The hacks keep coming
As the bear market continues, hacks and exploits are becoming more common.
In Today’s Email, We’ll Be Covering:
- Mango’s Exploited. $100MM exploited, but there’s a plot twist!
- SushiSwap’s Head Chef. The position that is more cursed than “Defense against the Dark Arts.”
- News: Someone exploited BNB for $550MM, Celsius wallets doxed, and more.
Let’s dive in!
📉 THE MARKETS
- Total Crypto Market Cap: 920B (-4.56, 7 days)
- BTC Price: $18,383.53 (-8.8%, 7 days)
- ETH Price: $1,212.55 (-1.30%, 7 days)
- TVL in DeFi: $52.74B (-5.06%, 7 days)
- Fear & Greed: 20 (EXTREME FEAR)
CPI data just released.
Inflation is up 8.2% from a year ago – this is higher than expected considering the rate hikes.
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“To achieve satisfactory investment results is easier than most people realize; to achieve superior results is harder than it looks.”
– Benjamin Graham
💡 THE BIG STORY
Mango Markets Gets Exploited for $100MM
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Mango markets is a decentralized trading platform on Solana and one of the flagship DeFi products of the Solana ecosystem.
Yesterday, Mango Markets was exploited for over $100MM!
What happened: This isn’t like one of those bridge or smart contract exploits you’re perhaps used to hearing about. This is market manipulation – someone took advantage of inefficiencies in the system.
- The exploiter had $10MM to hand to pull this off.
- They pumped the price of Mango and then used it as collateral to borrow assets on the Mango platform.
Here’s a useful thread that goes into more detail about what happened:
1. Quick breakdown of what happened today on @mangomarkets, the movement of exploited funds and who might be responsible. pic.twitter.com/4EKDp2MNyq
— ponzilonger.eth (@Tristan0x) October 12, 2022
What’s interesting is that Mango Markets were warned about this vulnerability back in March:
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The Proposal: In an interesting turn of events, the exploiter submitted a proposal to the Mango markets governance forum:
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- The exploiter wants to return the majority of the funds.
- Because this is a DAO, this proposal will be put to a public vote. And, evidently, the exploiter is voting yes with the very money they stole. However, they need many more votes for this proposal to enter the quorum.
- They don’t want to be criminally investigated.
If all goes according to plan, the exploiter will be able to retain roughly half the Mango they stole while also avoiding prosecution.
Why This Matters:
- Solana has experienced its fair share of issues this year. The Slope wallet got hacked a while ago. The Solana network crashed no less than 8 times this year. Events like these are really detrimental to the Solana ecosystem.
- Can DAOS work? DAOS are still in the experimental phase. Using tokens for DAO governance can easily be corrupted, as we can see here.
- Was this really a hack? This reignites the debate around “code is law.” The bad actor was using the smart contracts as they were intended.
👨💻 The Hiring Edge
If you are seeking a job in Web 3, check out my Job Board on Pallet.
There are 121 jobs currently available. Everything from marketing, community management, engineering, developers, business development, and many more – there should be something for everybody!
And if you’re interested in a “sit back and chill” match-making approach, check out the The Edge Collective. It’s a reverse job board.
If you apply and get accepted, Web 3 companies will be able to view your application and ask to chat to you.
There are over 25 companies hiring within The Edge Collective.
It’s 100% free for you, and you can remain anonymous too, if you’d like.
If you’re interested in joining my talent collective, you are welcome to apply here.
🍿 DeFi Bites
The Binance Chain was hacked for around $560MM.The world’s largest crypto exchange was forced to halt its chain. This limited total losses to $100MM that had already reached other chains.
Celsius was forced to expose user information, including wallet and exchange addresses, in a public document. Aside from safety and identity theft concerns, CT got to see what ‘influencers’ actually did behind the scenes.
Alex Mashinsky and Dan Leon, Celsius co-founders, withdrew millions before the transfer halt. This makes Mashinsky a strong contender for the Defi supervillain title, rivaling Do Kwon.
Gary is coming in guns blazing, now aimed at Yuga Labs. Even if this probing doesn’t lead anywhere, it has made the crypto community even more wary.
MakerDAO decides to invest $500MM in treasuries and corporate bonds. This move comes despite Rune Christensen’s, MakerDAO’s founder, recent efforts to make Maker more decentralized.
OECD released a framework for unifying global crypto tax reporting. This is designed to facilitate the sharing of crypto asset taxpayer information between OECD countries.
Babylon is set to bring Bitcoin-equivalent security to Cosmos zones, combining the best of both worlds.
Polygon zkEVM is in Public Testnet. This is a major step towards the holy grail of Ethereum scaling.
