$36M Liquidation in 3% Price Move Raises Manipulation Suspicions

A recent price move on Pendle's PT-reUSD/USDC market triggered $36.1 million in liquidations, affecting at least 12 borrowers.

The event occurred around 04:30 UTC when the PT-reUSD asset price dropped by roughly 3%, causing the 15-minute market average to take over as the active oracle reference instead of the fixed curve.

Pendle's own team confirmed that its oracle for this specific market was set up correctly and functioned exactly as intended, ruling out a misconfiguration despite the unfortunate outcome.

Herd co-founder Andrew Hong offered a different characterization of the event, describing it as an oracle manipulation, with the party responsible capturing 96% of the liquidated collateral, netting approximately $1.3 million in profit.