OM's Near 90% Plunge in the Dead of Night, Divergent Accounts from Project Side, Exchanges, and Investors

Behind OM's billion-dollar market cap collapse was a market storm triggered by multiple factors.

In the early morning of April 14th, the price of MANTRA's token OM plummeted sharply. According to CoinGecko data, OM's price plummeted by 89.2% in the past 24 hours.

OM's Market Cap Collapses, Manipulation Exposed, and Divergent Statements from All Sides

For OM's sudden crash, the official explanation from MANTRA stated that the chaos was not caused by the team, MANTRA Association, core advisors, or MANTRA investors selling tokens. The tokens remain locked and are subject to the announced vesting periods, with the tokenomics remaining unchanged. They warned against clicking on any fraudulent links or accounts impersonating MANTRA.

At the same time, the official pointed out that the incident occurred during a period of low liquidity, possibly due to exchange negligence or market manipulation. The timing and depth of the crash indicated that positions were suddenly closed without sufficient warning or notice. This happened during a time of low liquidity in the early morning (Asian time) in UTC, suggesting a certain degree of negligence on the part of the exchange, or possibly a deliberate market positioning.

Binance confirmed in its statement that OM has recently experienced severe price fluctuations, and preliminary investigations showed that it was triggered by "cross-exchange liquidation." Since last October, Binance has implemented multiple risk control measures for OM tokens, including reducing leverage levels. Since January of this year, Binance has added a pop-up warning for OM tokens on its spot trading page, reminding users that the token has undergone significant adjustments to its tokenomics, increasing the token supply. Binance stated it will continue to closely monitor the situation and take appropriate actions to protect users and maintain platform integrity.

OKX stated in its announcement that since October 2024, OM's token economic model has undergone significant changes, and since early March, several similar operational chain addresses have made large deposits and withdrawals on various exchanges. Based on market risk, OKX has adjusted platform risk control parameters and warned users that recent market risks are high, and changes in the supply of some tokens may lead to price fluctuations. A risk warning has been added to the OM token page. At the same time, OKX CEO Star said that this is a major scandal for the entire crypto industry. All on-chain unlocking and recharge data are public, and all mainstream exchanges' collateral and liquidation data may be investigated. OKX is ready with all reports.

Although MANTRA attributed the responsibility to the exchange, on-chain data points to a more complex scenario, triggering community doubts about potential insider selling and market manipulation.

According to Spot On Chain monitoring, 19 wallets that were previously tracked and suspected to belong to the same entity, created in March, transferred 1.427 million OM tokens (about $1 million) to OKX at an average price of $6.375 in the three days before the OM crash. According to The Data Nerd monitoring, in the past three days, five wallets have deposited a total of 24.4 million OM tokens (about $139.4 million) into OKX. Four wallets have the same operation pattern: they withdrew from Binance last month and then deposited into OKX; another belongs to Laser Digital. Additionally, according to Lookonchain monitoring, since April 7th, at least 17 wallet addresses have deposited a total of 4.36 million OM tokens (worth about $227 million at the time) into exchanges, accounting for 4.5% of the circulating supply. At the same time, five hours before the OM token plummeted, a wallet that had been dormant for a year transferred 200,000 OM tokens to a wallet suspected to belong to Shane Shin, a founding partner of MANTRA's investment firm Shoorooq Partners. The wallet received 2 million OM tokens at a price of $125.8 million, but now its value is only $1.57 million.

However, MANTRA Chain's strategic investor Laser Digital responded, stating that Laser has no connection with the recent price drop of OM. The social media claims about Laser being related to "investor selling" are incorrect and misleading. Laser did not deposit any OM tokens into OKX, and the wallet mentioned related to OKX is not Laser's wallet. Laser's core OM investment remains locked, with no interest in exerting pressure on the token or undermining the stability of the project. Transparency is very important.

Investment firm Shoorooq Partners also issued a statement clarifying that the drop was not due to a hacker attack or team selling but was triggered by a large-scale forced liquidation, followed by panic selling during a period of low liquidity. Shoorooq emphasized its position as a long-term equity investor has not changed and publicly disclosed the relevant wallet addresses to prove transparency.

The project side, exchanges, and investors each hold their own views. The deeper cause of this crash may stem from recent adjustments to MANTRA's token economic model. Recently, MANTRA announced that the community proposal will unify OM as the mainnet native token, abandoning the dual-token strategy, which also brought technical challenges. Therefore, the team decided to abandon the original ERC-20 OM and establish OM as the standard version on MANTRA Chain. At the same time, MANTRA announced that it will double the OM supply from 888.8 million to 1777.77 million and introduce a 3% annual inflation rate to incentivize staking. Although this move was intended to support ecosystem growth, the significant increase in circulation and the uncapped inflation mechanism was considered to have weakened investor confidence.

