What Happened to Marginfi: Founders Walk Out, TVL Plunges 20%
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What Happened to Marginfi: Founders Walk Out, TVL Plunges 20%
Marginfi hit by vampire attack, rival's downfall exposes past Drama.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthors: Kaori, Joyce
This morning, Edgar Pavlovsky, founder of Solana-based lending protocol Marginfi, announced on social media that he has left the Marginfi team due to disagreements with internal or external practices within the team.
He mentioned that lawyers are currently handling the matter regarding his departure as a founder. "Even though my recent financial situation has been poor and my personal income has nearly dropped to zero, I’ve made it clear to all parties involved that I don’t care about tokens, money, or anything else," Edgar stated, adding that he currently has no plans for what’s next.
A founder publicly leaving their team is undoubtedly a heavy blow for any project on an upward trajectory. Although Edgar did not specify the exact reasons behind the split, the community widely associates his departure with SolBlaze’s prior allegations against Marginfi.
SolBlaze, an LST project on Solana, accused Marginfi last night of manipulating BLZE emissions distribution, causing user losses. "Over the past three emission cycles (three weeks), marginfi failed to load the allocated BLZE emissions into its reward system for users to claim, and the BLZE sent from the emission allocation remained solely in the team’s multi-sig wallet," the project stated, announcing the immediate suspension of bSOL and BLZE emissions stored on Marginfi.
SolBlaze also added that after reaching out to Marginfi co-founder Mac Brennan regarding insufficient emissions, they received no response, and Marginfi had not communicated any information about delayed emissions to SolBlaze over the past several weeks.
Perhaps Edgar’s departure is related to how the Marginfi team handled this incident with SolBlaze. At the time of writing, SolBlaze said it has reached a settlement with Marginfi—but before the community could catch its breath, a new player entered the drama.
Marginfi Hit by Vampire Attack, Rival Steps In to Expose Past Drama
An hour after Edgar’s post, Solend officially announced it would airdrop tokens to users who withdraw funds from Marginfi and deposit them into Solend. The airdrop amount will be proportional to the dollar value transferred, and funds must remain deposited for a certain period to qualify.
The founder's exit and this targeted vampire attack have left much of the community puzzled. Chris Burniske, founder of Placeholder, who seems privy to the backstory, simply commented: "Wow, things just got interesting."
Solend founder Rooter then stepped forward with a detailed thread recounting the long-standing tensions between Solend and Marginfi.
According to Rooter, the Marginfi team resorted to unethical tactics in competition—spreading rumors about Solend, such as claiming all of Solend’s TVL came from Alameda or that Solend v2 had no TVL. Screenshots shared by Rooter show that they contacted OKX Wallet’s team and learned that Marginfi had advised OKX against forming business relationships with Solend, citing Solend’s alleged ties to “FTX old money.”
In addition, Rooter accused the Marginfi team of frequently engaging with negative posts about Solend, stating, “Marginfi often says bad things and interacts with posts criticizing Solend.” Rooter provided evidence showing that Marginfi co-founder Mac Brennan once posted a tweet mocking Solend and repeatedly replied under Rooter’s tweets. “We initially refused to engage, not wanting to give them attention. But the noise never stopped. We didn’t fight back, so they kept attacking.”
Meanwhile, Mac Brennan, Marginfi’s co-founder now thrust into the spotlight, had just finished responding point-by-point to SolBlaze’s accusations when he was hit with another round of personal attacks.
Before Rooter’s thread, Brennan had already posted a lengthy explanation defending his online behavior, saying, “It was all just about increasing clicks and traffic.” After asserting his character and marketing rationale, he concluded: “Everything we do is for our users, and we’ll keep doing it.” However, judging from comments, the community wasn’t convinced by Brennan’s attention-grabbing tactics—one user sarcastically remarked, “TL;DR: Dude has dissociative identity disorder.”
Beyond the exchange between Rooter and Mac Brennan, the broader community—acting as onlookers—shared varied opinions. Some expressed sympathy for Edgar, others questioned whether the whole situation was staged, but the most common sentiment urged users to withdraw their funds from Marginfi. Following the escalation of these dramatic events, Marginfi’s current TVL stands at $650 million, down 18.85% over 24 hours, falling behind Raydium.
Since the FTX collapse, the quiet but steady progress across the Solana ecosystem has been evident to market observers. Undoubtedly, Solana has emerged as the fastest-growing and most capital-attractive ecosystem since 2024. Yet, precisely because of the sheer number of projects, competition for market attention has intensified—clearly illustrated by this dramatic episode involving Marginfi, SolBlaze, and Solend. As Solana’s DeFi space inherits the negative narratives previously tied to network congestion, whether the ecosystem can regain stability remains to be seen.
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