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- Mango-ing, going, gone 🥭
GM, Tim here.
Mango DAO votes to shut down trading platform.
Usual defends bond token rule change.
Thorchain’s DeFi pause shakes investors.
Mango DAO shuts down 🥭
Mango DAO, a digital collective that manages the Mango Markets trading platform, is voting to shut down.
Three proposals designed to force users to close their trading positions and prevent them from opening new ones were created on January 11.
So far, two of the three proposals have passed.
The votes mark the end of a turbulent, months-long saga at the decentralised autonomous organisation.
In August, DAO members ratified a proposal to settle a lawsuit brought against the app’s creators by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The settlement stipulated that the DAO would destroy the MNGO governance token and pay a hefty fine to the regulator.
Then in October, Mango Labs brought legal action against two senior contributors, accusing the pair of running a fraudulent scheme to enrich themselves at the DAO’s expense.
Mango Markets was once one of the Solana blockchain’s leading DeFi apps with over $200 million in deposits.
In 2022, crypto trader Avraham Eisenberg, stole $115 million from the protocol by exploiting a vulnerability in the way the app calculated asset prices.
Eisenberg was convicted by a federal jury for fraud and market manipulation in April.
Usual addresses controversy 🎤
DeFi app Usual apologised for the chaos caused by its decision to cut the fixed price of the staked, bond-like version of its USD0 stablecoin.
The $1.6 billion protocol blamed the confusion on users misunderstanding the protocol’s mechanisms.
“The end of the 1:1 mechanism and the introduction of Early Unstaking were scheduled for early 2025, as has always been visible on the dApp itself since October 2024 and the whitepaper since November 2024,” Usual said in an X article.
The incident highlights how in DeFi, where proponents lionise the sector’s ability to create a trustless financial system, developers at many popular apps still retain the power to shake markets without recourse.
Previously, holders of the staked version of Usual’s dollar-pegged USD0 stablecoin could redeem them for at least $0.9995, as governed by the protocol’s code.
But on Thursday, Usual updated its code so staked USD0 could only be redeemed for $0.87.
The move plunged DeFi into chaos. Usual users and investors said the change was unexpected, and not adequately communicated ahead of time.
Thorchain’s RUNE drops 📉
Concerns over the solvency of DeFi apps on Thorchain have shaken investor confidence, resulting in a 25% drop for its native RUNE token.
On January 9, Thorchain founder JP Thorbjornsen implemented a 12-month pause for Thorchain’s Savers and Lending programmes in response to fears that the apps may not be able to return funds to depositors.
There are 3 sources of RUNE inflation in the price.
1) THORFi - this is now timed out for 12 months. No longer a concern for now. We will get users liquidity in the app layer then restructure after 12 months.
2) Emissions. This year I’ll work with community to look at how… x.com/i/web/status/1…
— JP.THOR | ACEL (@jpthor)
9:20 AM • Jan 9, 2025
Hours after the pause, three Thorchain nodes whose owners disagreed with the move reversed it, re-opening withdrawals.
The episode shook investors, who, fearful that their funds could become trapped, withdrew some $75 million off the blockchain.
Thorchain lets crypto users trade native assets between separate blockchains without the need for a centralised intermediary like crypto exchanges Coinbase or Kraken.
It’s a popular tool among crypto diehards who want to distance themselves from centralised products for security and privacy reasons.
In 2021, the RUNE token hit an all-time high of $20.87. It now trades at just $3.14 — an 85% decline.
There’s a growing consensus among the Thorchain community that the amount of new RUNE tokens minted as rewards for DeFi participants should be reduced.
This week in DeFi governance ⚖️
Post of the week 💥
Crypto Twitter pokes fun at those caught up in the USD0++ snafu.
dad, did you buy a 4 year zero coupon at par?
— SS (@sshxbt)
7:29 AM • Jan 10, 2025
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