Original | Odaily (@OdailyChina）
Author | Ding Dong (@XiaMiPP）
At 2 AM on April 14, the native token OM of the RWA sector's star project Mantra experienced a severe crash, plummeting from $6.15 to $0.37, with a staggering 90% drop, instantly wiping out $5.5 billion in market value. This violent fluctuation triggered over $65 million in liquidations across the network, the second-largest liquidation amount within 12 hours after BTC, causing an uproar in the crypto community and quickly pointing fingers at potential insider trading and market manipulation.
On-Chain Data Reveals: Who's Driving the Crash?
On-chain data provided crucial clues to this crisis. According to Lookonchain, at least 17 wallets deposited 43.6 million OM (worth $227 million at the time) into exchanges before the crash, representing 4.5% of circulating supply. Among these, two addresses marked by Arkham were related to Mantra's strategic investor Laser Digital, suggesting potential institutional involvement.
Additionally, Spot On Chain revealed that three days before the crash, new OM whales transferred 14.27 million OM (approximately $91 million) to OKX at an average price of $6.375. These addresses had previously bought 84.15 million OM from Binance in late March at a cost of approximately $565 million (average price $6.711). After the crash, their remaining holdings were only worth $62.2 million, with an unrealized loss of $406 million.
Spot On Chain suspects these addresses might have hedged or even been behind the crash.
Project Team and Exchanges Blame Each Other, Tensions High
After the incident, Mantra's official team quickly responded at 4:50 AM, attempting to stabilize market sentiment. They insisted: "MANTRA is fundamentally sound, and today's chaos was completely triggered by reckless liquidations, which have nothing to do with our project. We especially clarify: this was definitely not done by our team. We are investigating and promise to publish more details soon." Their words urgently distanced themselves, pushing responsibility to the "free market".
Subsequently, Mantra co-founder JP Mullin's response was more direct and confrontational. He publicly accused: "The violent market fluctuations of OM were entirely caused by reckless forced liquidations by centralized exchanges (CEX) against OM account holders." He emphasized that the crash occurred during extremely low liquidity in Asian morning hours, with account positions suddenly closed without warning, exposing serious negligence by CEX or potentially deliberate market manipulation. JP further pointed out that CEX plays a crucial role in providing project liquidity, and their discretionary power without effective supervision can lead to disasters, as seen in this market misalignment that damaged both the project and investors.
The exchanges were not passive. Binance's former CEO CZ first responded on X, suggesting investors "don't chase narratives" but choose projects with users, revenue, and profits to avoid similar incidents. OKX CEO Star also strongly responded: "The OM crash is a major scandal for the entire crypto industry. All on-chain unlock and deposit data are public, and collateral and liquidation data from various platforms can be verified. OKX is ready with all related reports and welcomes scrutiny."
The conflict between project teams and exchanges reveals a key clue: Mantra's economic model adjustment might be the true trigger of this crisis.
According to KOL danny@agintender, the crisis has "shared responsibility", rooted in conflicts and communication failures between the project team and market makers, possibly involving internal strife, with the catalyst being Mantra's April 8 announcement "Understanding $OM".
The economic model adjustment was not a sudden event. It was approved by the Sherpa community in January 2024, deciding to abandon the "two tokens, one ecosystem" model and use a single OM as MANTRA Chain's native asset. To achieve this, Mantra used a "mirror bucket" mechanism to burn ERC-20 OM on Ethereum and release equivalent tokens on the mainnet, doubling total supply from 888,888,888 to 1,777,777,776.
While the community had no objections to upgrading OM from a fixed supply model to an inflationary one, the problem might lie in the April 8 announcement. This announcement detailed token allocation and unlock schedules for various stakeholders, particularly noting that seed round investors' tokens will be unlocked on the 23rd of this month.
The timing of this announcement is exceptionally sensitive, inevitably raising suspicions that conflicts over interest distribution may have ignited the crisis.
Meanwhile, Tokenise data platform analyst Daniel@_founderdan provided another layer of insight. He pointed out that an initial transaction from a wallet associated with Mantra to OKX seemed to be the trigger for a panic sell-off. This transaction raised market concerns about potential insider involvement or mismanagement.
Further investigation revealed that most $OM tokens, especially those allocated to early investors and Mantra itself, have been unlocked and are tradable, with additional token distribution scheduled to begin unlocking on April 21, 2025, which will undoubtedly increase future selling pressure. The timing is particularly suspicious: just before this major unlocking plan is set to launch, the market experienced an unexpected massive sell-off, making people wonder if insider manipulation is at play, though no conclusive evidence exists yet.
Daniel proposed two possible scenarios: first, a centralized exchange or market maker recklessly selling due to excessive liquidity, triggering market panic; second, insiders or early investors deliberately selling before a broader token unlock to mitigate risks or seek profit. Regardless of which scenario is true, the crash's intensity and unnatural nature strongly suggest this is not a natural market fluctuation, but the result of deliberate manipulation. He called on the project team to enhance token management and transparency to prevent similar incidents.
Mantra's Trust Stain: History and Community Doubts
In fact, Mantra has long been nicknamed a "single-machine coin" or "pump and dump token" by the community, and its trust crisis is not a sudden occurrence but a long-accumulated result.
According to HashKey Capital member Rui and ArkStream Capital Founding Partner Ye Su's X leak, OM is an "OTC push disk" with an OTC scale of $500 million, operating on a model of "using new OTC tokens to offload old OTC sell orders" until the final unlocked chips become "OTC immobile" leading to a collapse. In 2023, when OM's FDV dropped to $20 million, a Middle Eastern capital intervened, retaining only the CEO position and repackaging OM as an RWAfi project.
Under such high-level control, OM achieved an astonishing 200-fold growth in 2024, but continues to promote its "OTC disk" business, widely raising market suspicions of manipulation.
Mantra's repeated modifications to airdrop rules further deepened community suspicions. In November last year, the project initially promised an airdrop rule of a 3-month cliff period followed by initial liquidity distribution and 9-month linear unlock to attract users. Shortly after, they changed the rule to a 1-month cliff period and 11-month linear unlock, initially claiming to distribute 50 million OM tokens, with 20% unlocked upon listing, and the airdrop to be completed within a month. However, in actual implementation, Mantra repeatedly delayed fulfilling promises, changing "unlocked upon listing" to "linear release starting one month later", and further extending to "10% initial release, with the remainder vesting over three years". This inconsistent behavior effectively locked community traffic as long-term chips, sparking strong dissatisfaction.
The trust crisis is also reflected in early investors' experiences. @Phyrex_Ni, who invested in OM's predecessor RIODeFi years ago, clarified after being affected by this flash crash: "I left the OM company years ago, was an early builder, but have been unrelated to OM and RIO since 2021. I'm currently in a lawsuit with them in Hong Kong, they owe me investment Tokens and fees, not a cent paid, and even winning the lawsuit is useless as the team has moved to the US." His revelation not only exposes Mantra's historical debt issues but also echoes the current OTC model and highly controlled strategy, potentially indicating the project team's long-standing opacity and breach of trust.