It is worth noting that despite OM's significant drop, large-scale token selling continues. Onchain Lens (@OnchainLens) latest monitoring shows that the MANTRA DAO staking wallet sent 38 million OM tokens (about $26.96 million) to a cold wallet on Binance.

Early Controversy, High Degree of Centralized Control, and Narrative Trap Behind the Soaring Prices

MANTRA's predecessor was MANTRA DAO, established in 2020, initially focusing on staking, lending, and asset management services. However, MANTRA DAO was considered a scam in its early days, labeled with popular labels such as DeFi and poker. According to previous reports from Wu Blockchain and Beehive Finance, Mantra DAO's core team and advisors had dubious backgrounds, with identity fraud and even a history of fraud, including the background of founder Calvin Ng, which was closely linked to an online gambling site 21Pink. At the same time, the project itself had not yet been implemented technically and functionally, but Mantra DAO relied on marketing tactics and false partnerships to attract investment.

Moreover, MANTRA was also became embroiled in litigation due to internal disputes. In early 2022, RioDeFi filed a lawsuit against MANTRA DAO, accusing it of ownership, management rights, and asset misappropriation issues. RioDeFi claimed that it founded and developed MANTRA DAO in 2020, but the core team of MANTRA DAO (including co-founder John Patrick Mullin and six others) stopped financial reporting after 2021, misappropriated assets, and controlled the project. MANTRA DAO argued that as a DAO, it was governed by OM token holders, not owned by RioDeFi. In August 2024, the Hong Kong High Court intervened, ordering key figures of MANTRA DAO to disclose financial records in response to charges of asset misappropriation and unauthorized control. This case became the world's first judicial review of DAO ownership and governance.

In 2022, MANTRA DAO announced its official name change to MANTRA, initiating a brand restructuring, stating its attempt to transition from a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) to a broader blockchain ecosystem. Since 2024, MANTRA has again become the focus of attention due to OM's strong price increase. CoinGecko data shows that in 2024 alone, OM's price rose by more than 168.8 times. At the same time, DeFiLlama data shows that OM's fully diluted valuation (FDV) once reached $1.539 billion in March of this year, which has now fallen sharply to $125 million. However, in stark contrast to its high valuation is that since 2023, OM's total value locked (TVL) has long been at a low level, only maintaining at the level of several hundred thousand dollars.

The high degree of centralized control by the project side and the RWA narrative are considered important reasons for OM's rise. On one hand, according to a recent disclosure by crypto analyst Mosi, the MANTRA team holds 90% of OM tokens' "circulating supply", with the real market circulation only accounting for 5% of the fully diluted valuation (FDV).

However, the highly centralized strategy also laid the groundwork for a concentrated stake, fragile liquidity bomb. According to HashKey Capital member Rui's exposure, MANTRA is a local push OTC, with the external market at least reaching a scale of $500 million over two years, using a "new OTC token takes over the old OTC and sells" model to operate in cycles until the last unlocked tokens "OTC does not move" and burst.

On the other hand, MANTRA has been active in the RWA track, releasing a series of positive signals, including setting up a $109 million ecosystem fund, cooperating with the United Arab Emirates DAMAC Group, planning to tokenize $1 billion in assets, introducing Google as a verifier and infrastructure provider to cooperate on the RWA accelerator, tokenizing $500 million worth of Dubai MAG Group's real estate assets, etc.

The involvement of Middle Eastern capital was a turning point in MANTRA's development. According to ArkStream Capital Founding Partner Ye Su's disclosure, in 2023, when OM's FDV fell to $20 million and was almost abandoned, a Middle Eastern capital intervened under the mediation of an intermediary, only retaining the position of the CEO. This Middle Eastern capital has a large number of luxury houses, resorts and other physical assets, and then packaged OM into a real-world asset tokenization (RWAfi) project. Ye Su said that under high centralized control, OM achieved the highest increase on Binance in 2024, achieving a 200-fold growth, and the team is still promoting OTC business recently.

Public information also shows that MANTRA co-founder and CEO John Patrick Mullin, co-founder Jayant Ramanand, CTO Matthew Crooks and other executives have all resigned. And financing background shows that MANTRA announced a $1 million financing led by Shoorooq Partners in March 2024. It is understood that Shoorooq Partners is a leading venture investment and alternative investment management company headquartered in Abu Dhabi, focusing on technology startups in the Middle East, North Africa, and Pakistan (MENAP) regions. After MANTRA announced obtaining investment from Shoorooq Partners, it launched an incubator at the Dubai World Trade Center, focusing on RWA tokenization projects in the Middle East and North Africa regions.

Overall, the unresolved shadow of early controversies, highly centralized tokenomics, behind-the-scenes capital manipulation, and the heat of the RWA narrative are multiple factors that together constitute the multiple causes of this crash tragedy.

