Solend Invalidates Vote to Take Over At-Risk Solana Whale Wallet

If Solend is unable to take over the account, some believe this could lead to a collapse, pushing the price of Solana (SOL) to zero.

Solend, the Solana-based decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocol, has initiated another governance vote to invalidate a recently approved proposal to give Solend Labs “emergency powers” to access the whale wallet to avoid liquidation.

On Sunday, the crypto lending platform launched a governance vote titled “SLND1 : Mitigate Risk From Whale.” It allowed Solend to reduce the risk the whale’s liquidation poses to the market by letting the lending platform access the whale’s wallet and letting the liquidations happen over-the-counter.

According to Solend, if SOL drops in price and the whale gets liquidated, the lending platform may “end up with bad debt” and strain the Solana network. The proposal was approved, triggering criticism from members of the community.

After the community condemned the move, calling it the opposite of what DeFi should be and outright illegal, the Solend team initiated a second governance proposal vote to invalidate the previously-approved proposal. The proposal ended with 1,480,264 votes in favor of disregarding the SLND1 proposal.

The new proposal invalidates the previous vote and will push Solend to find another solution that does not involve forcibly taking over an account. Additionally, it also increases the governance voting time to one day.

The situation has put the crypto lending platform into a gruesome dilemma. If Solend were to take over the whale’s wallet and be granted emergency powers, it might save Solana from a DeFi implosion. However, it would show that anyone’s assets can be confiscated within the platform and could cause a boycott.

On the other hand, if the Solend team is unable to mitigate the risks surrounding the whale account, some believe this could trigger a crash of Solana and cause the price of SOL to plummet.