Solana DeFi Projects Reopen After $114M Mango Markets Hack

Two Solana-based DeFi protocols have reopened following the $114 million hack of lending protocol Mango Markets.

Dividend aggregator Tulip and stablecoin the provider UXD has restored tokens from Mango Markets, which was affected by a large exploitation previously earlier this month, and can now continue their services, they both said on Twitter.

Mango Markets is a Solana-based platform for token trading and lending. Solana is the popular blockchain behind SOL, the ninth largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. Many DeFi projects – the kind that enable peer-to-peer trading, loans and lending – are now based on Solana.

Earlier this month, the hacker was able to temporarily increase the value of Mango Markets’ security due to a glitch in the system. The hacker then took out a loan from Mango’s treasury and disappeared with the funds.

Such a move is common in the DeFi hacking world.

DeFi refers to apps and tools in the crypto world that allow users to quickly and easily do things that in the traditional financial world would typically require checks and an intermediary – like taking out a loan, for example.

Such apps are experimental and new and therefore prone to exploitation. Last year lending protocol Cream Finance lost hundreds of millions in three separate hacks.

When the industry really started to take off in 2020, hacks like this happened often—mostly to apps built on Ethereum (which is where the DeFi world started). Now that other blockchains like Solana have entered the room, bad actors turn their attention to them.

Mango markets offered to enter into a $47 million deal with the hacker not to press criminal charges – in return for $67 million of the stolen tokens. The person who takes responsibility for the hack later so they would return the tokens if the community agreed to pay off bad debts taken from a previous operation.

UXD lost access to $19.9 million after the hack, while $2.5 million disappeared from Tulip’s protocol. Both protocols used Mango Markets to deposit money.