Mango Markets

Announced is what was said at the time. Cash actually received is rarely disclosed and is not assumed to match.

1. 11 August 2021

   MNGO token sale closes

   The 24-hour sale was closed to US investors. Bids peaked above $500 million before most were withdrawn in the grace period that followed.

2. 11 October 2022

   Exploit drains most deposits; exchange goes offline

   MNGO's price on the feed the exchange relied on rose more than 13-fold in 30 minutes, and inflated positions were used as collateral to withdraw most of the assets users had deposited. The version then running was shut down by the project's upgrade council.

3. 27 December 2022

   Criminal complaint against the trader unsealed

   Federal prosecutors in Manhattan charged Avraham Eisenberg with commodities fraud and commodities manipulation over the October trades.

4. January 2023

   SEC sues the trader and calls MNGO a security

   The SEC made no allegation against Mango itself at the time.

5. 9 January 2023

   CFTC files civil action against the trader

   The CFTC's complaint alleges an oracle-manipulation scheme; it was the agency's first such case involving a decentralized exchange.

6. 26 January 2023

   Developers commit to relaunching as version 4

   The same week Mango sued the trader over $47 million. Durairaj said Mango Labs had spent an estimated $400,000 on legal fees in 2022 and would ask the DAO for a $1.5 million grant, partly for lawyers.

7. April 2024

   Jury convicts the trader

   A federal jury found Eisenberg guilty of commodities fraud, commodities market manipulation and wire fraud.

8. 19 August 2024

   DAO votes to settle with the SEC

   The proposal, to pay a penalty and destroy the MNGO tokens, passed after two days of voting.

9. 27 September 2024

   SEC files settled charges; MNGO to be destroyed

   The SEC charged Mango DAO and Blockworks Foundation with the unregistered offer and sale of MNGO, and Blockworks Foundation and Mango Labs with acting as unregistered brokers. Without admitting or denying the allegations, they agreed to pay $700,000 in total, destroy their MNGO and ask exchanges to delist it. The settlement was subject to court approval.

10. 11 January 2025

    "Mango Markets will be shutting down"

    The project told users on X to close their positions.

11. 13 January 2025

    Wind-down proposals take effect

    Three DAO proposals forcing positions closed and blocking new ones became executable at 8pm UTC.

Mango told users to close their positions as its v4 exchange and Boost product wound down, after DAO proposals that made most borrowing economically unviable passed unanimously. Co-founder Maximilian Schneider had opened the discussion on Discord, saying contributors wanted to stop working on the project and move away from its legal problems.

1. Court ruling23 May 2025

   Judge vacates the trader's convictions

   US District Judge Arun Subramanian vacated Eisenberg's commodities fraud and manipulation convictions and acquitted him of wire fraud, finding insufficient evidence of false representations to a permissionless protocol and that venue in New York was not established.

2. AftermathJanuary 2026

   Prosecutors appeal the acquittal

18 sources behind this page.

1. 1Mango Markets Shuts Down Following SEC Settlement... And Hack · Blockhead · Jan 2025
2. 2Mango Markets Agrees to Destroy MNGO Tokens in SEC Settlement · CoinDesk · Sep 2024
3. 3Mango Markets to Resume Crypto Trading, SEC Be Damned · CoinDesk · Jan 2023
4. 4Mango Markets Will Alter Multi-Sig Feature to Mitigate Security Threats After $114M Exploit · CoinDesk · Feb 2023
5. 5Solana's Mango Markets DEX Raises $70M in MNGO Token Sale · CoinDesk · Aug 2021
6. 6Judge overturns fraud convictions in Mango Markets exploit case · Cointelegraph · May 2025
7. 7SEC files 'settled charges' against Mango Markets operators · Cointelegraph · Sep 2024
8. 8Mango Markets shuts down following SEC settlement · Cointelegraph (syndicated by TradingView)
9. 9CFTC Charges Avraham Eisenberg with Manipulative and Deceptive Scheme to Misappropriate Over $110 million from Mango Markets, a Digital Asset Exchange · Commodity Futures Trading Commission · Jan 2023
10. 10Mango Markets announce plans to wind down operations after technical and legal trouble · Cryptopolitan

Every figure above is clickable and opens the sources behind it. Copies were stored when each source was read, so a citation still resolves after the page it came from is gone.