Manta Network

Manta was founded by P0x Labs, a developer team made up of Victor Ji, Shumo Chu and Kenny Li in 2020. The mission was to create a privacy-focused protocol on the Polkadot blockchain. It eventually spun off to create its own modular blockchain in September, 2023 leveraging data availability services from Celestia and Polygon Labs. In contrast to monolithic blockchains like Ethereum, modular blockchains work by creating specific channels for speed and execution.

Whilst originally built using the OP Stack, Manta developers outlined plans to transition to a zero-knowledge (ZK) rollup using Polygon’s Chain Development Kit (CDK).

After transitioning to a zero-knowledge rollup, Manta plans to release the Pacific mainnet, which will integrate ZK proof aggregation to reduce on-chain proof verification gas costs for ZK applications.

P0x Labs raised $25 million at a $500 million valuation in July, 2023, in a round led by Polychain Capital and China-focused venture capital firm Qiming Venture Partners. Investment also came from Binance Labs, which would eventually host the network’s native token sale on the Binance Launchpad.

The MANTA token has several use cases including network governance participation, staking and delegation to enhance the security of the network.

The MANTA token went live in January after 30 million tokens were sold at $0.05 each on the Binance launchpad. The total supply of is 1 billion tokens, with a 2% yearly minting rate, initial circulating supply was set at 251 million tokens. 50 million tokens were allocated to an airdrop that rewarded early adopters.

Token holders can also benefit from using protocols on the Atlantic network, which include a series of lending, trading and liquidity management products that have contributed to Manta’s rapidly-growing total value locked (TVL).