Security Token Exchange

Modular Ethereum layer two solution Mantle Network today announced at the ongoing Ethereum Community Conference the official release of Mainnet Alpha, making it open to the public. This year’s edition of the EthCC event kicked off on Monday (Jul 17) at the House of Mutuality in Paris and will conclude on Jul 20 – the last day of the EthCC Week.

Mainnet Alpha development and testing highlights

Mainnet Alpha comes after half a dozen months of testnet development, during which the network recorded average monthly active wallet addresses count of over 157,000 and saw participation from more than 48,000 developers. Over 140,000 smart contracts were deployed over the six-month phase while the number of on-chain transactions processed on the testnet exceeded 14 million.

“The network is now fully integrated along with data availability solution Mantle DA powered by EigenDA technology. The team also completed several security audits, whose recommendations were incorporated into our codebase.” Mantle said in a Monday blog post.

Mantle’s resources include 264,947 ETH in the on-chain treasury with which the community has created its liquid staking protocol. In addition to securing the network, staking its Ether unlocks other benefits like liquidity provisioning and improvements to the Mantle UI/UX to make overall interactions smoother.

“The liquid staked ETH can then be used to liquidity provision any DeFi protocol building on Mantle, thereby helping Mantle DeFi projects reduce slippage. DeFi projects can further create markets and use cases for the liquid staked ETH, creating more value from the base LST.”

Mantle ecosystem is community-oriented at all levels, including governance, and features two building levers in the form of a builder’s grants program and a dedicated $200 million EcoFund. The former supports teams building on the network by providing funds to facilitate deployment of dApps creations on the mainnet. In today’s blog post, the L2 network confirmed that plans for its ecosystem fund are in motion after the community passed the proposal seeking to set up the same in a vote session opened on Jul 8 and concluded last week.

BitDAO and Mantle Network Merge

Mantle Network merged with BitDAO integrating the backer’s governance framework and treasury with its high-performance Ethereum layer two network in May following BitDAO community’s approval of the BIP-21 governance proposal. The merge provided Mantle Network developers access to significant resources under the BitDAO’s hood, including the DAO’s sizable treasury. The resulting unified ecosystem brought notable tokenomic changes like the rebranding of BitDAO’s governance token from BIT to Mantle represented by the MNT ticker symbol.

Mantle (MNT) token price chart, UTC +3. Source: CoinMarketCap

BitDAO community members assented to the other changes outlined in the BIP-21 proposal whose voting period closed on May 19. Other changes included the rebranding of BitDAO Treasury as Mantle Treasury, BitDAO changing to Mantle Governance, and the L2 rollup segment transforming into Mantle. The governance and financial rights of the existing token holders were preserved to ensure their crucial role in shaping the ecosystem is unaffected.

Mantle’s total reserves are currently estimated at $2.4 billion. Source: DeFi Llama

DeFi Llama data shows that the BitDAO Treasury holds 3.043 billion BIT tokens worth approx. 1.521 billion and representing a 65.18% share at the time of writing. The treasury also constitutes Wrapped Ether (WETH) tokens which make up a 21.72% share, followed by USDC and USDT with 9.51% and 3.17% respectively.

Mantle reserves – Tokens breakdown

The assets are expected to play a crucial role in funding the future expansion and further development of the network.

“The $BIT $MNT conversion tool is LIVE! Starting today, users of Mantle Network can now convert their $BIT tokens to Mantle’s new native token, $MNT,” Mantle notified in tweet today.

Worth noting, Mantle’s L2 blockchain is Ethereum-compatible and thanks to a modular architecture and rollup design delivers boons of higher transaction speeds and lower fees while guaranteeing Ethereum’s security. The modular approach, which entails separation of execution, data availability, consensus, and settlement layers, also allows upgrades to be swiftly implemented. Blockchain developers can execute the upgrades by swapping new modular components to replace the existing ones.

Mantle EcoFund 1: A $200M ecosystem fund

The DAO-led ecosystem recently approved a $200 million ecosystem fund to support the development of early-stage dApps on its Ethereum L2 network. Mantle explained that the scheme to raise funds would be initiated by a $100 million injection from BitDAO. The DAO would then break down the remaining amount into three segregated but equal capital calls. Its co-investment strategy means other venture partners join hands to raise the second $100 million target figure. In the latest update today, Mantle reassured that the fund has continued attracting interest from a unique mix of big investment players.