Squid Game

Squid Game was an unauthorised token launched on BNB Chain in October 2021 by anonymous promoters, who claimed it would power a play-to-earn tournament modelled on the Netflix series. It had no connection to Netflix, the show's creators or its rights holders, and Netflix said it was not involved.

Its defining feature was not the price. It was the exit. Buyers could acquire the token freely, while selling required a second token called MARBLES, a restriction the project's own documentation presented as an "anti-dump mechanism". The quoted price reached roughly $2,861 in a market many holders could not leave.

On 1 November 2021, shortly after 13:38 UTC, the liquidity was removed and the token was worth almost nothing within ten minutes. The website, white paper and social accounts disappeared. Contemporary estimates of the amount taken ranged from about $2.1 million to $3.38 million depending on method and timing; Wired's onchain estimate was approximately $3.36 million. The funds were moved onward through Tornado Cash.

This dossier covers two contract phases of one contested identity. They were not built by the same people.

Phase one, the original contract (October 2021, BNB Chain): 0x87230146e138d3f296a9a77e497a2a83012e9bc5

Phase two, presented as Squid Game V2 (2024, omnichain via LayerZero's OFT standard, present on BNB Chain and Base): 0xfafb7581a65a1f554616bf780fc8a8acd2ab8c9b

The original contract was never retired. A later, self-described founderless community continues to use it, and it still carries liquidity and daily trading. A separate community promoted the V2 migration, describing that project as volunteer-led, community-owned and leaderless. Those are self-descriptions rather than verified governance facts.

The migration acquired its own incident. On 8 April 2024 an attacker exploited faulty logic in the migration's swap contract using a flash loan, taking assets estimated at around $87,000.

Not established: the identity of the original 2021 promoters, and any arrest, criminal charge, conviction, civil judgment or settlement tied to the original operation. Binance said in November 2021 that it was investigating, blacklisting related addresses and preparing to share findings with law enforcement. Journalists have separately pursued identification. No verified legal outcome appears in the public record reviewed for this page.

Also not established: that the anonymous 2021 developers ever returned, that the promised game was completed, or that any current version has Netflix authorisation. The promised tournament never launched.

Squid Game-themed scam tokens have recurred whenever the franchise returns to attention, including a wave on other chains around the release of the show's second season. The name remains reusable bait, which is part of why both surviving contracts still trade on cultural memory of the collapse while trying to distance themselves from the people who caused it.