Founder driven away, TVL plummeted by 20%, what happened to Marginfi?

This morning, Edgar Pavlovsky, the founder of the Solana ecosystem margin protocol Marginfi, announced on social media that he has resigned from the Marginfi team. The reason for his resignation is that he cannot agree with the way things are done internally or externally by the team.

He mentioned that there are lawyers currently resolving the issue of the founder leaving the team. "Even though my recent financial situation has been very poor, my personal income has almost dropped to zero, but I have told all relevant parties that I don't care about tokens, money, or anything else," Edgar stated in the post, adding that he currently has no next plan.

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

SolBlaze is an LST project on Solana, which accused Marginfi of manipulating BLZE emission distribution last night, causing losses to users. "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 their team's multisig," SolBlaze announced the immediate suspension of the emission distribution of bSOL and BLZE stored on Marginfi.

SolBlaze also added that they contacted Marginfi co-founder Mac Brennan about the issue of insufficient emission supplements and did not receive a response. Marginfi also did not convey any information about delayed emissions to SolBlaze in the past few weeks.

Perhaps Edgar's resignation is related to how the Marginfi team handled the matter with SolBlaze. At the time of writing, SolBlaze stated that they had reached a settlement with Marginfi, but before the community could recover, a new player entered the dispute.

Marginfi Under Vampire Attack, Drama Unfolds

One hour after Edgar's post, Solend officially announced that they would airdrop to users who withdrew from Marginfi and deposited into Solend. The specific airdrop amount will be proportional to the dollar value transferred by the user, and the funds must be held for a period of time to qualify.

The founder's resignation and the vampire attack on Marginfi have left most of the community puzzled, while Place Holder founder Chris Burniske, who seems to be privy to the insider information, exclaimed, "Wow, things are getting exciting." Solend founder Rooer took the opportunity to recount the past entanglements between Solend and Marginfi.

In his narrative, the Marginfi team, in order to compete, used all means, 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 found that the Marginfi team had discouraged the OKX team from developing a business relationship with Solend because Solend was associated with "FTX old money."

In addition, Rooter also accused the Marginfi team of frequently participating in those "black posts" about Solend, "Marginfi often speaks ill of Solend in posts and interacts with them." Rooter also provided evidence that Marginfi co-founder Mac Brennan had tweeted mocking attacks on Solend and relentlessly pursued them in Rooter's tweets. "We initially refused to participate, didn't want to give them attention. But the voices were endless, we didn't fight back, and they kept attacking."

Meanwhile, Marginfi co-founder Mac Brennan, who had just finished analyzing and laying out a timeline to respond to Blaze's accusations, faced "personal attacks."

Before Rooter's tweet, Brennan had already posted a long explanation of his actions on social media, stating, "Everything is just to increase clicks and traffic," and after proving his character and marketing abilities, Brennan responded with "Everything we do is for the users, and we will continue to do so" as the conclusion. However, judging from the comments, the community is not buying into Brennan's attention-seeking marketing strategy, with one comment mocking, "TLDR: Dude has split personality disorder."

Outside of the "showdown" between Rooter and Mac Brennan, the entire community, as "onlookers," has expressed their own opinions, some expressing sympathy for Edgar, some questioning the team's performance, but most reminding users to withdraw funds from Marginfi. After the dramatic events unfolded, Marginfi's current TVL is $650 million, with a 24-hour decrease of 18.85%, being surpassed by Raydium.

Since the FTX scandal, the achievements of the entire Solana ecosystem's quiet construction have been evident in the market. Solana is undoubtedly the ecosystem with the fastest development and strongest fundraising effect since 2024. However, due to the numerous projects, the competition for market attention resources is more intense, as seen in the dramatic events between Marginfi and SolBlaze, Solend. Whether the entire ecosystem can return to calmness after the negative publicity caused by the congestion of the Solana network remains to be seen.

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