- The man who exploited the Mango Markets platform for $100 million has said that people are just jealous of him
- Avraham Eisenberg told the Unchained podcast that his actions were legal and carried out within the boundaries of the platform
- Legally speaking, such attacks are immoral but not, it seems, illegal
The man who exploited Mango Markets for approximately $100 million earlier this month has said that he did nothing wrong and that people are just jealous of his abilities as a trader. Speaking to Laura Shin on the Unchained podcast on Friday, Avraham Eisenberg, who has since become something of a crypto Twitter phenomenon, laid out the way in which he used Mango Markets’ algorithms to take $100 million from the platform, while others believe his actions were unlawful because of the way he artificially manipulated prices in order to make his gains.
“Jealousy and Hate” for Profitable Traders
Eisenberg explained to Shin how he and his team executed a “highly profitable trading strategy”, which took the form of a self-funded economic attack carried out by manipulating the oracle price of MNGO, the native token of Mango Markets, using the tools within the protocol to do so. This methodology is a key reason why Mango Markets has not been able to press charges against Eisenberg – in the eyes of the law, he did everything within the bounds of the platform.
Eisenberg said this “hate” for profitable traders did not just extend to him:
“I think that when there’s any profitable trader, it’s gonna attract some jealousy and some hate, and like you look at some of the stuff people say about Sam (Bankman-Fried), and he’s obviously made billions of dollars with various other profitable trades. He gets lots of hate.”
The debate over whether Eisenberg’s actions were legal or not has been a hot topic ever since exploits of this kind first began on DeFi platforms. The truth is that, on most occasions, there are no ‘regular’ laws that have been broken (such as common theft), because the actions are indeed within the operational parameters – these guys simply found a bug in the code and exploited it.
Mango Markets Not Protected by Financial Laws
However, there could be an argument that Eisenberg’s price manipulation in itself constituted a breach of financial laws…if the platform was registered as a provider of securities and Eisenberg was located in the same country. Even then it may not be a strong case, with a great number of loopholes he would likely be able to jump through.
In situations such as these, while the actions of the exploiters are certainly immoral they don’t seem to be illegal, and there is a duty of care that platforms like Mango Markets have to their customers to make sure that this sort of thing can’t happen in the first place.
