Mango Markets losses $100 million in an oracle price attack

Mango Markets is the latest decentralised financial (DeFi) platform to come under attack.

Mango, a decentralised finance platform hosted on the Solana blockchain, announced a few hours ago that it had suffered an exploit. 

The development team revealed that the attacker(s) stole $100 million from the protocol via an oracle price manipulation.

-The net value extracted by the account was around $100 million equivalent at the time

-At 02:37 UTC October 12th, the Mango program instructions were frozen to prevent any users from further interacting with the protocol, e.g., depositing more funds which may not be recoverable

— Mango (@mangomarkets) October 12, 2022

Mango Markets explained that two accounts funded with USDC took an outsized position in MNGO-PERP. The team added that underlying MNGO/USD prices on various exchanges (FTX, Ascendex) experienced a 5-10x price increase in a matter of minutes.

The price updates led to Switchboard and Pyth oracles updating their MNGO benchmark price to $0.15+This further caused a mark-to-market increase in the value of the account that was long MNGO-PERP from the unrealised profit.

The move allowed the account to borrow and withdraw BTC (sollet), USDT, SOL, mSOL, and USDC out of the Mango protocol. This maxed out the borrows available from the $190Million equivalent deposits on the platform, Mango Markets added.

Following the attack, Mango Markets informed its community members that users with deposits on the protocol are not able to withdraw assets. The attack has effectively resulted in a total draining of all equity available.

The team explained that the Mango Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO) is now focused on preventing any further unnecessary losses, ensuring depositors of the Mango protocol are made whole, and salvaging some value in Mango DAO and protocol to rebuild.

At press time, the drained funds remain on the Solana blockchain. Mango is a decentralised crypto exchange on the Solana blockchain known for offering users the option of making spot trades and loans. 

MNGO, the native token of the Mango platform, is down by more than 43% in the last 24 hours. 

The attack came a few days after Binance, the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchange, recorded a cross-chain hack. In the exploit, Binance reportedly lost around $100 million.