The 21-week running total now stands at $602,689,131 — crossing the $600M milestone. On average, retail investors on PancakeSwap V2 have lost $28.7M every single week of 2026.

Week-over-Week: More Rugs, Lower Value Per Rug

The divergence between fraud value (-15.7%) and rug event count (+24.4%) is the most important signal in the W21 data. These two metrics usually move together — more events mean more extraction. When they diverge, it indicates a structural shift in who is operating and how.

What the Divergence Means

In W20, a small number of large-scale operators extracted high value per pool — the removed-to-added liquidity ratio was 1.75x, meaning creators removed $1.75 for every $1 they seeded. In W21 that ratio dropped to 1.47x, but rug event volume surged to 6,768 — the highest count since Week 13.

This pattern suggests two things happening simultaneously. First, the high-value operators from W20 partially exited or reduced activity after a high-extraction week — consistent with the compression-then-spike-then-compress cycle visible across the full 21-week dataset. Second, a new wave of lower-sophistication operators entered, attracted by the same market sentiment that drove W20’s spike. More actors, running smaller schemes, producing higher event volume but lower total extraction per event.

The 1.47x ratio is still significantly above 1.0x — creators are still removing 47% more than they add. Combined with the highest rug event count in eight weeks, W21 is not a sign of the fraud industry cooling down. It is a sign of it broadening.

RUG PULL DETECTOR V3 — FREE

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Behavioral analysis of contract creators + smart contract code inspection. Handles pools and individual tokens. No signup required. For businesses, subscribe to the API. For AI agents, X402 protocol is enabled.

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21-Week Running Total: $602.7M

Week 21 pushes the cumulative total past the $600M milestone — $602,689,131 extracted from retail investors on PancakeSwap V2 in 21 weeks of 2026.

The 5-week trailing average (W17–W21) sits at $22.4M — below the 21-week mean of $28.7M, but the rug event count trend is climbing. For the full methodology and the original 20-week dataset that trained Rug Pull Detector V3, see our $569M PancakeSwap V2 analysis.

How to Protect Yourself

With 6,768 rug pull events in a single week, the probability of any random new pool being fraudulent remains extremely high. ChainAware’s free tools screen any pool or token in under two minutes:

• Rug Pull Detector V3 — behavioral analysis of the contract creator + smart contract code inspection. 90.1% prediction accuracy. Free, no signup.
• Fraud Detector — full behavioral history of any deployer wallet. 98% accuracy.
• Wallet Auditor — for P2P transactions. Audit any receiving wallet before sending funds.

NEXT WEEK

Week 22 Data Published Every Monday

ChainAware publishes fresh PancakeSwap V2 rug pull data every week — pool creation, rug events, fraud value, and week-over-week analysis. Follow the archive for every weekly update.

→ Follow the Rug Pull News archive

About This Tracker

The ChainAware Weekly Rug Pull Tracker measures the most basic, mathematically verifiable form of rug pull on PancakeSwap V2: a contract creator adds liquidity (Mint event), retail investors buy in, and the creator removes more than they added (Burn event). The difference is confirmed retail loss. This definition is deliberately conservative — it excludes LP token transfer rug pulls, unlocked token sell-offs, honeypot contracts, and associated wallet extraction. The numbers reported here represent the confirmed floor. For complete methodology, see chainaware.ai/resources/rugpull-verification .

The post $32.4M Extracted in Week 21 — More Rugs, Lower Value Per Rug first appeared on ChainAware.ai.

This is the ChainAware Weekly Rug Pull Tracker — published every week, covering PancakeSwap V2 on BNB Chain. The numbers come from ChainAware’s on-chain analysis: every pool where a contract creator added liquidity and then removed more than they added. The difference is retail money. Gone.

Week-over-Week: The Biggest Single-Week Jump in 20 Weeks

Week 20 stands out sharply against the four weeks that preceded it. After a sustained low-activity period running from Week 16 through Week 19 — where weekly extraction averaged just $15M — Week 20 delivered a 191% spike. This is the largest week-over-week percentage increase in the entire 20-week dataset.