OM's Near 90% Plunge in the Dead of Night, Divergent Accounts from Project Side, Exchanges, and Investors

Behind OM's billion-dollar market cap collapse was a market storm triggered by multiple factors.

In the early morning of April 14th, the price of MANTRA's token OM plummeted sharply. According to CoinGecko data, OM's price plummeted by 89.2% in the past 24 hours.

OM's Market Cap Collapses, Manipulation Exposed, and Divergent Statements from All Sides

For OM's sudden crash, the official explanation from MANTRA stated that the chaos was not caused by the team, MANTRA Association, core advisors, or MANTRA investors selling tokens. The tokens remain locked and are subject to the announced vesting periods, with the tokenomics remaining unchanged. They warned against clicking on any fraudulent links or accounts impersonating MANTRA.

At the same time, the official pointed out that the incident occurred during a period of low liquidity, possibly due to exchange negligence or market manipulation. The timing and depth of the crash indicated that positions were suddenly closed without sufficient warning or notice. This happened during a time of low liquidity in the early morning (Asian time) in UTC, suggesting a certain degree of negligence on the part of the exchange, or possibly a deliberate market positioning.

Binance confirmed in its statement that OM has recently experienced severe price fluctuations, and preliminary investigations showed that it was triggered by "cross-exchange liquidation." Since last October, Binance has implemented multiple risk control measures for OM tokens, including reducing leverage levels. Since January of this year, Binance has added a pop-up warning for OM tokens on its spot trading page, reminding users that the token has undergone significant adjustments to its tokenomics, increasing the token supply. Binance stated it will continue to closely monitor the situation and take appropriate actions to protect users and maintain platform integrity.

OKX stated in its announcement that since October 2024, OM's token economic model has undergone significant changes, and since early March, several similar operational chain addresses have made large deposits and withdrawals on various exchanges. Based on market risk, OKX has adjusted platform risk control parameters and warned users that recent market risks are high, and changes in the supply of some tokens may lead to price fluctuations. A risk warning has been added to the OM token page. At the same time, OKX CEO Star said that this is a major scandal for the entire crypto industry. All on-chain unlocking and recharge data are public, and all mainstream exchanges' collateral and liquidation data may be investigated. OKX is ready with all reports.

Although MANTRA attributed the responsibility to the exchange, on-chain data points to a more complex scenario, triggering community doubts about potential insider selling and market manipulation.

According to Spot On Chain monitoring, 19 wallets that were previously tracked and suspected to belong to the same entity, created in March, transferred 1.427 million OM tokens (about $1 million) to OKX at an average price of $6.375 in the three days before the OM crash. According to The Data Nerd monitoring, in the past three days, five wallets have deposited a total of 24.4 million OM tokens (about $139.4 million) into OKX. Four wallets have the same operation pattern: they withdrew from Binance last month and then deposited into OKX; another belongs to Laser Digital. Additionally, according to Lookonchain monitoring, since April 7th, at least 17 wallet addresses have deposited a total of 4.36 million OM tokens (worth about $227 million at the time) into exchanges, accounting for 4.5% of the circulating supply. At the same time, five hours before the OM token plummeted, a wallet that had been dormant for a year transferred 200,000 OM tokens to a wallet suspected to belong to Shane Shin, a founding partner of MANTRA's investment firm Shoorooq Partners. The wallet received 2 million OM tokens at a price of $125.8 million, but now its value is only $1.57 million.

However, MANTRA Chain's strategic investor Laser Digital responded, stating that Laser has no connection with the recent price drop of OM. The social media claims about Laser being related to "investor selling" are incorrect and misleading. Laser did not deposit any OM tokens into OKX, and the wallet mentioned related to OKX is not Laser's wallet. Laser's core OM investment remains locked, with no interest in exerting pressure on the token or undermining the stability of the project. Transparency is very important.

Investment firm Shoorooq Partners also issued a statement clarifying that the drop was not due to a hacker attack or team selling but was triggered by a large-scale forced liquidation, followed by panic selling during a period of low liquidity. Shoorooq emphasized its position as a long-term equity investor has not changed and publicly disclosed the relevant wallet addresses to prove transparency.

The project side, exchanges, and investors each hold their own views. The deeper cause of this crash may stem from recent adjustments to MANTRA's token economic model. Recently, MANTRA announced that the community proposal will unify OM as the mainnet native token, abandoning the dual-token strategy, which also brought technical challenges. Therefore, the team decided to abandon the original ERC-20 OM and establish OM as the standard version on MANTRA Chain. At the same time, MANTRA announced that it will double the OM supply from 888.8 million to 1777.77 million and introduce a 3% annual inflation rate to incentivize staking. Although this move was intended to support ecosystem growth, the significant increase in circulation and the uncapped inflation mechanism was considered to have weakened investor confidence.

