Mango DAO governed Mango Markets, a Solana exchange for lending, borrowing and perpetual futures. Holders of its $MNGO token voted on proposals through Realms. It has a place in this directory for one vote: in October 2022 the DAO approved a deal with Avraham Eisenberg, who had just taken about $110m from the exchange, under which he returned about $67m and kept $47m. The DAO shut the exchange down in January 2025, after a settlement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission required it to destroy its tokens.
October 2022: the exploit
On 11 October 2022, according to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's complaint, Eisenberg opened two anonymous accounts on Mango Markets and took large leveraged positions in a perpetual future priced on $MNGO against USDC. He then bought $MNGO on the three exchanges that fed Mango's price oracle, and the oracle price rose more than 13-fold in 30 minutes. The inflated positions counted as collateral, and he borrowed and withdrew more than $110m of the exchange's deposits against them. The CFTC called it its first case of oracle manipulation on a decentralized exchange.
The vote
Eisenberg then took the matter to the DAO. He filed a proposal on Realms offering to return most of the funds if he could keep the rest as a bounty and the DAO agreed not to pursue him. The version that passed had him return about $67m and keep $47m, and the treasury then reimbursed depositors (Cointelegraph). The vote was valid under the DAO's own rules, and he later argued it made his trades legal (Cointelegraph).
The DAO did not treat the deal as final. It sued Eisenberg for the $47m plus interest, arguing it had agreed under duress, while his lawyers argued the matter had been settled by the vote (Cointelegraph). The case is the standard example of governance ratifying an attack, and it is treated as one on How DAOs fail and DAO security and governance attacks.
The criminal case
A jury in the Southern District of New York convicted Eisenberg in April 2024 of commodities fraud, commodities manipulation and wire fraud after a 10-day trial (US Attorney's Office, SDNY). On 23 May 2025 Judge Arun Subramanian overturned all three convictions (TRM Labs). He found the government had not shown the commodities offences happened in that district, since Eisenberg traded from Puerto Rico. On the wire fraud count he also found no false statement: Mango Markets had no terms of service forbidding what Eisenberg did.
The SEC settlement and the wind-down
In August 2024 the DAO voted to offer the SEC a settlement: a civil penalty of $223,228 from the treasury and the destruction of the $MNGO it held. A second proposal, to burn the DAO's $MNGO straight away, failed with 99% against; one contributor explained that burning before the SEC answered would leave the DAO with nothing if talks failed. The treasury held more than $44m in SOL at the time (SolanaFloor).
On 27 September 2024 the SEC filed settled charges against Mango DAO and Blockworks Foundation for selling $MNGO as unregistered securities, and against Blockworks Foundation and Mango Labs LLC for acting as unregistered brokers (SEC; case 24-civ-07334, litigation release). Without admitting or denying the allegations, the three agreed to pay nearly $700,000 between them, to destroy their $MNGO and to ask trading platforms to delist it, subject to court approval.
The end came from the contributors. Three proposals filed on 11 January 2025 raised interest rates and collateral requirements until most borrowing no longer paid, forcing traders to close positions and stopping new ones (DL News). The two on rates and collateral passed unanimously and became executable on 13 January (The Block). The same report notes that co-founders and contributors had been suing each other over a tranche of locked $MNGO bought from the FTX estate.
How Caper approaches this
In a DAO where weight is tokens held, a vote goes to whoever holds the tokens on the day, including the person the vote is about. On a caper, a ballot's weight depends on the tokens a member holds and on their record of past ballots, which only voting earns and which cannot be transferred. A big bag alone can't capture control. How a ballot is weighed is set out on Voting.
External links
- CFTC charges Avraham Eisenberg – 9 January 2023
- SEC charges Mango DAO, Blockworks Foundation and Mango Labs – 27 September 2024
- Eisenberg convicted – US Attorney's Office, SDNY, April 2024
- Convictions overturned – TRM Labs, May 2025
- Mango DAO on Realms