The Research Report

Lesson 1 opens on

Mango Markets, October 2022

On 11 October 2022 Avraham Eisenberg drained about 110 million dollars from Mango Markets, a Solana lending and trading protocol. He funded two accounts with about 5 million dollars, took a large leveraged position in an MNGO perpetual swap, and bought the thinly-traded MNGO token on the exchanges feeding Mango's price oracle, so the oracle price jumped over 13-fold in 30 minutes, then used the inflated value of his MNGO position as collateral to borrow and withdraw almost everything else in the protocol. He then publicly admitted the conduct while asserting it was legal, returned about 67 million dollars under a DAO vote while keeping about 47 million, was charged in a criminal complaint unsealed in December 2022, and was convicted by a jury in April 2024 of commodities fraud, commodities manipulation and wire fraud; on 23 May 2025 the judge set all three convictions aside, for improper venue and, on wire fraud, for want of any material misrepresentation, while finding the evidence of a manipulative device sufficient.