DefiLlama Delayed Its App Launch Over Fake Copies on the App Store

DeFi analytics platform DefiLlama delayed the launch of its own mobile app for several months. The reason was simple: the team waited for Apple to remove fake copies from the App Store that impersonated DefiLlama and drained money from users.

A delay for user safety

The pseudonymous founder of the project, known as 0xngmi, explained the decision in a Saturday post on X. According to him, the finished app sat outside app stores for months while fraudulent copies with the same name and a similar icon kept running on the App Store.

"We waited 'till all the fake apps were taken down before we launched ours to avoid any user getting scammed."

- 0xngmi, founder of DefiLlama, from a post on X, August 15, 2026

The team spent months trying to get one of these apps removed. Reports to App Store moderation went nowhere. The fake app kept sitting in the store, disguised as a legitimate DeFi analytics tool.

Who is behind DefiLlama

DefiLlama is one of the most popular services for tracking decentralized finance metrics: total value locked, fees, and protocol revenue. The service aggregates data from dozens of networks, including Ethereum, and its numbers are regularly cited by journalists, researchers, and DeFi teams tracking their own performance.

0xngmi runs the project under a pseudonym. Staying anonymous for security reasons is common among founders in the crypto industry, and DefiLlama is one such example. Even so, 0xngmi regularly comments publicly on technical decisions and security issues at the platform.

How funds vanished from a fake wallet

The turning point came when the DefiLlama team installed the suspicious app themselves and tested it with a small amount in a test wallet. According to 0xngmi, funds disappeared after just a few actions inside the fake program. Months of complaints to Apple had gone nowhere, but a report backed by documented proof of the theft got the malicious app pulled from the store within days.

• Months of waiting with no result while the removal request went through standard support channels.
• The DefiLlama team installed the fake app itself and documented the theft of funds.
• The malicious app was removed within days once specific evidence was submitted.

Cointelegraph reached out to Apple for comment on the situation around fake crypto apps in the store. There was no response at the time of publication.

Not the first crypto app impersonation on the App Store

Fake apps impersonating well-known crypto brands have shown up on the App Store before. One such case involved Rabby Wallet: Apple left a fraudulent copy of the wallet app up for a long time despite complaints from users who lost funds after installing the fake.

For crypto holders, the core advice stays the same. Check the official link on a project's own website before downloading any app. Look at the download count, reviews, and the developer's publish date, since fake copies often appear in the store weeks before the real release. Some users store large sums in hardware wallets, where private keys never touch a smartphone and stay out of reach even if a malicious app gets installed.

Fake crypto apps are not a problem unique to DefiLlama. Scammers regularly copy the interface of popular wallets and exchanges, boost fake rankings with artificial downloads and reviews, and then wait for someone to enter a seed phrase or connect a wallet to a malicious site inside the app. Google Play sees similar cases about as often as the App Store.

Cases like this keep fueling criticism of Apple: security researchers have argued for years that App Store moderation reacts too slowly to phishing reports, even though the company's own rules formally ban fraudulent apps. For small teams like DefiLlama, that means fighting fakes largely falls on their own shoulders.

DefiLlama plans to release its official app soon, now that most of the fake copies have been cleared from the store.