0VIX’s next-generation money market protocol is the fastest-growing project on Polygon. They’re in beta right now, and you can earn up to 20% APR on blue chips and stablecoins with boosted $VIX pre-mining rewards. Start earning yield here! *
* This is sponsored advertising content.
👨🍳 New Sushi Chef. Who Dis?
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Look, I don’t believe in curses, but, man, that Head Chef position at SushiSwap has some bad juju.
(SushiSwap is a decentralized multichain exchange. It’s the 7th largest DEX by volume.)
Why? Every time someone accepts that job, something bad happens.
No – really!
Last week, Jared Grey was named the new head chef of SushiSwap. (The Head Chef is their version of a CEO.)
Jared has plenty of experience in this field. He was previously the CEO at EONS, a decentralized ecosystem that generates yield for retail users.
Everyone was really excited to see their legendary protocol get back on track with Jared’s help, who people seemed to like and trust (he got 84% of the votes).
And then some news came out that tanked Sushi’s price by 10%.
Here’s what happened: A thread dropped with allegations of fraud.
(There are some other rumors of sexual misconduct with a horse. But that’s not really the sort of content I want this newsletter to talk about 🤮.)
Here’s what Jared said: Jared claims that this is all untrue, and that it was actually his business partner that stole those funds.
Today has been interesting. Let me be clear: the accusations towards me are 100% untrue. FYI, in 2019, my business partner stole funds from our community while I was busy raising funds to launch the Bitfineon exchange. /1
— Jared Grey (@jaredgrey) October 11, 2022
SushiSwap came on the scene a little bit after the DeFi summer of 2020.
Since the beginning, Sushi has had a more difficult time filling their Head Chef position than Hogwarts had with their “Defense of the Dark Arts” post.
Let me remind you of the very tumultuous history of the SushiSwap Head Chefs.
The OG Chef: Nomi
Nomi was a playful character, a distinct persona in the DeFi scene. He generated a lot of traction for SushiSwap.
Three days after Larry Cermak’s infamous “what if” tweet on August 26, 2021, SushiSwap was founded.
Nomi was the first Sushi Head Chef.
10 days after the founding of SushiSwap, Nomi pulled $14MM worth of ETH and disappeared.
- A week later, he returned all the money and made a big bold apology thread saying sorry for the theft.
- He was promptly removed from the position. Sam Bankman-Fried (CEO of FTX) became responsible for passing the chopsticks (keys) to the next chef.
The Next Chefs: 0xMaki and Joseph Delong
Officially, 0xMaki became the new head chef, but I want you to focus on another core member of the team: Joseph Delong.
Joseph was the CTO of SushiSwap. He, alongside 0xMaki and other core members, helped course correct Sushi’s ship.
On September 21, 0xMaki made an unexpected forum announcement. He was stepping down into an Advisor role.
Naturally, these news generated buzz around possible internal conflicts between the core members.
When asked privately, 0xMaki said that Joseph had been forced out.
Joseph was accused of plotting to fire 0xMaki. The vote was conducted by Telegram message, according to RektHQ reports.
This led to significant backlash on Twitter, especially from Joseph himself. Eventually, 0xMaki stepped down from the role of Sushi head chef.
Again, the community felt hopeless.
A Frog to the Rescue: Daniele Sesta
For some time, Frog Nation was the hottest thing in DeFi. Wonderland was hot, Popsicle finance was booming, and Abracadabra had developed a strong stablecoin, $MIM.
Daniele Sesta, the head of Frog Nation, seemed unstoppable.
On December 21, Frog Nation passed a proposal to assume the head position of SushiSwap. Daniele as Head Strategist, Omakase in Operations, and Matthew as Head of Engineering.
Sushi became part of the Frog Nation.
Now is official. $SUSHI is part of the Frog Nation.
— Daniele never asks to DM (@danielesesta) January 25, 2022
Everyone was hyped! The Sushi token rocketed 10% soon after the proposal was announced.
But the curse struck again!
One month after the proposal, Zachxbt disclosed Sifu’s real identity as Michael Patryn. Michael Patryn was the co-founder of Quadrigacx, a Canadian exchange that collapsed in 2019 after the founder disappeared with 169MM dollars!
As Sifu was a close partner of Daniele, this was a brutal blow to their credibility.
Alas, another Sushi Chef was gone.
The Sushi Head Chef role has historically been inundated with difficult-to-prove claims, but one thing is clear: The allegations against Jared Grey are serious.
And a simple “I was busy raising funds” excuse isn’t going to cut it.
I hope that Sushi can resolve this issue and that this curse can be lifted soon.
😂 MEME
