The founder was driven away, TVL plummeted by 20%, what happened to Marginfi?

Written by: Kaori, BlockBeats

This morning, Edgar Pavlovsky, the founder of the Solana ecosystem margin protocol Marginfi, announced on social media that he has left the Marginfi team, citing disagreements with the team's internal or external practices.

He stated that lawyers are currently addressing the issue of the founder's departure, "Even though my financial situation has been poor recently, with personal income almost at zero, I have told all relevant parties that I do not care about tokens, money, or anything else," Edgar mentioned in the post, adding that he currently has no plans for the next steps.

The founder's departure from the team is undoubtedly a heavy blow to a project that is on the rise. Although Edgar did not specify what caused the team to fracture, the community generally links his departure to the previous accusations made by SolBlaze against Marginfi.

SolBlaze is an LST project on Solana, which accused Marginfi last night of manipulating the distribution of BLZE emissions, resulting in user losses. "In the past three emission cycles (three weeks), Marginfi failed to load the allocated BLZE emissions into its reward system for users to claim, and the BLZE sent from the emission distribution only exists in the team's multi-signature," thus, SolBlaze announced the suspension of the emission distribution of bSOL and BLZE stored on Marginfi, effective immediately.

SolBlaze also added that after contacting Marginfi co-founder Mac Brennan regarding the insufficient emission distribution, they did not receive a response, and Marginfi had not communicated any information about the delayed emissions to SolBlaze in the past few weeks.

Perhaps Edgar's departure is related to how the Marginfi team handled the situation with SolBlaze. As of the time of writing, SolBlaze stated that they have reached a settlement with Marginfi, but before the community could process this, a new player joined the dispute.

Marginfi Faces Vampire Attack, Drama Unfolds

An hour after Edgar's post, Solend officially announced an airdrop for users who withdrew from Marginfi and deposited into Solend, with the specific airdrop amount proportional to the dollar value transferred by the users, and the funds must be held for a period to qualify.

The founder's departure and this vampire attack on Marginfi left most of the community puzzled, while Chris Burniske, founder of Place Holder, who seemed to be in the know, exclaimed, "Wow, things just got exciting."

Solend founder Rooter took the opportunity to publish a lengthy post detailing the entanglements between Solend and Marginfi.

In his narrative, he claimed that the Marginfi team resorted to unscrupulous means to compete, including spreading rumors about Solend, claiming that all of Solend's TVL came from Alameda and that Solend v2 had no TVL. Screenshots released by Rooter showed that they had contacted the OKX wallet team and discovered that the Marginfi team had discouraged the OKX team from developing a business relationship with Solend because Solend was associated with "FTX old money."

Additionally, Rooter accused the Marginfi team of frequently participating in "black posts" against Solend, stating, "Marginfi often spoke ill of Solend in critical posts and interacted with them." Rooter also provided evidence that Marginfi co-founder Mac Brennan had tweeted sarcastically attacking Solend and relentlessly pursued Rooter in the comments. "We initially refused to participate, not wanting to give them attention. But the noise was relentless, and since we didn't fight back, they kept attacking."

Meanwhile, the exposed Marginfi co-founder Mac Brennan had just finished analyzing and responding to Blaze's accusations when he faced a "character attack."

Before Rooter's tweet, Brennan had already posted a lengthy explanation of his behavior on social media, stating, "Everything was just to increase clicks and traffic." After proving his character and marketing abilities, Brennan concluded with, "Everything we do is for the users, and we will continue to do so." However, comments indicated that the community was not buying into Brennan's attention-seeking marketing strategy, with one comment mocking, "TLDR: Dude has a split personality."

Aside from the "back-and-forth" between Rooter and Mac Brennan, the entire community, as "onlookers," expressed their views, with some showing sympathy for Edgar and others questioning the team's theatrics, but the loudest voices were those reminding users to withdraw their funds from Marginfi. After the dramatic events unfolded, Marginfi's current TVL stands at $650 million, with a 24-hour decline of 18.85%, surpassed by Raydium.

Since the FTX incident, the achievements of the entire Solana ecosystem have been quietly built and are evident in the market. Solana is undoubtedly the fastest-growing ecosystem in 2024, with the strongest capital attraction. However, due to the multitude of projects, the competition for market attention resources is also more intense, as seen in the dramatic events involving Marginfi, SolBlaze, and Solend. The Solana DeFi circle is taking over the negative public opinion caused by the congestion of the Solana network, and whether the entire ecosystem can return to calm still requires time to observe.