Solana Project Marginfi Withdrawals Top $214 Million After CEO’s Resignation

Edgar Pavlovsky, the founder and CEO of Solana decentralized lending protocol Marginfi, has announced his resignation amidst a whirlwind of controversy and operational discord.

Pavlovsky revealed his departure in a tweet, citing disagreements with Marginfi’s internal and external practices. His announcement, sent from a personal account, was closely followed by an official confirmation from Marginfi, attributing his exit to a mix of personal reasons and internal operational conflicts.

“The lawyers are still working things out but I’ve told everyone involved I don’t really care about tokens, or money, or any of that,” Pavlovsky wrote in his post. “Let that be a clear statement of my intention here and of my principles. I’ve been running pretty red financially lately so this puts me pretty much back at $0, but if you’ve been in this industry for a while you know that’s nothing new.”

The infighting is happening against a backdrop of especially bad congestion on the Solana network, public arguments over who’s to blame for it, and developers rallying to get a solution implemented as soon as possible.

The departure has triggered a significant exodus of funds from Marginfi, with data indicating withdrawals surpassing $130 million in the wake of the news.

This mass withdrawal was further catalyzed by Solend, a competing decentralized Solana lending protocol, which has seized the opportunity to attract disenchanted Marginfi users by offering airdrops to those who transfer their funds to Solend, proportional to the migrated value.

But Marginfi’s challenges were not limited to Pavlovsky’s departure.

Earlier in the week, the protocol faced criticism from Solana staking pool SolBlaze for allegedly mismanaging BLZE rewards tokens intended for governance purposes, leading to a public dispute. Pavlovsky’s response to the backlash, now deleted, and his subsequent antagonistic social media behavior, did little to quell the growing unrest among users and partners.

Despite the turmoil, there seems to be a silver lining.

Following Pavlovsky’s resignation, Marginfi expressed a willingness to mend fences with the Solana staking pool, SolBlaze, and reaffirmed its commitment to supporting the partnership, hinting at a potential path toward reconciliation and stability after a tumultuous period.

Edited by Stacy Elliott.