Texas Genius Launched Tvl Solana Into Space, Creating 11 Personalities And A Fake $7.5 Billion

• Saber founder created 11 fake identities to run interconnected protocols on the Solana network.
• Fictional developers behind Cashio, Sunny Aggregator, TribecaDAO, and other platforms
• A convoluted scheme allowed Ian Macalinao to inflate TVL Solana by $7.5 billion.

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As part of a new investigation, it was revealed that the developers of the Saber protocol were responsible for a unique billion-dollar scam. The Macalinao brothers have created 11 fake identities behind the famous platforms in the Solana ecosystem.

The scammers pumped the TVL networks with fake $7.5 billion generated by layering protocols. This scheme forced the system to recalculate the users’ assets several times.

Now the geniuses from Texas are migrating towards the Aptos blockchain. Meanwhile, deceived users are trying to return millions of dollars, begging Macalinao to try on the identities of fictional developers at least for a while.

Ian Macalinao’s Digital Empire

“I have developed a scheme that will allow Solana to increase TVL: I will create protocols that overlap so that the dollar can be counted several times ,” Yang wrote in an unpublished blog.

In September 2021, TVL Solana rapidly went uphill and reached $10.5 billion. The cryptocurrency was trading at $188, and users considered the network one of the most promising ecosystems in the world of digital assets. Only two people knew that 2/3 TVL were hand-drawn numbers.

Ian Macalinao and his brother Dylan are programmers from Texas. In 2017, Jan took his first steps in cryptocurrencies by writing the code for the EOS blockchain. Three years later, he became interested in the Solana ecosystem and launched the Saber decentralized stablecoin exchange.

DEX quickly grew and was in demand among the owners of Solana, but its creator had more ambitious plans than just creating a successful protocol. He intended to launch a project that could compete with Ethereum in scale.

“I wanted to create a system very similar to this one (ETH). However, if the same team created every protocol, TVL would be a silly metric. So I created more anonymous profiles,” Macalinao wrote.

As a result, Yang came up with 11 different personalities who launched a whole network of interconnected protocols. They have become the jewel of Solana. Among them:

• Sunny Aggregator;
• Cashio;
• TribecaDAO;
• Quarry;
• Goki и т.д.

By the way, Sunny Aggregator and its “creator,” hiding under the pseudonym Surya Khosla, became a test pen for Macalinao. Further, other pseudo-developers appeared.

Ship Capital – Resident Evil

The Texas genius didn’t just make up a bunch of anons, trying to make it look like different teams were working. He created a vibrant community as fictional developers actively interacted with each other on social networks, commenting on each other’s projects and promoting them online.

Fake personalities like 0xGhostchain (Cashio), Goki Rajesh (Goki), Svalioni (TribecaDAO), and, of course, Surya Khosla (Sunny Aggregator) have been actively promoting Ship Capital. Praise, mutual sharing of posts, and recognition that SC inspired them to develop Solana.

Anons fought fiercely for their identities. Anyone who dared to question the plausibility of their personas received a harsh response. For example, Surya Khosla wrote in response to one of the users: “I am not a puppet!”. A little later, he posted a photo on Twitter in which a fictional character created by a neural network was visiting the Macalinao brothers in Los Angeles.

Of course, not all Ship Capital employees were fake. This is a significant development team, but within it, a network of fictitious personalities was secretly operating. And Ian Macalinao pulled the strings, along with his brother Dylan.

CASH: The point Of Apogee

The icing on the cake was the CASH stablecoin introduced in November 2021 from the Cashio platform. The cryptocurrency was pegged to the dollar and backed by LP tokens. At the same time, Cashio accepted only Saber tokens, the key Solana exchange at that time.

Unbeknownst to users, Cashio essentially relies on the self-contained ecosystem of the Milinao brothers. The profit came from Jan’s projects. First, the assets were packed into “tokenized baskets” via the Crate protocol (alias kiwi pepper), then they were sent to the Arrow yield redirection platform (oliver_code).

After that, Cashio reported that it received income by placing derivative derivatives on deposits in Sunny Aggregator. In addition, some of the assets were redirected to the Quarry mining reward aggregator. The resulting profits went to the Cashio treasury, managed by the DAO. Regular additional farming: promised CASH holders that by “pouring” stablecoins into the liquidity pool of the Sunny protocol, they would receive a return of 10-30%.

As a result, 1 conditional dollar passed through Yan’s network, turning into $6 TVL Solana. By September 11 last year, the figures reached their maximum. The SBR token was worth $90, and deposits reached $4.15 billion. At the same time, Sunny Aggregator’s assets amounted to $3.4 billion.

Ian and Dylan wanted to turn Saber into a monster whose fall would take the entire Solana network.

Robin Hood Strikes

Over time, the cryptocurrency world of Ian Macalinao began to sag. The protocols worked, but the price of tokens fell by 99%. The final blow was delivered by an unknown Robin Hood, who hacked the Cashio platform in March 2022. To do this, he used a vulnerability in the code made by Jan himself.

The hacker brought down the CASH stablecoin and stole $52.8 million. This story is even more surprising when the hacker returned users’ assets with less than $100,000 in their accounts. Macalinao, speaking on behalf of 0xGhostchain, begged the hacker to return the rest of the funds.

As a result, Robin Hood demanded that users explain the origin of the assets. According to the hacker, for those who needed the money, he returned another $ 14 million of the $ 39 million requested by the owners.

The cyber attack forced experts and journalists to start digging under Ship Capital. Subsequently, it was they who discovered 11 fictional personalities of Jan Macalinao. Along with the disclosed scheme, unpublished entries from the scammer’s blog fell into the hands of the Coindesk editors. In them, he described in detail the process of creating an ecosystem.

Macalinao go to Aptos, ignoring deceived users

Recently, the brothers began to recruit a team of external developers. This happened after Saber moved from Solana to Aptos. Together with them, former employees of Ship Capital migrated to the new blockchain. The team has changed its name and now appears as VC Protagonist.

Users affected by Yang’s actions are still trying to get to the scammer. Some even ask Macalinao to try on the identity of fictional developers for a while.

Answering a question about the future of Sunny Aggregator and the possible transition of the protocol to Aptos, Jan told the bike about the sad state of the fake person.

“Prime developer Sunny went bust after losing most of its savings due to the Cashio hack , ” Macalinao said.

A week later, he reported that the creator of Sunny Aggregator felt energized when he tried his hand at the Aptos network. Meanwhile, Solana is trading at $40 and does not seem to have any intention of fading into the past due to another FUD.