MNGO token falls 52% after $100m Mango Market exploit
09:35, 12 October 2022
Mango Markets, a lending protocol on the Solana (SOL) blockchain, has been the victim of a $100m hack that has seen its MNGO token plummet.
Two accounts funded with USD Coin (USDC) took out an outsized position in the MNGO and PERP pairing. This manipulated the protocol’s oracles, allowing the attackers to max out their accounts and walk away with a net value of $100m.
Around 22:00 UTC October 11th the ???? protocol had an incident involving the following:
— Mango (@mangomarkets) October 12, 2022
-2 accounts funded with USDC took an outsized position in MNGO-PERP
-Underlying MNGO/USD prices on various exchanges (FTX, Ascendex) experienced a 5-10x price increase in a matter of minutes
The price of MNGO plunged by three quarters after the attack took place on 11 October.
MNGO’s downfall
The Solana-based decentralised finance (DeFi) platform reached a high of $0.08 on 11 October as the attacker manipulated the token’s price. It then closed the day at $0.019, a drop of more than 75%.
MNGO has since recovered slightly. As of 12 October, it was trading at $0.024, but it was still down 41% over the past week.
This exploit also damaged the total value locked (TVL) in the lending protocol. Mango Markets’ TVL plummeted from $104m on 11 October to just $209 the following day, according to DeFi Llama.
The hacker’s ultimatum
Recently, the attacker posted a proposal on Mango Markets’ governance platform. They said the funds would be returned if the protocol uses $70m to pay off bad debt.
This debt refers to a Solana investor who had to be bailed out after the whale had more than $200m in debt across multiple lending platforms. The bailout was made because of concerns that the investor could become liquidated, sending shockwaves across the market.
SOL to USD
At the time of writing, approximately 33 million MNGO votes are in favour of the proposal. A total of 66 million votes are needed to pass the proposal.
Mango Markets had previously tweeted its intention to communicate with the hackers and find an amicable solution.
We believe the most constructive way to approach this is to continue communicating with those responsible for the incident and in control of the funds removed from the protocol to attempt to resolve the issues amicably.
— Mango (@mangomarkets) October 12, 2022
However, the lending protocol has not yet responded publicly to the hacker’s proposal.
Markets in this article
Related topics
