Author: TechFlow
According to L2beat data, there are more than 153 L2s that have been launched or are about to be launched. As the barriers to launching an L2 get lower and lower, the number of people using the L2 becomes an important criterion for judging the success of an L2.
Now that "non-acquisition" has become a prominent feature of this cycle, L2s need to show their true skills to impress users and developers to continuously promote the expansion of the ecological scale. Under such complex and changing market conditions, many community members still noticed the beautiful exponential growth curve drawn by the modular L2 Mantle Network on the chain:
Not only has the TVL increased several times, but the on-chain activity has also been impressive. With more and more users choosing it, Mantle has stood out in the L2 competition and ranked in the top five of the TVL on the L2 beat list.
How is this done?
Let us analyze the multiple driving forces behind Mantle’s growth through data, and further explore Mantle’s “customer attraction” rules and future growth potential in the current L2 competition.
Image source: Mantle Medium
TVL growth is certainly gratifying, but on-chain activity is even more valuable
Following the logic of "provide evidence first, then analyze", let's first establish a concrete perception of Mantle's growth in the past six months through multiple sets of data comparisons. We know that Mantle's mainnet was launched on July 17, 2023. After a period of stability, it ushered in explosive growth at the end of 2023.
In terms of TVL: According to L2 beat data, Mantle TVL was about $200 million in December 2023, and then began to soar, reaching a peak of $1.49 billion in April 2024, an increase of more than 700% in 4 months. In the July 2024 Layer2 monthly report recently released by Coin98 Analytics, Mantle's TVL also achieved a 1.6-fold increase in July, ranking second among all 11 mainstream L2s counted, and its growth rate was second only to Scroll. As a basic indicator for evaluating the development of L2, TVL largely reflects the value information of user participation, market confidence and the health of the ecosystem. The rapidly growing TVL often represents the trust and acceptance of users, and is also one of the proofs that Mantle can provide stronger liquidity.
Image source: l2beat.com
After looking at the TVL fundamentals, let's take a look at Mantle's on-chain activity. We know that as more and more L2s are born, more and more L2s are gradually becoming "ghost towns" because no one uses them. Therefore, it is more realistic to measure the prosperity of L2 through data such as user volume and transaction volume, and we have also seen the excellent user activity shown by Mantle's growth data.
A careful study reveals that the main contributors to Mantle's TVL come from multiple ecological sectors such as Dex, lending, Restaking and RWA, and the rapid growth of Dex TVL accounts for a relatively high proportion, which is more intuitively displayed in the Defillama data dashboard, which also proves that more of Mantle's on-chain assets have been deployed on the chain.
Image source: defillama.com
In terms of user volume: According to Dune data, the number of Mantle users showed a clear step-by-step growth trend. In December 2023, the number of Mantle users was about 330,000. As of August 9, 2024, when this article was written, the total number of Mantle users had exceeded 3.15 million. The nearly tenfold increase also shows that more and more users are entering the Mantle ecosystem.
In addition, according to the L2 2024 Q2 report data released by Coin98 Analytics, Mantle’s independent addresses increased by more than 160% in the second quarter of this year, and the number of new super addresses on June 13 exceeded 114,000, ranking second among all 11 mainstream L2s counted, and its increase was second only to Blast, which started airdrops in the second quarter.
Image source: Twitter @Coin98Analytics
In terms of trading volume: According to the L2 2024 Q2 report data released by Coin98 Analytics, Mantle's total trading volume in the second quarter of this year increased by more than 77%, ranking top among all 11 mainstream L2s counted.
In addition, according to Dune data, the total transaction volume on the Mantle chain has exceeded 120 million, with a daily transaction peak of more than 2.2 million, showing strong on-chain activity. The more active the on-chain transactions, the higher the network transaction fee income, which to a large extent represents the network's stronger ability to generate self-revenue.
Image source: dune.com
The growth that has been achieved is certainly gratifying, but being good at summarizing the success factors behind the growth is the only way to achieve sustainable growth in the future.
We know that applications are the key containers that carry ecological users, assets, and transactions. A rich and diverse ecosystem can not only attract more new users, but also encourage existing users to interact more frequently and diversely in the ecosystem.
Thinking about Mantle's growth from this perspective, although the rotation of market cycles has indeed brought it positive impact, what is more important is the support brought by Mantle's continuously enriched ecological landscape.
