The Mango Tango Continues

Last week’s Mango Markets hack saw more than $100 million get drained from the decentralized cryptocurrency exchange in one of the year’s biggest attacks. Since the funds were swindled, the attention and controversy have only grown.

• On Saturday, Avraham Eisenberg (a member of the group claiming responsibility for the alleged exploit), returned $67 million to Mango Markets.
• The return of funds was accompanied by a Twitter post in which Eisenberg seemingly defended his actions, saying “I was involved with a team that operated a highly profitable trading strategy last week.” and “I believe all of our actions were legal open market actions, using the protocol as designed”.
• He went on to say that an unfortunate side effect of his lucrative strategy was the insolvency of the decentralized exchange and that the insurance fund was insufficient to cover the resulting liquidations.
• The fate of the reimbursement is yet to be decided by the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) governing the protocol, according to Mango Markets cofounder Daffy Durairaj.

One possible course of action to be taken by the DAO could be to prioritize the restoration of access to investors’ funds in order to ensure Mango users don’t walk away empty-handed, but nothing has been decided quite yet.

According to blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis, October is already “the biggest month in the biggest year ever for hacking activity”, going on to reveal that over $700 million has been stolen from decentralized finance protocols in 11 different hacks with almost half the month left to go.