Solana DeFi Platform Votes to Control Whale Account in Bid to Avoid Liquidation 'Chaos'

Users of Solana-based borrowing and lending service Solend voted Sunday to force a takeover of the protocol's largest account: a "whale" whose "extremely large margin position" was getting, according to Solend contributors, dangerously close to a catastrophic on-chain liquidation cliff.

The unprecedented governance vote, Solend's first, will grant Solend Labs "emergency powers" to liquidate the whale's vulnerable assets (around $20 million in SOL) via over-the-counter (OTC) trades instead of decentralized exchanges – where decentralized finance (DeFi) liquidations usually occur – if the price of SOL drops too low.

Solend Labs said on-chain liquidation of the whale's position "could cause chaos" in Solana's DeFi markets. Doing so over an OTC service would likely avoid such an outcome. But it also usurps entirely the smart contract–coded protocol Solend programmatically follows for every other borrower liquidation.