The innovations and success of decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms have attracted several developers to launch their apps and provide the best marketplace. The increased competition in the space is giving rise to platforms that claim the best features, a stable ecosystem, and a friendly user interface. Many platforms are in a virtual arms race to sit on the DeFi throne.
Mango Markets is a decentralized platform, serving the features of spot trading, lending, and perpetual futures to traders. The decentralized exchange (DEX) is built atop the Solana blockchain which accounts for its low latency of transaction speed. It also harnesses the power of Serum DEX, a permissionless order book for margin trading. It aimed to combine the benefits of CeFi (liquidity and usability) with those of DeFi (permissionless) and offer a price that is lower than both of them. The platform allows users to perform cross-trades and depends on a margin trading protocol for it. A blockchain oracle was used to compare the price of a crypto asset on different exchanges and then finally determine the price of that asset on its exchange. This oracle was the data source for running smart contracts and performed as a bridge connecting the protocol and the ecosystem outside. Cross-trading is a trading strategy where the profits earned from one trade are invested in another trade. This allows one to enter a new position without exiting the older one, managing the risk associated with the first trade. Let’s see how Mark performs a cross-trade. Suppose Mark buys BTC today which is valued at $15,000. Now, as the price fluctuates, they valued at $17,000 tomorrow. Instead of keeping the profit, Mark sells BTC worth $2000 and buys ETH with them. At the end of the day, he has the original $15,000 worth of BTC and $ 2,000 worth of ETH. However, during cross-trading, the individual transactions are not recorded but a single cross-trade. Many major exchanges do not allow cross-trading because of underlying security issues.
Mango claims to provide latency as low as one second. This increases the usability of the platform and gives quick confirmation status on performed transactions. Low latency also indirectly supports better liquidity. By providing an early change in price quotes, the risk of a major market movement is significantly reduced. It also prevents any losses which may occur because of response delays. Although it is not possible to escape the gas fees (transaction cost), Mango aims to provide a price that is lower or comparable to that of CeFis. A lower price on all the Mango financial tools is a positive sign of efficiency and can be a major factor in deciding the fate of any platform in the long run.
MNGO is the native token for the platform which is majorly a governance token, with most of it locked in a DAO treasury. These tokens will be released and used to reward the protocol builders (developers and code contributors) and protocol service providers (oracles and LPs). The token holders can make decisions related to the protocol which can even lead to a complete change in the system. With such decisions, the platform rests the major power and wealth of DAO to its many future contributors and participants.
MNGO tokens did not undergo a presale to promote the spirit of transparency and equal opportunities, native to cryptocurrencies. The maximum supply of tokens is limited to 10 billion.
There were some incidents of attacks on the platform, the major being the draining of more than &100 million from the Mango Markets. The attack was completed in just 40 minutes. Surprisingly, the attacker did not rely on any unauthorized access but rather utilized a vulnerability in the source code and claimed it to be a fair trading strategy. The platform quickly regained control and with fewer competitors which offer the same features as the platform, Mango Markets may quickly rise and become a leading exchange.