A fraud in which a project’s operators withdraw pooled liquidity or exercise a retained privilege to expropriate holders, having marketed the project as legitimate.
Why it matters
Distinguished from an exploit by intent: the operators are the attacker. Conisec does not characterise a project as a rug pull without an official finding — that is a legal conclusion about intent, and it is not one a publication should reach on its own.
What you can check
What is observable in advance is concentration and control: how much supply sits in how few addresses, whether liquidity is locked and for how long, and whether the contract retains functions that let an owner mint, pause, or block transfers. All of that is readable before there is anything to report.
Not advice. Definitions are for understanding, not instruction. Nothing here is financial, legal, tax or security advice.