What the W20 Spike Tells Us

Four consecutive low weeks followed by a sharp resurgence is a recognizable pattern in this dataset. It appeared after the W4 peak ($53.4M) when extraction compressed through W8 before partially recovering. It appeared again after W13 when extraction declined through W19 before snapping back in W20.

The compression-then-spike pattern reflects the operational rhythm of professional rug pull operators. Low-sentiment periods reduce retail capital inflows into new pools — making large extractions less profitable. Operators compress their activity, reduce deployment volume, and wait. When market sentiment recovers and retail capital returns to speculative DeFi activity, operators re-accelerate. The W20 spike is not an anomaly. It is the beginning of a new extraction cycle.

Two data points support this reading. First, total pools created jumped from 9,777 in W19 to 10,752 in W20 — a 10% increase in deployment volume alongside the 191% increase in fraud value. Operators deployed more pools AND extracted more per pool simultaneously. Second, the ratio of removed-to-added liquidity widened sharply: W19 was 1.50x (removed/added), W20 was 1.79x. Operators are extracting a higher fraction of the available liquidity per pool — a signal of more aggressive execution.

RUG PULL DETECTOR V3 — FREE

Check Any Pool Before You Invest — 90.1% Accuracy

Behavioral analysis of contract creators + smart contract code inspection. Handles pools and individual tokens. No signup required. For businesses, subscribe to the API. For AI agents, X402 protocol is enabled.

→ Run a Free Check at chainaware.ai/rugpull

20-Week Running Total: $569M and Counting

Week 20 closes the first 20-week measurement period of 2026. The cumulative picture is stark:

The W20 spike pushes the 5-week trailing average (W16–W20) to $20.2M — below the 20-week mean of $28.5M, but trending sharply upward. If the W20 resurgence continues into W21, the trailing average will recover toward the historical mean within two weeks. For the full 20-week methodology and dataset, see our complete $569M PancakeSwap V2 rug pull analysis.

How to Protect Yourself

Every rug pull event in this dataset was preventable. Not by avoiding DeFi — but by checking before investing. ChainAware’s free tools take under two minutes per token:

• Rug Pull Detector V3 — paste any pool address or token contract. V3 runs behavioral analysis of the contract creator AND inspects the smart contract code. 90.1% prediction accuracy. Free, no signup.
• Fraud Detector — paste the deployer wallet address. Checks the full on-chain behavioral history of the person behind the contract. 98% accuracy.
• Wallet Auditor — for P2P transactions. Audit any receiving wallet before sending irreversible funds.

For DApps that need to screen wallets at connection automatically, ChainAware’s Transaction Monitoring Agent deploys via Google Tag Manager in 12 minutes with no code changes — screening every connecting wallet in real time and blocking bad actors before any transaction begins.

NEXT WEEK

Week 21 Data Published Every Monday

ChainAware publishes fresh PancakeSwap V2 rug pull data every week — pool creation, rug events, fraud value, and week-over-week analysis. Bookmark this page or follow ChainAware on X to get each week’s numbers as they drop.

→ Follow ChainAware at chainaware.ai

About This Tracker

The ChainAware Weekly Rug Pull Tracker measures the most basic, mathematically verifiable form of rug pull on PancakeSwap V2: a contract creator adds liquidity (Mint event), retail investors buy in, and the creator removes more than they added (Burn event). The difference is confirmed retail loss.

This definition is deliberately conservative — it excludes more complex extraction methods (LP token transfer rug pulls, unlocked token sell-offs, honeypot contracts, associated wallet extraction). The numbers reported here represent the confirmed floor. Real total losses are higher. For the complete methodology, see chainaware.ai/resources/rugpull-verification .

Coverage will expand to additional DEXes and chains in coming weeks. Follow the Rug Pull News archive for every weekly update.

The post $39.9M Extracted in Week 20 — PancakeSwap V2 Weekly Rug Pull Tracker first appeared on ChainAware.ai.