Looking through the l2beat data, we found that Mantle, which mainly provides mainnet native income for ETH assets, has a total TVL of $1.82 billion, surpassing Blast to become the fourth layer2 in terms of locked value. It can be regarded as one of the "four kings" of layer2. Many people are curious about how Mantle counterattacked step by step through the combination of mETH+cmETH+Cook. Next, let me sort it out systematically:

-mETH's two-sided linkage: L1 native benefits + L2 unified interoperability

1) L1 native benefits

Mantle is a layer2 chain directly based on the OP Stack Codebase. When it was first launched, Ethereum layer2 as a whole suffered from the lack of "native income". Therefore, Mantle and Blast adopted a similar Tokenomics economic model design. The core concept is to allow users to deposit ETH in layer2 to generate native income on the Ethereum mainnet. For example, ETH can be deposited in LiDO to enjoy an APY income of about 4% of POS staking.

Therefore, Mantle launched the Ethereum liquidity staking protocol mETH on the Ethereum mainnet, which has currently accumulated 483,000 ETH, ranking behind stETH, wBETH, and rETH.

Part of the native income of Mantle layer2 comes from the POS staking income of mETH. The key is that mETH, as a key LSP protocol, will also be integrated into other LRS protocols including Eigenlayer, puffer, Renzo, Kelp, etc., and enjoy their points and ecological governance mining rewards. In addition to the on-chain income, Mantle cooperates with Bybit Exchange to connect the funding needs of C-end users and B-end AMM market makers, and obtain off-chain income generated by leasing funds.

In short, the goal of the mETH protocol is to connect as many diversified revenue sources as possible and provide a lasting pump for its layer2 Tokenomics. For example, its liquidity protocol will also cover alt-layer1 such as Bearchain and Fuel. The logic is not difficult to understand. In addition to the stable revenue of Ethereum POS, the revenue of the LRT platform is dynamically unstable and has no sustainable revenue. In order to tell the story of the main network revenue feeding layer2, mETH must expand the possibility of diversified revenue.

2) L2 unified interoperability

In addition to the native revenue attributes of the underlying mETH, Mantle introduces another core feature to its layer2 chain: layer2 can interoperate with the liquidity center. Recently, Vitalik and a number of layer2 project parties have been working together to drive the liquidity integration of Ethereum layer2, which shows that the current decentralized liquidity of Ethereum layer2 has become the core problem of the Rollup-Centric grand strategy.

In fact, Mantle has taken "interoperability" integration as its underlying technical framework since its inception. Specifically:

Mantle adopts the atomic cross-chain logic provided by LayerZero. A main contract is deployed on Mantle to control the total Supply, and sub-contracts are deployed on each layer2 to control the local supply and cross-chain minting instructions. If the user transfers the ETH on Arbitrum to Optimism across the chain, he can first pledge ETH on the Mantle chain, and the main contract will mint mETH to increase Supply. At the same time, the relay node of layerZero will synchronize the message to the sub-contract of Optimism. After receiving the instruction, the sub-contract will mint mETH corresponding to the user's recharge address.

The existence of mETH assets is based on the interoperability of layer2, especially when a large amount of ETH funds are idle on other layer2s. With the characteristics of the underlying atomic lossless cross-chain, users will naturally tend to aggregate ETH assets to the mETH of the Mantle chain to earn income. Use Omini Contract to achieve atomic cross-chain, and use APY income as an anchor to attract users to pool funds.

mETH has been designed with precision from upstream funding sources to downstream business closed-loop logic.

-cmETH+Cook is destined to be: Activate the operation of L2 DeFi economy

The question is, what are the considerations behind the emergence of cmETH? If there is only mETH, will the market think that Mantle, as the leader, has gathered other L2s to launch a "vampire" attack on the Ethereum mainnet?

Obviously not, the destiny of layer2 is to provide blood transfusion to the main network, so L2 must have the ability to generate blood on its own. cmETH is the key to mETH's self-generation.

Users can convert mETH into cmETH and use it to participate in DeFi project restaking on L2 to obtain the income generated by the L2 DeFi ecosystem. Although cmETH bears an extra layer of re-staking risk compared to mETH, it also enjoys L2's more aggressive incentives and mining income expectations. For example, Mantle launched the Methamorphosis event, where users who re-stake mETH can obtain Powder equity certificates to obtain future de-protocol governance tokens $COOK.

Many people would be surprised, since there is $MNT, where does $COOK come from? This has to start with the dual-token model designed by Mantle. MNT is the native token of the Mantle layer2 network, which is used to pay network gas fees and ecological governance, as well as the POS network income to maintain the security of its chain. Its goal is to maintain the economic operation of the Mantle chain.

$COOK will cover the unified rights and governance of mETH in the main network and layer2 interoperable unified layer. It is a pan-protocol mETH exclusive governance token, mainly used for mining rewards and community incentives at the liquidity level. According to the overall mETH and cmETH planning, it may eventually flow into the overall layer2 liquidity system, while also enjoying the yield possibility of the entire layer2 ecosystem.

The end.

The reason why Blast, which was once famous, has attracted much attention is not only because of its huge ability to absorb funds, but also because it is expected that its funds can be injected into layer2 to produce a catfish effect, which will provide a breakthrough for the current difficulties of layer2 economy. Mantle, which also has a huge amount of funds and excellent token model design, aims to bring "variables" to the layer2 industry. In my impression, everyone's definition of the four kings of layer2 is still biased towards the "technical" dimension, but the current situation is that Starknet and zkSync, which have excellent technical foundations, are falling behind, while Base and Mantle, which are good at operations and TVL, are overtaking. .