Mango Markets Wants Eisenberg To Pay Up, His Lawyers Say the “Matter Was Settled”

At issue is whether a DAO-voted settlement can be considered legally binding

article-image

Dall-e modified by Blockworks

share

Avraham “Avi” Eisenberg, exploiter of DeFi protocol Mango Markets, is looking to retain a portion of the cryptocurrency he managed to gain from manipulation of the price of the Mango token (MNGO). 

Eisenberg’s attorneys filed a motion Wednesday opposing the protocol’s lawsuit that seeks $47 million in damages from Eisenberg whose self-proclaimed “profitable trading strategy” netted him tens of millions in October.

“Mango Labs never explains in the [Preliminary Injunction] Motion where it came up with the amount of $47 million,” the attorneys said in the motion, adding that the protocol waited more than three months after the events and after the “matter was settled.”

Mango Markets, a Solana-based DeFi platform, was drained of over $100 million in October. Mango said the hacker, Eisenberg, was able to drain funds via an oracle price manipulation. 

Eisenberg purportedly used two addresses to manipulate the price of MNGO — Mango’s native token and collateral asset — from $0.04 to a peak of $0.91. This allowed him to borrow heavily against the inflated MNGO collateral, to the tune of about $114 million.

He proposed, via the Mango DAO governance forum, to return a portion of the funds including Marinade-staked Solana (mSOL), native SOL and the MNGO token, but claimed the rest as a bounty. But Eisenberg offered recompense of $67 million to make users whole on the condition that Mango wouldn’t push for criminal charges. 

Mango DAO voters then agreed to a proposal that would allow Eisenberg to retain $47 million of the originally stolen amount, as long as he would return the remainder.

The new civil lawsuit implies the October vote was meaningless. Eisenberg’s lawyers disagree.

“Per the Settlement Agreement, Mr. Eisenberg transferred funds totaling approximately $67 million to Mango Markets,” his attorneys said. “Several weeks later, eligible Mango Markets’ members received reimbursement from the Mango Markets treasury.”

However, in its own lawsuit, Mango said Eisenberg schemed to protect his ill-gotten gains by forcing the protocol “under duress” to a settlement agreement. 

Eisenberg’s attorneys argue the only explanation for the “improper three-month delay” is that Mango is attempting to take advantage of Eisenberg’s arrest.

He was arrested in Puerto Rico in December, after which US prosecutors charged Eisenberg with commodities fraud and market manipulation.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Research Report Templates.png

Research

Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) represent low-hanging fruit in a massive market ripe for Web3-driven disruption. The global CDN market was valued at ~$28B in 2024, and is projected to surpass $140B by 2034, (18.75% CAGR) underscoring the immense demand for efficient content delivery.

article-image

TAPEDRIVE says it can make Solana data storage 1,400x cheaper

article-image

Immigration changes are papering over a fragile labor market

article-image

BlueYard’s head of crypto research developed FreePay to make fee-free, tap-to-pay crypto payments a reality

article-image

Buzzwords include: succinct universal proofs, zkVM, incrementally verifiable computation, distributed supercomputer and agentic AI

article-image

US dollars might technically be worth less, but it’s still good news

article-image

Apps are doing well, as is casino gaming, says Tom Schmidt of Dragonfly