Is there something rotten at Mango DAO? – DL News

A version of this article appeared in our Decentralized newsletter of May 14. Register here.

general manager, Alex here I replace Tim again.

Here’s what caught my eye about DeFi recently:

• Mango DAO’s problems didn’t stop with Avi Eisenberg.
• Ethereum wallet proposal from Vitalik Buterin.
• Hacker returns millions of stolen Bitcoins.

Mango DAO executives respond to takeover controversy

Most of our readers are probably familiar with Solana DeFi protocol Mango Markets’ 2022 exploit, in which infamous trader Avraham Eisenberg managed to steal around $110 million in crypto.

Eisenberg income a good portion of the money to Mango DAO, the digital cooperative that manages the protocol. Since then, Mango has limped forward, with deposits at a fraction of their pre-mining peaks.

But it wasn’t really left for dead. After reviewing the recent actions taken by DAO leaders, critics think something smells rotten.

Mango DAO core contributors John Kramer and Max Schneider were accused of purchasing 333 million MNGO governance tokens and then pushing through a proposal to sell them back to the DAO at an inflated price for an alleged profit of 3 million dollars.

My colleague Tim Craig contacted both. They denied the accusations.

Join the community to receive our latest stories and updates

But questions remain.

MNGO tokens were purchased from the estate of the collapsed exchange FTX. On-chain evidence suggests that Schneider and Kramer’s trading company, called CKS Systems, may be behind the purchase.

DL News asked Schneider if CKS Systems purchased MNGO tokens from FTX. He declined to comment.

Vitalik wants to make Ethereum wallets more user-friendly

Let’s be real: using crypto can be terrifying, with irreversible transactions, missing or forgotten keys, etc.

The solution? “Account Abstraction,” which brings a Web 2 style experience to crypto. Think: passwords and usernames, for example.

Account abstraction has been around for over a year. But this did not understandwith a member of the Ethereum Foundation calling so-called “smart accounts” that use AA “second-class citizens”[s] of the network. »

Enter itinerant software developer (and Ethereum co-founder) Vitalik Buterin.

Buterin recently wrote a proposal that would allow existing wallets to use AA. Right now, Ethereum users have to go to the trouble of creating entirely new smart accounts.

“This is still a very early proposal, so we need to evaluate all the rough edges,” said Marius van der Wijden, lead developer of Ethereum. DL News.

If successful, the proposal will unlock new transaction types, prevent users from losing access to their funds via email recovery, and even facilitate new use cases for the leading smart contract network.

Dubbed EIP-7702, the proposal will likely be included in the next major Ethereum upgrade. This upgrade is planned for the fourth quarter of 2024.

Bitcoin Hacker Returns Funds for a “Bounty”… But Doesn’t Keep the Bounty

I’ve seen a lot of crypto hacks. Most of them look like this:

The hacker drains a protocol. Protocol representatives, wary of a lengthy manhunt, tip their hats and make an offer: return 90% of the crypto, and we’ll pretend it’s a “bug bounty” – a payment for the service of finding a vulnerability in our design. No call to the police, no prosecution. The hacker usually ignores this request.

Not this time.

A few weeks ago, someone scooped up a staggering $72 million in wrapped Bitcoin tokens – Bitcoin on the Ethereum blockchain.

This was a classic phishing attack, in which the hacker convinced the victim to send their crypto to the wrong address. (Where is account abstraction when you need it?)

But the victim and the hacker agreed to a deal that provides for the return of 90% of the funds. The two sides negotiated the deal via chain messaging and Telegram chats.

“You win, brother. You can keep 10% and give back the 90%. We can pretend nothing happened,” the victim communicated to the hacker via chain messaging on May 4. “We both know that $7 million is enough to live very comfortably, but $70 million will keep you up at night.”

The saga took another turn on Friday.

According to on-chain data, the hacker returned all the cryptography. It’s not immediately clear why they didn’t keep their 10%, but crypto security company Match Systems released a statement saying this had contributed to the recovery.

“At the moment, the victim has no complaints against the attacker. Further comments will be provided at a later date,” Match said.

Data of the week — The rise of ZkLink

ZkLink Nova, a new layer 3 blockchain, had a have a nice week end:

ZkLink transactions through May 2024. Transactions on ZkLink Nova peaked on May 10-11, 2024. (Alex Obchakevich/Alex Obchakevich)

It wasn’t just about transactions. According to data from DefiLlama, crypto deposited in ZkLink Nova’s DeFi ecosystem has more than doubled since Friday.

This week in DeFi governance

VOTE: Uniswap wants to make people more active in governance.

VOTE: Arbitrum wants to get into mergers and acquisitions.

VOTE: Aave is looking to fund GHO’s stability modules.

Article of the week

Billionaire Mark Cuban is defending crypto amid a series of posts in which he criticizes Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler’s treatment of the sector.

What we watch

The crypto resulting from the hack of Parity in 2017, the company behind the Polkadot blockchain, is on the move:

In 2017, the hacker stole 150,000 Ether, worth around $30 million at the time. On Monday, the hacker began laundering approximately $9 million in Ether. They control a wallet containing approximately $250 million in Ether.

Do you have a tip on DeFi? Contact us at aleks@dlnews.com.

Fuente