Suspicions surrounding Manta Network’s trading activities: Are retail investors being taken advantage of once again?

Manta Network ($MANTA) focuses on designing L2 blockchains with privacy protection technology and recently climbed to a new level of attention by participating in Binance’s 44th coin mining phase. This has further heightened the anticipation of participants in the cryptocurrency community for its official trading on Binance at 18:00 on January 18th.

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Binance Launchpool – Manta Network (MANTA) attracts 5.8 billion yuan, becoming the 10th largest chain after Base. )

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Manta team accused of market manipulation and money laundering
Manta Network: Innovator in privacy protection
Expanding into the Asian market: Manta Network’s strategic layout in South Korea and Hong Kong
Market performance of Manta Network
Manta team accused of market manipulation and money laundering
However, just one hour before the opening of trading pairs, it was reported that Manta Network’s RPC endpoint crashed. Official personnel stated that they were subjected to a DDoS attack, and users were unable to claim airdrops at that time. There was a brief period where all trading prices were affected, but users still could not claim airdrops or withdraw tokens to exchanges via the blockchain. This situation was jokingly referred to by the community as “toilet paper data manipulation”.

The cloud of suspicion surrounding Manta Network’s transactions does not end there. According to Definalist, a Korean crypto KOL, there was a large transaction involving Manta Network right before the token listing, which may have involved dumping. According to on-chain data tracking, the wallet belongs to a Manta Network employee in South Korea, who received up to 2 million $MANTA tokens through this transaction. The employee took advantage of the low supply caused by the front-end crash at the start of trading and made a profit of $5.162 million, with an average transaction price of $2.58 per token, slightly higher than the current price by 20%.

In addition to the possibility of team members selling tokens during the network outage, the Korean community also believes that these actions may involve money laundering. They argue that this employee, who sold the tokens, had only been with Manta Network for five months and should not have had such a large allocation. However, the Manta team denied the community’s accusations and stated that the funds were allocated to the Korean branch as operating expenses from the token model’s ecosystem/community project.

In fact, the controversy surrounding Manta Network’s token issuance does not end there. Manta Network was initially an ecosystem project on Polkadot and held a token public sale on the Tokensoft platform in 2021, raising $28.8 million. However, due to the community’s belief that Manta Network did not actively provide Polkadot cross-chain support and faced RPC overload, many people were unable to obtain the tokens.

Manta Network is dedicated to developing and providing privacy protection technology for blockchains. It has built a modular Layer2 ecosystem specifically for zero-knowledge (ZK) DApps, offering a low-cost and high-efficiency user experience.

Co-founded by individuals from Ivy League schools with years of industry experience, Manta Network received investments from top web3 VCs such as Binance Labs and Polychain Capital in its last funding round. Its valuation reached $500 million, not far from its current market capitalization after listing.

Currently, Manta Network is actively expanding its business in South Korea and Hong Kong. Apart from establishing local branches, it also aims to gain a localized understanding of the needs of the local population and integrate with the web3 ecosystems of different markets. Manta Network’s modular Layer2 ecosystem and zero-knowledge application development show great potential.

Looking at Manta Pacific’s roadmap, it will be the first project to transition from Optimistic Rollup to Validium’s zkEVM L2, achieving this transition using the Polygon CDK. It significantly reduces gas fees through Celestia DA and increases security through Ethereum consensus and on-chain cryptographic proof of activities. Therefore, it can be said that it is a highly forward-looking L2 solution.

According to official data from Manta Network, the Manta wallet has been installed over 200,000 times, and the comprehensive project ecosystem of Manta Network has covered over 1.5 million users.

According to data from CoinGecko, almost 80% of the current trading volume for $MANTA occurs on Binance, demonstrating the influence of Binance’s coin mining. As of the deadline, $MANTA is currently trading at $2.18, showing a 16% decrease in the past 24 hours.

According to data from DefiLlama, Manta Network currently has a Total Value Locked (TVL) of $410 million, growing 23 times in the past month. It is currently the 10th largest blockchain, with LayerBank being the largest DApp on Manta Network, accounting for over 70% of the TVL.

According to data from Token.Unlocks, Manta Network has currently unlocked 250 million liquidity tokens, which will not be fully unlocked until 2030.

Manta
Manta Network

Further reading
Binance Launchpool – Manta Network (MANTA) attracts 5.8 billion yuan, becoming the 10th largest chain after Base
90% of people have peeked into someone else’s wallet address, blockchain privacy issues need to be improved.