Mantle’s L2, restaking and TON ties: an ecosystem overview

Since the alpha launch of Mantle’s L2 in July 2023, its TVL surpassed $1.86bn. According to data from DeFi Llama in November 2024, more than 90 DeFi protocols are deployed on the network.

We explain what Mantle is and analyse the ecosystem’s main activities.

What is Mantle

Mantle emerged from a relaunch of the BitDAO decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO), created in August 2021 with backing from Founders Fund, Pantera, Dragonfly, Spartan and the Bybit cryptocurrency exchange. The latter contributed about $19.3m in Ethereum (ETH), Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC) to the BitDAO treasury and pledged recurring contributions for the future.

Bybit is proud to support https://t.co/KRPTmhyQOM. We have made a ~$19.3M contribution (in ETH, USDT and USDC) to the @BitDAO_Official treasury, equivalent to 2.5bps of futures trading vol. between July 15 and July 24. We pledge recurring contributions for the foreseeable future.

— Bybit (@Bybit_Official) July 26, 2021

The DAO’s mission was to pool funds to support early-stage DeFi projects with financing and liquidity.

Over time BitDAO chose to shift focus from investing to building products, prompting a rebrand. On July 17, 2023, BitDAO launched a 1:1 migration of native BIT tokens to Mantle (MNT).

At the time of writing, the Mantle ecosystem comprises two core products:

• Mantle Network;
• mETH Protocol.

Mantle Network is an EVM-compatible layer-2. Its modular architecture lets Ethereum contracts and tooling run on L2 with minimal changes while significantly reducing transaction fees and increasing throughput.

“In traditional monolithic blockchains, transaction execution, consensus, settlement and storage occur on a single layer. Mantle Network separates these functions into distinct modules: an EVM-compatible layer for transaction execution, a layer for consensus and settlement on Ethereum, and an external data-availability component, MantleDA, based on EigenDA technology,” the documentation says.

The solution is built on the OP Stack. Developers on Mantle Network can upgrade each module independently of the others.

mETH Protocol is a liquid staking and restaking protocol for Ethereum, launched in October 2023 as Mantle LSP. In August 2024 the project rebranded.

Users receive the liquid mETH token for staking ETH, plus additional rewards in the mETH Protocol governance token (COOK). mETH can be swapped for cmETH to earn rewards in the restaking protocols EigenLayer, Symbiotic and Karak.

At the time of writing, 482,069 ETH is staked via mETH Protocol and 144,837 ETH is in restaking.

“cmETH is the only solution that gives users automatic access to multiple restaking protocols: EigenLayer, Karak and Symbiotic. There will be more in the future.

You do not need to manage the redeployment of mETH; the protocol will do it for you. Simply put, cmETH is simple, efficient and secure restaking,” said Edmund Chua, a DeFi strategist at Mantle.

MNT is Mantle’s native token with a capped supply of 6.22bn units. According to CoinMarketCap, 3.37bn MNT (54.14%) is in circulation, for a market capitalisation of $2.46bn. Users can pay fees on Mantle or vote on Snapshot with the token.

“All decisions, from launching new initiatives to allocating and recalling treasury funds, as well as appointing and modifying the mandates of operating teams, are made on the basis of proposals and votes by MNT token holders,” the project’s website says.

Most of the funds in the treasury Mantle are held in MNT (75.14%).

The token trades on Bybit, KuCoin, Kraken and 20 other centralised exchanges with direct withdrawals to Mantle Network. Users can bridge the token from Ethereum mainnet to L2 via the official bridge, as well as through Symbiosis and Mini Bridge.

How Mantle is developing

The Mantle team supports the growth of its decentralised application ecosystem with grants and two main initiatives:

• Mantle EcoFund. A $200m fund created in July 2023. The team invests in native applications built on Mantle Network. Beyond direct investments, EcoFund provides promotion across social media, events and media, and offers listing guidance with partner exchanges such as Bybit;
• liquidity for applications. This is a $300m reserve in USDx, ETH, BTC and MNT. The funds support liquidity for early-stage applications.

Among Mantle EcoFund’s strategic partners are Pantera Capital, Spartan Capital, Animoca Ventures, Bankless Ventures, Dragonfly and others. The fund has invested in the asset-management protocol Range Protocol, the DEX Merchant Moe and the Catizen app on Mantle and The Open Network (TON). The latter has become “one of the most successful blockchain games in the world with 36m users”.

“Guiding a project from idea to actual launch sets Mantle apart from investor-led ecosystems. The latter are good at spotting promising teams but are constrained when making decisions related to game development and publishing,” said Mantle’s head of GameFi, Geezee, in an interview with ForkLog.

After the listing of the Catizen (CATI) token on Binance, OKX, Bybit, Gate.io and Bitget, the Mantle team continued to develop applications tied to the Telegram/TON ecosystem.

In early November, TON Accelerator, in partnership with TON Ventures and Mantle EcoFund, unveiled Synergy — a $5m initiative aimed at building cross-chain solutions between TON and EVM-compatible networks such as Mantle.

“Synergy makes it possible to connect more than 950m Telegram users to over $90bn in cross-chain liquidity, opening the door to new innovation and commercial opportunities. The programme aims to create applications spanning both ecosystems,” the press release says.

Also in early November, Mantle launched the Autumn Games campaign with a $4,000 giveaway in COOK, cmETH, mETH and 4,000 MNT.

https://t.co/aG59R3q3Zn

— Mantle (@0xMantle) October 31, 2024

Each week the Mantle team announces new tasks in Discord and Guild. Participants collect Leaflets points, which can later be exchanged for a share of the prize pool. The promotion runs until December 2.

In addition, mETH Protocol launched Season 2 of its Methamorphosis campaign with Agni Finance, Pendle and INIT Capital, supported by KyberSwap and LayerZero. It ends on February 17, 2025.

6/9 Season 2: Methamorphosis will begin today, and last for 110 days.

We are pleased to introduce the complete list of teams supporting Season 2: Methamorphosis, including $cmETH integrations.

Note: L1 Protocols will not be incentivized in this season, only on Mantle L2. pic.twitter.com/8YPtNRHvkq

— mETH Protocol (@mETHProtocol) October 30, 2024

By restaking cmETH, users can earn mETH Protocol (COOK) tokens and rewards from other protocols.

Conclusions

Within the community, Mantle is known above all as a modular L2 for Ethereum. Today, the decentralised exchanges Agni Finance and Merchant Moe and the lending service INIT Capital run on Mantle Network, and more than $360m is locked in stablecoins.

In the second half of 2024 the project accelerated development of the mETH Protocol for staking and restaking: on October 29 the TGE of the COOK governance token took place, and on October 30 the cmETH restaking product was launched publicly. As of November 2024, mETH Protocol ranks among the top five liquid-staking protocols, with TVL of around $1.5bn.