Mango Markets announces shutdown after $117M hack

Solana-based DeFi platform Mango Markets, which was the victim of a $117 million exploit in 2022, announced its complete closure.

The platform’s governance proposal was unanimously approved with 23,347,212 votes supporting its closure.

The platform has set January 13, 2025 at 20:00 UTC as the deadline for users to close their positions once closing recommendations become executable. In preparation for closing, Mango V4 will begin making changes to its lending parameters.

Mango Markets will close
It’s time for users to close their positions

Mango v4 and Boost are coming to an end. Much borrowing from Mango will become economically unsustainable going forward

Offers are live and executable at 20:00 UTC on Monday, January 13

Details below⬇️

— Mango (@mangomarkets) January 11, 2025

The new protocol parameters include reducing the target lending rate from 50% to 0.1% of deposits. The platform will also impose high interest rate hikes on major cryptocurrencies including SOL, USDC, USDT, ETH, MSOL, mangoSOL and INF.

According to the announcement, barriers to entry for new positions will increase significantly and margin requirements will increase tenfold.

The closure follows the exploit in October 2022, when attacker Avraham Eisenberg carried out the MANGO price manipulation scheme. Using only $5 million USDC as seed capital, Eisenberg executed a series of transactions that artificially increased the price of the MNGO token by nearly 1,000%.

This manipulation allowed him to borrow money against vastly inflated collateral values, costing the protocol $117 million.

Following the attack, the Mango Markets team attempted to negotiate with the attacker by offering a bug bounty in exchange for the return of the stolen funds.

Legal proceedings began against Eisenberg in October 2024 on charges of fraud and market manipulation, which could result in up to 25 years in prison.

Although he initially defended his actions as a “highly profitable trading strategy,” Eisenberg had attempted to negotiate retention of some of the stolen funds through a management proposal.

The unanimous moderator vote supporting the closure is an indication that the community has accepted the platform’s fate.