, and the anti-scam infrastructure built the machine. Summary Hackers compromised Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev’s X account on Thursday and promoted Vladhood ($VLAD) as the “official mascot” of Robinhood Chain, drawing 175,000 views in under 20 minutes and $22 million in trading volume. The operation was premeditated, not opportunistic: the token contract deployed 46 minutes before the hacked post, through the Pons launchpad, with Tenev’s own X profile listed as the token’s official website. The mechanism is the story: Pons locks a token’s liquidity permanently, making rug pulls impossible, but lets creators claim trading fees, so the attacker farms income from every trade, roughly $59,000 claimed in the first hours and still accruing, atop total proceeds estimated at $1.2-1.3 million. The design inverts a decade of scam economics: instead of one exit event, the scammer holds a perpetual annuity on victim activity, a...