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Moola Market

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anchored·5jLwHP…dPVH

Summary

Moola Market is a decentralized lending protocol built on the Celo blockchain, founded in 2020 by Patrick Baron and backed by Polychain Capital. In October 2022, the protocol suffered a price manipulation exploit draining approximately $9.1 million, making it one of the largest DeFi incidents on Celo; over 93% of funds were returned by the attacker within hours in exchange for a roughly $500,000 bounty. The protocol subsequently relaunched with reduced collateral thresholds, but its TVL and MOO token value have declined sharply since the incident.

Connected Entities

1 entities
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□Moola Market
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    Timeline(11 events)

    2020

    Moola Market founded by Patrick Baron in San Francisco, CA.

    March 2021

    Moola raises $1.4 million seed round led by Polychain Capital and Flori Ventures.

    18 October 2022

    Price manipulation exploit begins at approximately 16:04 UTC. Attacker wallet 0x95B5579b323Ddc6cd290Bd4DA6e56BA019588EfC inflates MOO token price 6,400% via Ubeswap and drains approximately $9.1 million across CELO, cEUR, cUSD, and MOO.

    18 October 2022

    Moola Market pauses all protocol operations and publicly announces exploit. Team contacts law enforcement.

    18 October 2022

    An individual identifying as the attacker contacts the Moola team within approximately 10 minutes of the public announcement and confirms possession of exploited funds. Negotiations begin.

    18 October 2022

    Attacker returns 93.1% of stolen funds to the Moola governance multi-sig wallet. Attacker retains approximately 650,000 CELO (~$500,000) as a bounty and donates approximately 50,000 CELO (~$37,000) to ImpactMarket.

    19 October 2022

    CoinDesk, CoinTelegraph, and other major crypto outlets publish full coverage of exploit and fund return.

    19 October 2022

    Moola submits governance proposal ID 9 to remove MOO as viable collateral by reducing LTV and liquidation thresholds.

    November 2022

    Moola publishes Proposal 10 (Unpausing), outlining protocol restart plan including admin multisig transition, phased unpause, and user compensation for haircut balances.

    2023

    Protocol relaunches with revised governance structure and MOO reserve frozen. TVL and MOO token value begin sustained decline.

    2025

    Moola Market TVL stands at approximately $1.1 million; MOO market cap approximately $54,500. Protocol remains operational but dormant.

    Provenance & Audit Trail
    Anchored on SolanaVerify on-chain13 Wayback Archivessrc:defillama

    Decision Log

    This investigation is cryptographically anchored to the Solana blockchain (1 event). 13 of 19 cited source URLs have an Internet Archive snapshot.

    full audit log →version history →

    model: claude-sonnet-4-6

    generated: 5/4/2026, 2:54:47 AM

    last updated: 8/30/2026, 5:14:12 AM

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