Solana’s Decentralized Exchange Platforms Eclipse Ethereum in Daily Trading Volume, Surpassing $2.8 Billion

March 18, 2024 Bitcoin.com

$100M drained from Solana DeFi platform Mango Markets, token plunges 52%

October 12, 2022 Coin Telegraph

The platform’s treasury was drained of over $100 million worth of cryptocurrency after an attacker manipulated price data of its native token to take out loans against their holdings.

Solana (SOL) based decentralized finance (DeFi) exchange Mango Markets has been hit with a reported exploit of over $100 million through an attacker manipulating price oracle data, allowing them to take out under-collateralized cryptocurrency loans.

The exploit was first identified by blockchain security firm OtterSec which tweeted the exchange had been drained of over $100 million due to the attacker manipulating the value of their Mango (MNGO) native token collateral, then taking out “massive loans” from Mango’s treasury.

It appears the attacker was able to manipulate their Mango collateral. They temporarily spiked up their collateral value, and then took out massive loans from the Mango treasury. pic.twitter.com/2IJrB9RcEJ
— OtterSec (@osec_io) October 11, 2022

The Mango Markets team tweeted soon after warning users not to deposit funds until “the situation was more clear” and asked the attacker to contact them to discuss a bug bounty.

The team later confirmed the manipulation of a price oracle — a price data feed of the value of its MNGO token — and stated that it had disabled deposits whilst it continued investigations of the incident.

We will be disabling deposits on the front end as a precaution, and will keep you updated as the situation evolves.

If you have any information, please contact blockworks@protonmail.com to discuss a bounty for the return of funds. 2/
— Mango (@mangomarkets) October 11, 2022

Due to news of the exploit, the price of the platforms’ MNGO token has fallen by around 52% in the last 24-hours at the time of writing according to data from CoinGecko.

The exploiters' account on the platform shows the three largest withdrawals were for $50 million worth of USD Coin (USDC), over $26.7 million worth of a Solana staking token called Marinade Staked SOL (mSOL), and nearly $24 million worth of SOL.

Over $14.7 million worth of MNGO was withdrawn and Mango said it’s “taking steps to have third parties freeze funds in flight.”

Meanwhile, the QANplatform blockchain also suffered from an exploit of its ownon Oct. 11, with its Ethereum (ETH) bridge drained of around $1.89 million worth of its native QANX token according to blockchain security company Beosin. QANplatform says it’s investigating the incident.

Coinbase Wallet adds support for Solana

March 18, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Coinbase has added wallet support for SOL and Solana-based tokens, and has outlined that it will look to support NFTs and dApps on the blockchain in the future too.

Top U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase has added wallet support for Solana (SOL) and its ecosystem of Solana tokens (SPL).

Coinbase cited the surging interest in Solana over the past 12 months as investors look for low-cost alternatives to Ethereum as a key reason behind adding support to the network.

The expanded wallet support comes just a few days after the firm launched Coinbase Pay, which enables users to fund their wallets directly via a web browser extension.

In a March 18 blog post announcing the move, the firm also loosely outlined plans to “further integrate” with Solana by connecting the Coinbase Wallet with decentralized applications (dApps) and NFTs hosted on the network, which is famously championed by FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried.

Users of Solana-based wallets such as Phantom and Solflare can now import their existing wallets into the Coinbase Wallet via a desktop browser extension as well.

Following the addition of the Solana network, the Coinbase Wallet now supports Ethereum, Avalanche, Polygon, BNB Chain, Bitcoin, Dogecoin Litecoin, Stellar Lumens and the Ripple network. Coinbase said:

“Many users have been looking for networks that are optimized for scale, offering low-cost transactions and fast transaction times. One of the fastest-growing blockchains over the past year has been Solana."

According to data from Defi Llama, the Solana blockchain is currently ranked fifth in terms of total value locked (TVL) in decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols at $6.94 billion. NFT data aggregator CryptoSlam ranked it as the second-highest blockchain for secondary sales volume last month at $156.28 million.

Much like the majority of the crypto market which has had a torrid performance this year, the price of SOL is down 18% over the past 30 days to sit at $85.90 at the time of writing. In the short term, Cointelegraph's Rakesh Upadhyay has identified a bullish target of $122 for SOL if the price breaks above the 20 day moving average of $86, or the bearish figure of $66 if the market fails to support and hold above that zone.

Solana Labs co-founder: We don’t want to kill ‘beautiful’ Ethereum

November 12, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Solana Labs’ co-founder thinks the fight between Ethereum and so-called “ETH Killers” is unnecessary, as the true aim for people working in crypto should be to onboard “every human” onto Web 3.0.

While many pundits have labeled Solana (SOL) as an "Ethereum killer" due to its lower fees and faster transaction times, Solana Labs co-founder Raj Gokal said the project has no desire to kill the cryptocurrency — and wouldn’t be able to if it did.

Gokal made the comments in response to a Nov.10 Twitter post from the co-founder of venture capital firm Placeholder, Chris Burniske who wrote that “despite pretty words, L1 knives are fully out. In crypto, generally, people want their biggest bags to win.”

“This will influence almost all communications, so don't take what you see and hear as truth,” he added,

In response, Gokal emphasized that “it doesn’t have to be a fight” as he argued that the goal for all people working in the crypto space should be to onboard “every human” on to Web 3.0, and noted that:

“’Knives out’ implies we are trying to kill Ethereum. Ethereum cannot be killed, it’s impossible. And it’s already a beautiful force of good in the world, empowering millions and creating billions in wealth. Bitcoin is quite obviously the same.”

According to CoinGecko, SOL is currently the fifth-ranked digital asset in terms of total market cap with $71.7 billion, and is ahead of fellow ‘ETH killer’ Cardano (ADA) at sixth with $67.4 billion. ETH sits well ahead of the two in second place with a market cap of around $564.7 billion.

Solana has been making up a lot of ground lately however. It's up 11,742% over the past year to sit at $237.53, while ETH has gained 931% within that time frame to reach around $4,800.

I know you may not even be talking about @solana, and if so I apologize. but I’m just sad and disappointed that every time non-ethereum chains like solana see success or take big swings at growing, it’s seen as taking swings against incumbents.

we are trying to grow the movement
— Raj Gokal (@rajgokal) November 10, 2021

Solana’s expansion

Earlier this week the Solana Foundation hosted the “Solana Breakpoint 2021” conference in Lisbon, Portugal featuring guests such as Gokal, CEO and co-founder of Solana Labs Anatoly Yakovenko, FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire.

Speaking on day one of the event, Gokal stated that the Solana ecosystem has been “exploding” in 2021 across every vertical and “use case.” The co-founder highlighted data showing 2.2 million NFTs were minted on the Solana blockchain within three months, along with more than $15 billion worth of total value locked in Solana-based DeFi as of Nov. 7 ($14.47 billion at the time of writing).

In a Nov. 12 post titled “The Perpetual SOL Rise” from Messari researcher Dustin Teander, he noted that “Solana has received sizable investor attention over the last quarter,” and pointed to a long list of promising “growth catalysts” for the project.

“In many respects, the price discovery has been healthily fueled across various sectors — a $100M gaming fund announced, Brave announcing native integration on the Web3 front, $100M investment from Reddit for Social Media, $40M raised by Neon Labs to bring EVM infrastructure over, pplpleasr launching NFTs on Solana, FTX building out an NFT integration.”

“And, of course, there’s Solana’s DeFi ecosystem that has seen a 4x TVL expansion since September,” he added.

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