The rise of multi-sector applications behind the growth: a panoramic view of the Mantle ecosystem
According to the Mantle official website ecology page, Mantle ecology has more than 195+ projects settled in, covering Dex, Restaking, real world assets (RWA), games and other sectors, showing the diversity and breadth of the ecology. The continuous improvement of the ecological map not only provides users with a wealth of choices and services, but also provides an important driving force for on-chain growth.
Image credit: Twitter @0xMantle
For ecological construction, the importance of DeFi is self-evident: if each chain is compared to a country, then DeFi is like the GDP of this country. The perfection of DeFi infrastructure largely affects the potential and upper limit of the development of the entire ecosystem.
In the Mantle DeFi ecosystem, not only does it have many products that are popular with the community in DeFi basic components such as DEX and lending, but there are also rapidly growing projects such as re-staking that closely follow hot narratives within the ecosystem.
In the DEX sector, Agni Finance and Merchant Moe have both made outstanding contributions in terms of liquidity and TVL: Agni Finance, as an AMM-based DEX, specializes in spot trading and centralized liquidity; Merchant Moe, as part of the Trader Joe ecosystem, aims to change on-chain transactions through its liquidity book protocol. According to Defillama data, Agni Finance TVL is $114 million and Merchant Moe TVL is $96 million.
In the lending sector, INIT Capital also plays an important role: as a liquidity-linked money market, INIT Capital provides liquidity-linked lending, borrowing and yield-earning strategies, and has achieved US$146.9 million TVL in May 2024.
In the staking sector: In December 2023, Mantle launched Mantle LSP mETH on the Ethereum mainnet. Partners include Karak, Pendle, Renzo and other star projects in the re-staking track. It is currently the fourth largest liquid staking token in DeFi. As the first L2 protocol to launch its own LSD, Mantle is building a powerful LSD ecosystem.
Image source: Mantle Medium
Outside of the DeFi track, another notable feature of this cycle is the “embracing of the attention economy.” The community has paid more attention and expectations to the implementation of consumer-level applications. Committed to building rich experiences for users, the Mantle ecosystem also frequently produces high-quality projects in the RWA, games, and Meme sectors.
In the RWA sector: Last September, Mantle partnered with Ondo Finance, a leading project in the RWA track, to launch USDY, a tokenized note guaranteed by short-term U.S. Treasury bonds and bank demand deposits. Users will be able to mint new USDY through Ondo and purchase USDY on DEX on Mantle. USDY can be adopted as a yield stablecoin throughout the Mantle ecosystem. In addition, Mantle also partnered with Ethena to launch USDe.
In the game sector: In April this year, Mantle established a strategic partnership with Catizen, a TON ecological idle cat raising chain game. This cooperation aims to seamlessly integrate Mantle's native token MNT and its modular L2 infrastructure to innovate in-game transactions and asset management. With its cute cat image and unique gameplay, the game attracted 3 million players during the public beta stage. In just 2 months after its launch, the number of registered players reached nearly 20 million. As of June 23, the total number of users on the chain exceeded 1.25 million. Mantle's strong technical support contributed to the success of Catizen, and Catizen's popularity also brought more users and chain activity to Mantle.
In addition, as the game is a track that Mentle focuses on, MetaCene, another heavyweight game project in the ecosystem, has received strong support from Mentle and started a new round of game testing on July 28. As a large-scale Meta-MMO game, MetaCene has attracted more than 150,000 players to participate in pre-registration. This round of testing covers Asia and the Americas, and will provide $3 million worth of MAK and NFT as game rewards. Mantle officials will provide MNT as an additional reward for participating players.
In the hot MEME sector this year, the Mantle ecosystem also gave birth to the hit MEME project Puff: Puff attracted more than 7,000 mETH in the public minting in April. The recently launched NFT collection Puff Dragons has currently achieved a premium of about 5 times, and the floor price is now 218 MNT (about US$145.58). The outstanding performance has attracted widespread attention from the community.
Image source: element.market
Mantle's prosperous ecosystem provides strong support for the growth of on-chain data. This prosperity is due not only to Mantle's unique technical advantages as the underlying platform, but also to its all-round support for projects within the ecosystem.
Technological advantages + financial support dual drive: Helping Mantle ecosystem to develop rapidly
As a highly modular L2, Mantle separates the core functions of blockchain such as transaction processing, state verification, and data availability into dedicated layers to optimize performance and reduce costs. Developers and users within the ecosystem enjoy the advantages brought by modularity:
Decentralized sorters reduce decentralization risks
Transaction processing is handled by Sequencers in Mantle. Initially, Mantle used the official foundation to operate a centralized sequencer. Later, Mantle introduced a "scheduler" to determine who the sequencer is when the next block is generated, in order to provide secure and trustless block production and reduce the possibility of single point failure or censorship on the network.
