Mango Markets Hack Update: Hacker Divulged, Legality of his Actions Doubted

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Last week, Mango Markets was subject to an attack that led to an exploit worth just over $100 million.
The story received many twists and turns, with the culprit not just making an offer to the community, but also revealing his identity. 

On Oct.15, Avraham Eisenberg came out as a member of the group responsible for the crypto heist in a dedicated Twitter thread, saying “I was involved with a team that operated a highly profitable trading strategy last week.”

Describing himself as an art dealer in his bio, he tweeted, “I believe all of our actions were legal open market actions, using the protocol as designed, even if the development team did not fully anticipate all the consequences of setting parameters the way they are.” 

He also returned $67 million to the Solana-based decentralized finance hub last Saturday as confirmed by the reps of Mango.
$67 million in various crypto assets have been returned to the DAO. Let’s meet up on Monday 3 PM UTC on the Mango discord to discuss how we can sort out this mess,
they tweeted.
Meanwhile, the co-founder of Mango Markets Daffy Durairaj said, “everything has to go through DAO proposals. My personal goal is to make depositors whole and that's what I'll aim towards. But the mix of tokens and positions everyone had might be different.”

The company eventually came up with three proposals on Twitter, one of them is to “send 42 millions USDC from Treasury to Upgrade Council for reimbursements (proposal expires on Thursday).”

Although Eisenberg claims that his actions were legal, some lawyers are ready to challenge the statement. 

Among them is Michael Bacina, partner at Australian law firm PiperAlderman, who noted that had this situation occurred in a regulated financial market, it would be likely seen as market manipulation and hence would lead to some sort of legal responsibility. 

“The wording of the proposal is weak and the circumstances are such that the offer of a release is questionable,” he said, commenting on the story and  Eisenberg’s claims.

Previously, GNCrypto published an interview with crypto-guru Dr. Smartcontract.