It is worth noting that despite OM's significant drop, large-scale token selling continues. Onchain Lens (@OnchainLens) latest monitoring shows that the MANTRA DAO staking wallet sent 38 million OM tokens (about $26.96 million) to a cold wallet on Binance.

Early Controversy, High Degree of Centralized Control, and Narrative Trap Behind the Soaring Prices

MANTRA's predecessor was MANTRA DAO, established in 2020, initially focusing on staking, lending, and asset management services. However, MANTRA DAO was considered a scam in its early days, labeled with popular labels such as DeFi and poker. According to previous reports from Wu Blockchain and Beehive Finance, Mantra DAO's core team and advisors had dubious backgrounds, with identity fraud and even a history of fraud, including the background of founder Calvin Ng, which was closely linked to an online gambling site 21Pink. At the same time, the project itself had not yet been implemented technically and functionally, but Mantra DAO relied on marketing tactics and false partnerships to attract investment.

Moreover, MANTRA was also became embroiled in litigation due to internal disputes. In early 2022, RioDeFi filed a lawsuit against MANTRA DAO, accusing it of ownership, management rights, and asset misappropriation issues. RioDeFi claimed that it founded and developed MANTRA DAO in 2020, but the core team of MANTRA DAO (including co-founder John Patrick Mullin and six others) stopped financial reporting after 2021, misappropriated assets, and controlled the project. MANTRA DAO argued that as a DAO, it was governed by OM token holders, not owned by RioDeFi. In August 2024, the Hong Kong High Court intervened, ordering key figures of MANTRA DAO to disclose financial records in response to charges of asset misappropriation and unauthorized control. This case became the world's first judicial review of DAO ownership and governance.

In 2022, MANTRA DAO announced its official name change to MANTRA, initiating a brand restructuring, stating its attempt to transition from a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) to a broader blockchain ecosystem. Since 2024, MANTRA has again become the focus of attention due to OM's strong price increase. CoinGecko data shows that in 2024 alone, OM's price rose by more than 168.8 times. At the same time, DeFiLlama data shows that OM's fully diluted valuation (FDV) once reached $1.539 billion in March of this year, which has now fallen sharply to $125 million. However, in stark contrast to its high valuation is that since 2023, OM's total value locked (TVL) has long been at a low level, only maintaining at the level of several hundred thousand dollars.

The high degree of centralized control by the project side and the RWA narrative are considered important reasons for OM's rise. On one hand, according to a recent disclosure by crypto analyst Mosi, the MANTRA team holds 90% of OM tokens' "circulating supply", with the real market circulation only accounting for 5% of the fully diluted valuation (FDV).

However, the highly centralized strategy also laid the groundwork for a concentrated stake, fragile liquidity bomb. According to HashKey Capital member Rui's exposure, MANTRA is a local push OTC, with the external market at least reaching a scale of $500 million over two years, using a "new OTC token takes over the old OTC and sells" model to operate in cycles until the last unlocked tokens "OTC does not move" and burst.

On the other hand, MANTRA has been active in the RWA track, releasing a series of positive signals, including setting up a $109 million ecosystem fund, cooperating with the United Arab Emirates DAMAC Group, planning to tokenize $1 billion in assets, introducing Google as a verifier and infrastructure provider to cooperate on the RWA accelerator, tokenizing $500 million worth of Dubai MAG Group's real estate assets, etc.

The involvement of Middle Eastern capital was a turning point in MANTRA's development. According to ArkStream Capital Founding Partner Ye Su's disclosure, in 2023, when OM's FDV fell to $20 million and was almost abandoned, a Middle Eastern capital intervened under the mediation of an intermediary, only retaining the position of the CEO. This Middle Eastern capital has a large number of luxury houses, resorts and other physical assets, and then packaged OM into a real-world asset tokenization (RWAfi) project. Ye Su said that under high centralized control, OM achieved the highest increase on Binance in 2024, achieving a 200-fold growth, and the team is still promoting OTC business recently.

Public information also shows that MANTRA co-founder and CEO John Patrick Mullin, co-founder Jayant Ramanand, CTO Matthew Crooks and other executives have all resigned. And financing background shows that MANTRA announced a $1 million financing led by Shoorooq Partners in March 2024. It is understood that Shoorooq Partners is a leading venture investment and alternative investment management company headquartered in Abu Dhabi, focusing on technology startups in the Middle East, North Africa, and Pakistan (MENAP) regions. After MANTRA announced obtaining investment from Shoorooq Partners, it launched an incubator at the Dubai World Trade Center, focusing on RWA tokenization projects in the Middle East and North Africa regions.

Overall, the unresolved shadow of early controversies, highly centralized tokenomics, behind-the-scenes capital manipulation, and the heat of the RWA narrative are multiple factors that together constitute the multiple causes of this crash tragedy.