TSS node status verification shortens fraud proof time
Mantle uses the Threshold Signature Scheme (TSS) to implement state verification. This scheme involves MPC (multi-party secure computation) related technologies, which can effectively shorten the transaction challenge period and improve the correctness of off-chain transactions.
EigenDA achieves high performance data availability
EigenDA shares Ethereum’s strong security foundation through the Eigenlayer re-staking mechanism. In addition, EigenDA’s carefully designed reward and punishment mechanism enables data availability nodes (DA nodes) to be properly incentivized to provide more stable and reliable services, ensuring high data availability and paving the way for high-throughput, low-cost blockchain applications.
Image source: Mantle doc
The rapid development of a good experience machine for applications requires the support of solid underlying technology. In recent years, the problem of technological homogeneity in the L2 track has been criticized, but Mantle brings a better experience to developers and users through unique technical design. In the process of development, Mantle has also continued to iterate and improve, using its technical advantages to provide a solid guarantee for ecological growth. The mainnet v2 Tectonic upgrade completed in March this year is one of the strong proofs. This upgrade is the first step since the mainnet Alpha v1. The first major update, designed to significantly reduce gas costs.
In addition, Mantle has taken a series of measures to support the growth and innovation of developers in the process of promoting ecological development. On the one hand, Mantle provides developers with detailed developer documentation and complete developer tools. These resources not only cover the basic functions and usage guidelines of the platform, but also include rich sample codes and best practices to help developers develop on Mantle faster and more efficiently.
On the other hand, Mantle has also launched the Mantle LSP bug bounty program to encourage developers to actively participate in security audits and vulnerability discovery. Developers who discover Mantle LSP smart contract vulnerabilities will have the opportunity to receive rewards ranging from US$5,000 to US$500,000. This initiative continues to enhance the security and reliability of the ecosystem.
In addition to its technical advantages, another outstanding advantage of Mantle in ecological construction is the strong financial reserves accumulated by Mantle Treasuary. According to Defillama data, Mantle Treasuary had a fund worth more than US$5 billion at its peak. As the largest project treasury in the crypto industry, the astonishing scale of Mantle Treasuary has created a strong incentive for developers in the Mantle ecosystem, further promoting Mantle to become a fertile ground for innovation.
Image source: defillama.com
Currently, the Mantle ecosystem adopts multi-track parallel ecological incentive measures:
Mantle EcoFund is a $200 million ecological fund provided by the Mantle Treasury, which aims to promote the adoption of developers and DApps on the Mantle network, give priority to investing in teams building high-quality and innovative projects within the Mantle ecosystem, and increase investment in potential excellent projects when appropriate.
For early-stage projects, Mantle has launched Public Grants, where projects that submit applications and are approved can receive support of $20,000 in MNT tokens.
In response to the liquidity dilemma of projects within the ecosystem, Mantle has also launched a liquidity support plan for applications: the plan totals US$300 million (consisting of USDe, ETH, BTC, and MNT), aiming to provide liquidity support for applications within the ecosystem, thereby helping the ecosystem prosper and develop.
For high-quality projects within the ecosystem, Mantle has launched the Mantle Scouts Program, which authorizes 16 Mantle ecosystem leaders to issue $1 million in MNT token funding to high-quality projects within the ecosystem.
Mantle is also committed to promoting blockchain education and innovative discovery worldwide: EduDAO connects university ecosystems around the world to enhance cooperation and data exchange, and cultivate a new generation of blockchain and Web3 innovators. As an independent steering committee, EduDAO allocates up to $11 million per year for project funding, research, and independent product development. Current university partners include Berkeley RDI, Penn Blockchain, Harvard Blockchain Club, MIT Sloan Blockchain Club, Michigan Blockchain, USC Blockchain, Oxford Blockchain Association, and Tsinghua University Student Blockchain Association.
It is worth mentioning that as Mantle focuses on the ecological development direction, Mantle has also cooperated with Game7 to launch a game accelerator program. Based on the Mantle Network infrastructure, Game7 provides game developers with key tools, such as NFT markets, cross-chain bridges, game DAOs, etc., to provide high-quality user experience and ecological interconnection for the game projects it incubates and invests in. The two will be committed to promoting the development of a permissionless and interoperable game world.
In addition, based on the close relationship between Mantle and Bybit, excellent projects in the Mantle ecosystem will have the opportunity to be listed on Bybit and be discovered by more investors through Bybit's recommendations.
