A project promising to build a decentralized casino managed to raise $33&nbsp;million, despite an anonymous team that had exhibited several instances of shady behavior throughout ZKasino's development. The project promised that everyone who <button class="define-target" id="bridge">bridged</button> ETH to their <button class="define-target" id="layer-2">layer-2</button> chain would be able to receive their ETH back 1:1 in thirty days.<p>Instead, the project's creators transferred those more than 10,500 ETH ($33&nbsp;million) to Lido, an Ethereum <button class="define-target" id="staking">staking</button> service. As for the "return" of funds, the project team indeed followed through with their promises to return the crypto... except instead of ETH, depositors received the project's native token, ZKAS, which would vest over a period of 15 months. The project announced that they had calculated the ZKAS distribution based on a discounted rate, "as a favour to our users who have bridged to participate in the ecosystem". Gee, thanks!</p><p>One investor in the project wrote, "We made a mistake investing in Zkasino early. ... [I]t sounds like a scam, but 95% of crypto consists of such crap. With memecoins pumping every day, people believe this could be the next one."</p><p>It seems that ZKasino's creators have links to other crypto scams, including a failed "ZigZagExchange", which raised around $15&nbsp;million that was allegedly misallocated to work on the ZKasino project. Crypto sleuth zachxbt had also described the team as "proven bad actors" in December, listing multiple instances in which they had avoided making promised payments.</p><p>After the rug pull, the project's planned IDO on Ape Terminal and AIT Launchpad were canceled, and MEXC (which had invested in the project's seed round) canceled the token listing.</p>

"ZKasino Users Plead for Refunds as $33M of Bridged Ether Sent to Lido"

"ZKasino launch leads to widespread outrage as $33 million promised to investors is sent to Lido"

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