You may have come across posts on Exchange platforms like Binance, Coinbase, or other media outlets about Retik Finance. It's currently in its pre-sale phase 7 (considering the day of this post) and seems to be rapidly attracting millions of enthusiastic investors, hoping to have found the "gold mine."
What is Retik Finance?
Retik Finance is a DeFi ecosystem providing various financial tools and services, including DeFi debit cards, smart payment gateways, P2P loans, and a secure wallet. The goal is to redefine how people transact in the digital age.
Its main token, RETIK, is built on the Ethereum mainnet, ERC20 standard, with a total supply of 1,000,000,000. The primary function of the RETIK token is to power the Retik Finance ecosystem, driving decentralized transactions and supporting the financial solutions it offers.
CertiK KYC
After accusations of a possible scam by various users in the project's promotional articles, Retik Finance sought verification through CertiK's audit. However, they seem reluctant to reveal their identity, which is unusual for a project aiming to use a global debit card system.
You can verify this excerpt from their site:
Retik DeFi debit cards redefine accessibility and financial security, offering anonymous transactions without the need for KYC, prioritizing user privacy.
Retik DeFi debit cards come with various benefits.
I wonder, how can a card work at ATMs without confirming that I am its owner? And where would this work?
Control over your tokens
Continuing on the Retik Finance project audit, another issue arises. The owner has total control over the tokens.
That is, the anonymous owner can withdraw RETIK tokens from any user and transfer them to their wallet, making the project entirely centralized.
This is what the audit review team stated:
In the contract Ownable, the role _owner has authority over the functions shown in the diagram below. Any compromise to the _owner account may allow the hacker to take advantage of this authority to interfere with governance processes.
In a hypothetical situation, if they were to disappear with investors' tokens after the pre-sale, blaming a supposed hack that accessed this account would be easy, given all this access.
Similarities to RenQ Finance Project
Not long ago, another project emerged with supposed ideas and promises to change how DeFi operates in the real world: RenQ Finance.
Some users also noticed similarities not only in the pre-sale mode but graphical resemblances, from the website layout to their whitepaper. For those who purchased tokens in the sale before the launch, many couldn't redeem their tokens after RENQ trading opened; it currently lacks the intended functionality, and there's less daily news from its owners on platform X (Twitter) as before.
Whitepaper RenQ Finance
CertiK Audit
We can also observe that, like Retik, RenQ doesn't confirm the identity of those responsible, possibly another warning to stay vigilant.
Final Thoughts
In my opinion, there are various factors indicating that the person behind Retik Finance may be involved with the RenQ Finance project. However, I’m not entirely 100% certain about this.
We could consider it merely based on the thematic layout, as many cryptocurrencies have similarities based on another successful one. Still, the same issue with the audit and similar flaws in both projects should be concerning, as both seek total control over tokens, making them entirely centralized.