Collapse of the Aladdin Ponzi scheme: A meticulously planned scam
On June 22, 2025, the project named 'Origin Aladdin' completely collapsed, leaving 370,000 investors trapped in a lock-up hell, with $2 billion turned to dust. The glamorous facade of 382 days collapsed abruptly under the pretext of 'system upgrades'.
Last night, the withdrawal function was permanently locked, and the interface only displayed a cold countdown—179 days 23 hours 59 minutes, as if mocking countless investors to 'please patiently wait for payment'. However, this disaster did not come suddenly, but had been foreshadowed months ago.
Funds locked up and suspicious transactions
In March of this year, the locked amount of Origin Aladdin exceeded $2 billion, yet signs of abnormal operations began to surface. Data showed that within just 72 hours, the top 50 wallet addresses quietly transferred out $230 million. Among them, the core address 0x9c3... transferred 18 million USDT to a shell exchange registered in the Bahamas through 47 transactions.
Even more shocking is that the project party once claimed a '1:1 USDT backing' reserve pool, which had already initiated a 'dynamic siphoning' mode six months ago—whenever a new user injected funds, a portion of the old users' stablecoins would be quietly transferred away. This predatory operation planted a time bomb for the later collapse.
Plagiarized smart contracts
In-depth investigations by the tech community have revealed deeper dark secrets. Of the 137 smart contracts of Origin Aladdin, 82 directly plagiarized code templates from the infamous PlusToken scam of 2019.
The remaining contracts included suspicious designs such as forged multi-signatures, controllable backdoor addresses, and dynamic yield adjustments. The project party's bragging about the 'three-times burst algorithm' was actually just a Ponzi patch mechanism of 'as funds inflow decreases, the yield decreases'. This also explains why the platform's daily yield dropped from 1.2% in March to 0.3%, yet there were still investors blindly pouring in.
Fake brand packaging
The marketing tactics of Origin Aladdin can be described as a carefully orchestrated drama. The so-called Dubai 'global launch conference' was verified to have had less than 30 attendees, with the rest being temporary actors earning about 420 yuan per day. The project party claimed to cooperate with SWIFT Bank, but the related documents were purely forged, with no on-chain evidence of any linkage.
And that big screen advertisement in Times Square, New York, was nothing more than a temporary display bought for a few hundred dollars, yet packaged as a false impression of 'gaining favor from NASDAQ'. These 'high-end' appearances were merely meant to attract more unsuspecting investors into the game.
The blindness and greed of participants
If the fraud of the project party is infuriating, then the behavior of the participants is even more lamentable. A chat record from a disbanded Aladdin 'VIP group' shows that even when withdrawals were largely blocked, 43% of members were actively recruiting others. They were not unaware of the risks, but firmly believed they would not be the 'last one standing'.
That classic line - 'bring in two more people and you can unlock withdrawals' - has become the death spell of the Ponzi circle, driving them to push their friends and family into the abyss. This blind greed allows the scam to continue spreading on the brink of collapse.
Five typical signals of a Ponzi scheme
Looking back at this scam, Origin Aladdin perfectly illustrates the five major characteristics of a Ponzi scheme:
Super high yield: Daily returns up to 1.2%, far exceeding the reasonable range of real DeFi projects.
Forced lock-up and countdown: Creating a sense of urgency of 'miss it and it's gone forever', while actually manipulating the withdrawal pace.
False brand exposure: Creating the illusion of 'authoritative endorsement' through fabricated international cooperation and advertising.
Fake smart contract security: Using technical jargon to cover up the vulnerabilities and fraudulent nature of the code.
Hierarchical promotion and referral commissions: A naked pyramid scheme, relying on new recruits to maintain the cash flow.
The collapse of Origin Aladdin was neither a hacker attack nor a system failure, but a meticulously designed 'chronic harvesting scheme' from day one. The evaporation of $2 billion and the despair of 370,000 people were merely the inevitable results of this scam.
The Aladdin that has fallen today is just one corpse among many Ponzi schemes, and the next one may already be brewing. If you are still chasing the myth of 'guaranteed profits' and 'daily fortunes', then the day of reckoning is probably not far off. In the crypto world, only caution and rationality can prevent you from becoming a victim of scams.