Is Solana Really Decentralized? Solend’s Actions Sparks Debate

The Solana community has been rising in reputation amongst decentralized finance (DeFi) lovers. The success of many initiatives on the platform has drawn builders to it and with the builders have come to the buyers. With the market crash, many networks out there have suffered as a result of declining costs, having to place in varied measures to make sure longevity. The latest occurred on Solend, a Solana DeFi protocol, whose actions have drawn the ire of DeFi buyers.

Threatening The Security Of Decentralization

Final week, the value of SOL had trended to the mid $20s, finally bottoming out at $26 earlier than recovering. This has put a Solana DeFi protocol, Solend, in a dangerous place because of the OTC commerce of a single whale pockets. The whale had borrowed 108 million in USDT and USDT utilizing 5.7 million SOL. Because it was a leverage place, it meant that 20% of the commerce stood to be liquidated if the value of SOL have been to fall to $22.3 at any time.

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The quantity of the place made it in order that liquidation of such proportions would put the complete protocol in danger. It is because decentralized exchanges are sometimes working with restricted liquidity and Solend couldn’t adequately present the liquidity required to execute such a commerce.

SOL costs falls near liquidation level | Supply: Arcane Analysis

On condition that the digital asset had declined dangerously near the liquidation value, Solend had begun to discover varied choices to mitigate towards this. On Sunday, the protocol launched a governance proposal vote which had acquired 97.5% of votes in favor of passing it. This proposal was to manually liquidate the whale place by initiating a token sale via an OTC desk. This was to bypass the occasion of the liquidation occurring on-chain and closely impacting the market.

Solana Customers Increase Hell

The Solend proposal had shortly gone viral on social media and had drawn the eye of a considerable amount of Solana customers who strongly opposed the choice. To them, this went towards every part DeFi stood for and raised questions on how actually “decentralized” the protocol is.

Because of the outrage, Solend had needed to reverse its resolution and abandon the proposal to quickly seize the belongings of the whale, whose account made up 88% of all borrowed funds and 95% of all deposited SOL on the protocol. Instead, a brand new proposal was launched which acquired 99.8% of affirmative votes to invalidate the primary proposal.

SOL value recovers above $36 | Supply: SOLUSD on TradingView.com

SOL has since recovered again above $35 since then, pushing again the fears of liquidation with reference to this account. Nevertheless, the entire debacle has left a mark in the marketplace as customers at the moment are questioning if decentralized actually means decentralized within the crypto house.  As such, DeFi customers are suggested to maintain such occasions in thoughts when collaborating and interacting with varied protocols which they imagine to be decentralized.

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SOL is up 2.87% within the final 24 hours to be buying and selling at $36.28 on the time of this writing. It’s the ninth largest cryptocurrency within the house with a market cap of $12.43 billion.

Featured picture from Blockbuild.africa, charts from Arcane Analysis and TradingView.com

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