Solana (SOL): The developer of Saber (SBR) created 11 fake profiles to manipulate TVL
The Macalinao brothers, who founded the Saber (SBR) stablecoin protocol, allegedly used fake developer profiles to fake the Total Value Locked (TVL) on Solana’s DeFi (SOL). In fact, Ian Macalinao would have created multiple protocols to be used in symbiosis with Saber, posing as 11 different developers.
The Macalinao brothers fake TVL thanks to Saber Solanas
Our colleagues at CoinDesk have conducted an investigation in which they reveal the main developer of the protocol Saber (SBR) Fake profiles used to skew total blocked value Solana (SOL). He would have worked for that 11 pseudonymsto impersonate other developers. In the process, he created other protocols to interlock with Saber.
The developer in question is Ian Macalinao, who created Saber with his brother Dylan. This protocol focuses on stablecoin exchanges and is represented at its peak by Sunny Aggregator (SUNNY). 7.5 billion from Solana’s $10.5 billion TVL according to CoinDesk.
Sunny is actually another decentralized finance (DeFi) app developed by Ian Macalinao. This is used in Complementarity of Saber and reached $3.4 billion in TVL within two weeks of existence. The chart below helps to understand how value locked on Solana’s DeFi could be skewed thanks to Sabre:
Diagram of an interaction between two DeFi applications
Let’s imagine a user deposits $1000 into Protocol A. This gives him tokens represents proof of payment. Applications can then optimize the perceived rate of return by encouraging investors to come and deposit those LP tokens with them.
In this example, we get $1,000 for Protocol A and another $1,000 for Protocol B, even though there weren’t any only an original post.
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An unpublished blog post
The principle described above is not a secret in itself and is common to all decentralized finance in general. Indeed, it is common for a new application to come out to be launched optimize anotherwhich creates one log overlay.
The difference here is that it was done knowingly for the purpose manipulate statistics. A high TVL is in fact one of the criteria to monitor when choosing your investments. Ian Macalinao is said to have described the process in a blog post what has never been posted:
“I devised a scheme to maximize Solana’s TVL: I would create logs that would be stacked on top of each other, allowing a dollar to be counted multiple times. […] If the same team created every log, TVL would be a dumber metric. So I created more anonymous profiles. […] I wanted to give the impression that many people rely on our protocol […]. »
This revelation prompts serious reflection drifts who can intervene in the decentralized financing. These are items to consider if you are interested in an uplink protocol. too fast, too high.
These allegations are all the more serious given that Cashio (CASH), a stablecoin project, was hacked in the same way $52 million last March, was also part of the process.
For now, the two brothers seem interested in the nascent Aptos ecosystem, judging by Dylan Macalinao’s Twitter profile. This story must now challenge us as investors to encourage digging more and more in our research.
👉 Also in the news – NEAR Protocol reveals that some of its user data was leaked last June
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Source: CoinDesk
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