Mango Markets announces shutdown after $117M hack

Mango Markets, the Solana-based DeFi platform that fell victim to a $117 million exploit in 2022, has announced its complete closure.

The platform’s governance proposal received unanimous approval, with 23,347,212 votes in favor of closure.

The platform has set January 13, 2025, 8 p.m. UTC as the deadline for users to close their positions when the shutdown proposals become enforceable. In preparation for closing, Mango V4 will begin modifying its loan settings.

The new protocol settings include a reduction in the target lending rate from 50% to 0.1% of deposits. The platform will also implement large interest rate hikes on major cryptocurrencies including SOL, USDC, USDT, ETH, MSOL, mangoSOL and INF.

As per the announcement, new positions will face much higher barriers to entry, with collateral requirements increasing tenfold.

The shutdown follows the October 2022 exploit, where attacker Avraham Eisenberg carried out a MANGO price manipulation scheme. Using just $5 million in USDC as initial capital, Eisenberg executed a series of trades that artificially inflated the price of the MNGO token by approximately 1,000%.

This manipulation allowed it to borrow against significantly inflated collateral values, draining $117 million from the protocol.

After the attack, the Mango Markets team attempted to negotiate with the attacker, offering a bug bounty in exchange for returning the stolen funds.

Legal proceedings against Eisenberg began in October 2024, with charges of fraud and market manipulation carrying up to 25 years in prison.

Although he initially defended his actions as a “highly profitable business strategy,” Eisenberg attempted to negotiate the retention of a portion of the stolen funds through a governance proposal.

The unanimous governance vote in favor of closure is an indicator of the community’s acceptance of the platform’s fate.