Mango Markets to wind down in wake of SEC settlement, DAO battle

Solana-based decentralized exchange Mango Markets will wind down its operations on Monday in the wake of an SEC settlement that required Mango's governance DAO and development organization to destroy their MNGO tokens and delist them from all exchanges. 

"Mango v4 Boost are winding down," the protocol's X account posted on Saturday. "Most borrowing on Mango will be economically unviable going forward." 

Proposals to modify Mango Markets' interest rates and collateral requirements in order to dissuade borrowing and lending will become executable on Monday, Jan. 13, at 8 p.m. UTC; both proposals currently show unanimous support and have reached the threshold needed for passage. 

Mango's tumultuous history

Mango Markets was infamously exploited by Avraham "Avi" Eisenberg in October 2022 in what Eisenberg claimed was a "highly profitable trading strategy," which saw Eisenberg drain $110 million from the platform after manipulating the price of its native MNGO token on other exchanges. Eisenberg was convicted on fraud charges related to the exploit by a New York jury in April of this year, though he has since requested a new trial . 

In September of 2024, Mango's governance DAO agreed to settle an SEC lawsuit that charged Mango DAO, Mango Labs, and a Panama entity dubbed Blockworks Foundation (no relation to the similarly-named media organization) with selling unregistered crypto assets and acting as an unregistered broker.

Late in 2024, Mango's DAO became embroiled in another controversy as some of its co-founders and core contributors filed lawsuits against each other in a spat over a tranche of locked MNGO tokens purchased from the FTX estate. 

"I believe that all active contributors by now have expressed a desire to stop working on Mango in general or specifically on Mango v4 Boost," Mango co-founder Maximilian Schneider wrote in the protocol's Discord on Jan. 3, calling for a discussion and opinion vote on the topic of a "graceful shutdown" for Mango Markets. After other team members agreed, Mango Markets announced its intent to wind down. 

Mango Markets did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Block.