The diverse ecological incentives have attracted a large number of developers to participate, and many projects have grown rapidly through Mantle's incubation: In September last year, EcoFund announced the three innovative projects it supports, LiquidX, Valent and Range Protocol; and in January this year, EcoFund deployed $10 million in investment to provide new funds for six DeFi projects in the ecosystem, including Merchant Moe, INIT Capital, Butter, Renzo, MUFEX and TsunamiX. According to the official website, EcoFund has funded more than 13 projects, including INIT Capital, Catizen, Merchant Moe and many other projects, which have grown into the backbone of the Mantle ecosystem.
Image source: Mantle Website
cmETH is coming: Mantle’s future growth expectations
Of course, in the face of Mantle, which has achieved steady growth in the past six months, some users will consider:
If we join now, can we still enjoy the ecological dividends brought by growth?
More community members are optimistic about Mantle’s future growth, and this confidence comes from the arrival of cmETH.
As we know, mETH is a Liquid Staking Token (LST), and with the passage of MIP-30, cmETH will become a new Liquid Restaking Token (LRT). Like mETH, cmETH will be highly composable in the Mantle ecosystem, allowing users to explore more revenue opportunities through L2 decentralized applications and protocols while maintaining the advantages of mETH. At the same time, COOK was introduced as the new governance token of Mantle LSP, and the official announced plans to conduct a token TGE in mid-October.
This TGE will create 5 billion tokens, of which 15% will be allocated to four ecological projects. The specific rules are as follows:
Season 1 Methamorphosis event: 5%, 250 million tokens;
Mantle Rewards Station: 4%, 200 million tokens;
Puff: 5%, 250 million tokens;
Puff NFT: 1%, 50 million tokens.
Therefore, users currently have multiple ways to participate in the ecosystem and accumulate COOK chips. In addition to staking MNT tokens for COOK rewards in future activities, Mantle has also launched related activities in conjunction with Bybit.
The event time is from 12:00 on July 26, 2024 (UTC) to 23:59 on October 8, 2024 (UTC). During the event, users who hold mETH in their wallets can receive Powder rewards. Each mETH will receive x10 Powder rewards every day. The first 50 new users will receive 2,000 COOK tokens airdropped. In addition, Bybit will also hold daily draws, and lucky users will have the opportunity to win $10,000 worth of COOK rewards.
Powder will be exchangeable for COOK in the future, which means that the more Powder you accumulate now, the more COOK you will get in the future. In addition, the top 500 participants in the Powder ranking will receive additional COOK rewards.
Learn more about the event
Image source: Mantle Website
In addition, users can also get COOK rewards by participating in Puff and Puff NFT: On August 6, 2024, Puff Dragons, an NFT collection launched by Puff, held a TOP-UP Mint event. Participating in the casting of the Puff Dealer series will receive approximately 4,000 COOK rewards, and participating in the casting of the Puff Escobars series will receive approximately 5,000 COOK rewards.
Image source: Mantle Ecosystem Participation Guide (updated weekly) Twitter @0xMantle
In addition to cmETH and COOK, another hotly debated trend in the Mantle ecosystem is FBTC:
FBTC was launched by Mantle in cooperation with Ignition and is currently available for exchange and bridging on the Mantle network. As a secure, decentralized, composable and liquid full-chain Bitcoin asset pegged 1:1 to BTC, FBTC aims to increase the accessibility and practicality of Bitcoin while bringing richer returns to holders.
Although Mantle's FBTC ecosystem is still in its early stages of development, Bitcoin, as the world's largest cryptocurrency by market value, has a solid consensus foundation that not only gives it strong economic security, but also has a capital volume of over $1.5 trillion. As a popular narrative in this cycle, many community members believe that BTCFi will exceed ETHFi's historical high and is expected to reach $300 billion. The launch of FBTC introduces the BTCFi narrative to the Mantle ecosystem and is seen as one of the main drivers of the Mantle ecosystem's future growth.
In short, through the Mantle ecosystem, we can see that the impressive growth is inseparable from a solid technical foundation, strong ecological support, and a rich variety of participation options under the ecosystem. This growth path is applicable to every ecosystem, but not every ecosystem can be easily replicated.
Over the past six months, Mantle has demonstrated its strong competitiveness in the L2 track through impressive growth data. For current users, with the in-depth integration of FBTC with the ecosystem and the arrival of cmBTC and COOK, Mantle's future growth momentum is beginning to emerge. Faced with this foreseeable growth, actively participating in it may be one of the good choices for deploying L2.