DAO behind Mango Markets votes for SEC settlement

The DAO’s settlement offer includes destroying its MNGO holdings and ceasing all sales of tokens

August 20, 2024 03:48 pm

Tada Images/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks

The DAO behind Mango Markets is planning to pay a civil penalty of $223,228 as part of a settlement offer to the Securities and Exchange Commission to avoid litigation.

In the ongoing governance proposal, the settlement offer would also include an agreement to halt all offers and sales of MNGO tokens, destroy all its MNGO holdings and request the delisting of MNGO for trading from “all crypto asset exchanges and trading platforms where the DAO is aware MNGO is trading.”

The vote is likely to pass unanimously, with 100% (295,244,521) of all votes in favor of the governance proposal.

Mango Markets was one of Solana’s top DEX protocols that, at its peak, enjoyed a TVL of almost $200 million, according to DeFiLlama.

The protocol was subsequently exploited in October 2022 by Avraham Eisenberg, who manipulated the price of MNGO upwards in order to take out a loan of $120 million. When the price of MNGO subsequently crashed, the protocol was left with bad debt.

Eisenberg even sought to pay back half the loan in exchange for the DAO agreeing not to criminally prosecute him, though that vote failed.

The DOJ, CFTC and SEC subsequently launched investigations into Eisenberg for his market manipulation of Mango Markets. Mango Labs LLC also sued Eisenberg for his actions, while the protocol itself simultaneously faced “inquiries” from “some regulators,” according to a January governance proposal.

Eisenberg was arrested in December 2022 and charged with commodities fraud, commodities manipulation and wire fraud. A jury found him guilty back in April on all three counts after his legal team unsuccessfully argued that he merely executed a profitable trading strategy.

However, Eisenberg’s legal team is seeking either an acquittal or new trial on the grounds that the original trial was “improperly venued” in the Southern District of New York.

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