Mantle

Mantle is an Ethereum Layer 2 network and on-chain ecosystem that aims to bridge traditional finance and DeFi. MNT is its native token, used for governance, staking, and paying for activity across the Mantle ecosystem, which includes the Mantle Network Layer 2, the mETH liquid staking protocol, the Function (FBTC) Bitcoin product, and the Mantle Index Four (MI4) fund product.

Origin

Mantle grew out of BitDAO, one of the largest DAO treasuries in crypto, which was closely associated with the Bybit exchange. In 2023 the BitDAO community voted to consolidate under the Mantle brand, converting the BIT token into MNT. This origin left Mantle with one of the best-capitalized treasuries among Layer 2 projects, which it uses to fund ecosystem development and financial products.

How it works

Mantle Network is a rollup that executes transactions off Ethereum's mainnet and settles to it, inheriting Ethereum security while offering lower fees and higher throughput. A distinguishing design choice is its modular architecture, which separates execution from data availability: Mantle has used an external data availability layer rather than posting all data directly to Ethereum, reducing costs. The network is EVM-compatible, so Ethereum applications can deploy with minimal changes. MNT itself is a token on Ethereum and Mantle rather than a coin secured by its own independent consensus.

Supply and role in the ecosystem

MNT has a maximum supply of roughly 6.22 billion tokens, with about 3.3 billion in circulation; the remainder sits largely in the ecosystem treasury. Beyond gas and governance, Mantle has expanded into yield products — mETH for Ethereum liquid staking and FBTC for Bitcoin — positioning itself less as a pure scaling network and more as a unified on-chain financial services platform spanning trading, saving, and investing.