November 25, 2020
1983
0Fake Uniswap Clone Spotted on Google Play
A fake version of the decentralized exchange Uniswap was found in Google Play. It was used to steal assets from users. According to Nuggets News founder Alex Saunders, his friend lost $20,000 because of this app.
Note that currently, Google Play has become a popular channel for distributing cryptocurrency-related malicious apps.
Uniswap does not have an official mobile app, but the exchange’s name is actively used to promote other unrelated and often questionable products.
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What is Uniswap?
Uniswap is a decentralized exchange based on Ethereum, allowing anyone to exchange their ERC20 tokens among themselves. A person doesn’t need to register, confirm his identity, or other things usually required by the exchange.
The peculiarity of ERC20 tokens is that the coins on this standard are interchangeable; they are essentially equal to each other within the Ethereum blockchain. This allows you to exchange them without any problems.
Uniswap was created to solve the liquidity problem faced by conventional cryptocurrency exchanges. Liquidity itself can sell any coin reserves on the platform without significantly affecting the price, which requires many sellers and buyers.
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What’s happening now?
According to preliminary information, the fake application for exchanging ERC-20 Protocol tokens has already been downloaded more than five thousand times.
In the popular app store for Android devices, Goolge Play noticed a fake app that pretends to be the official Uniswap Protocol. The first to report the discovery was in one of the branches of the Ethereum community on the Reddit platform. BeInCrypto checked for the app and confirmed its presence in the search results when requesting “uniswap”.
According to the app description in Google Play, a clone is called Uniswap. It requires the user to enter a mnemonic phrase (seed phrase) from the wallet to exchange digital tokens after installing the app. The cryptocurrency community knows that if a mnemonic phrase is lost or stolen, access to the wallet is lost forever.
At the time of writing, the official website of the Uniswap Protocol has not announced the creation of any mobile application for either Android or iOS devices.
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The subject of special interest
The popular decentralized Finance Protocol Uniswap has long been under the scrutiny of hackers. In early August, tech giant Google inadvertently advertised at least three phishing projects posing as Uniswap.
Meanwhile, Uniswap runs out of the liquidity rewards program, and the project team has yet to comment on its future. Currently, more than $2.4 billion is blocked in four Uniswap liquidity pools. However, as of November 17, the current program for extracting liquidity and issuing rewards for its provision will be discontinued. According to Robert Leshner, founder of the crypto-credit service Compound Finance, the Uniswap community’s slowness can lead to an outflow of liquidity from the DAI, USDC, USDT, and WBTC pools.
What’s wrong with Google Play?
It is noteworthy that Google Play has repeatedly been at the center of a scandal involving fake apps for stealing cryptocurrency. For example, in 2018, about 4 fake applications were discovered for the Neo, Tether, Ethereum, and MetaMask.
Then, in May 2019, the fake Trezor Mobile Wallet app was discovered, which was downloaded about 1 thousand times.
After a series of scandals related to money theft, Google Play tried to remove all fake applications related to the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry.
