Solana’s MangoFarmSOL, a farming protocol on the Solana ecosystem, is speculated to be an exit scam after abruptly deactivating its social media accounts and reports of missing funds.
The protocol, which claimed to offer exceptional yield opportunities in the $SOL space, had scheduled an airdrop of its MANGO token for January 10, as stated in a Medium post published on January 5.
Participants were required to deposit Solana tokens into the protocol to be eligible for the airdrop.
The allegations of an exit scam were first raised by Delegate “Foobar,” a pseudonymous developer who had recently been appointed as MangoFarmSOL’s security auditor.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter) on January 6, Foobar warned that the project’s front-end had been compromised and hinted at the possibility of a rug pull, a situation where developers abandon a project and make off with investors’ funds.
mangofarm frontend compromised, don’t use
— foobar (@0xfoobar) January 6, 2024
Following Foobar’s warning, MangoFarmSOL’s profile on X and its website mysteriously went offline.
Additionally, the Telegram channel associated with the project, which had over 1,000 subscribers, ceased accepting new members.
The estimated losses from the alleged scam amount to nearly $2 million.
Users Report Missing Funds
On X, users shared screenshots of messages purportedly left by the developer behind the scam.
These messages claimed that the developer was forced to create Ponzi schemes and suggested involvement in another Solana-based yield protocol called BananaMiner.
However, representatives from BananaMiner vehemently denied any connections with MangoFarmSOL, stating that they were approached by MangoFarmSOL for collaboration but declined due to a conflict of interest.
The Solana ecosystem has recently been targeted by scammers employing wallet drainers.
Cybercriminals have been selling Solana drainer kits since December, leading to an increase in attacks.
Chainalysis, a blockchain security firm, reported that one of the largest online communities dedicated to SOL’s wallet drainer kits has amassed over 6,000 members.
Solana Continues to Acheive New Milestones
Layer 1 blockchain Solana (SOL) continues to make waves in the crypto community as it achieves several significant milestones.
Over the past week, the network surpassed Ethereum (ETH) in 7-day stablecoin trading volume for the first time ever.
As reported, the value of stablecoin transfers on Solana reached a staggering $103 billion last week, outperforming all other networks.
Ethereum secured the second position with $90.9 billion, followed by Tron with $82.3 billion and BNB Chain with $14.6 billion.
In addition to stablecoin trading volume, Solana also surpassed Ethereum in NFT trade volume for the month of December.
According to Degen News, Solana hosted trades worth $366.6 million, while Ethereum recorded $353.2 million.
However, data from CryptoSlam reveals that over the past 30 days, Solana’s NFT sales amounted to $329.3 million, which is approximately 5% less than Ethereum’s $345 million during the same period.
The popularity of Solana is evident not only in trading volumes but also in search trends.
In mid-December, worldwide searches for “Solana” surpassed those for “Ethereum,” as reported by Google Trends.
These milestones cap off a bullish year for Solana in 2023.
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