Is this better than a gov? A bank? Is this trust? Solend, a lending platform on the Solana blockchain, voted to take over control of its largest account, termed a whale account. On Sunday, users of the platform voted in favor of a proposal granting emergency powers to Solend Labs to liquidate about $20M of the whale’s assets via over-the-counter transactions versus through exchanges. The proposal said the whale had an extremely large margin position and posed a liquidation risk to the Solend protocol. Following backlash in the DeFi community, Solend users voted to reverse the decision. - The whale had 5.7 million SOL deposited and had borrowed over $108M in stablecoins. - The whale holds over 95% of the main pool deposits and 88% of the USDC borrowings pool. - If the price of SOL falls to $22.30, the whale becomes up to 20% liquidatable of its holdings, which would cause a ripple effect in the Solana network. - Solend Labs said they had tried to contact the owner of the whale account with no success, which prompted the decision to seek control of the account. - A second vote passed early Monday, invalidating the original decision and extending voting time to one day. - Solend Labs plans to create a new proposal that does not involve emergency powers to take over an account.