Original source: Victor Ji, co-founder of Manta Network (X: @victorJi 15)
To Mantalorians, Dear Manta Community Members:
Hello everyone, in the four months after TGE, I would like to share with you our progress from the perspective of a founder. For us, users and community are everything. We hope that through voice, text and various forms of communication, everyone can see Manta's continued development and collect more feedback.
First, let's talk about TVL, which everyone is most concerned about. There has been a significant decline from 2b to about 800m now. We believe that this is related to the excessively high yields given by various L2 and restaking projects in the market. Everyone has learned Manta's New paradigm and turned this lock-up airdrop paradigm into a basic operation for each L2 (even no matter how long it takes to go to the mainnet). Although Manta continues to develop the renew paradigm to give projects within the ecosystem a better opportunity to develop, we found that many users do not care about ecosystem projects, but only expect the benefits of the chain, which makes us either give a very surprising amount of manta to maintain TVL, or choose the loss of TVL. But when we found that the ecosystem projects in the renew paradigm were not attractive enough, we chose another direction.
1) With the launch of Manta CeDefi today, we have brought the funding rates, which is the highest return in this market neutrality, to the BTC, ETH and stablecoins on the chain. All assets can rely on CeDeFi products to obtain relatively high native returns. This is more lasting and more stable than the manta token subsidy. As the market value becomes smaller and smaller with the launch of various L2s, we can find that the era of giving native token incentives to TVL is basically over. In addition to the current CeDeFi, Manta is also very concerned about the construction of the RWA-oriented ecosystem. We first cooperated with the most compliant native income stablecoin USDM in the United States. Everyone will also see further development after this cooperation. In Asia, we have joined Hong Kong Cyberport, which will further promote the behavior of financial institutions on the chain.
2) We will further develop the ecosystem of Manta. Our ecosystem projects have increased to 200+, and there are more than 50 DeFi projects in Defilama. This shows that Manta has a comprehensive ecosystem without obvious missing pieces, but Manta also needs builders who really commit to continuously build better products in the ecosystem. Now Manta’s problem is the same as Ethereum and all EVMs. There are many builders, but there are not enough to form cooperation in the ecosystem and insist on iterating products in the ecosystem. We have seen some potential in the ZK App Accelerator, such as Nimble and Gull, which are very distinctive projects in Manta Native. In addition, there were various problems in the coordination of ecological projects in the previous Renew Paradigm, such as the airdrop of Zerolend was not issued in time, Stakestone did not get Eigenlayer points, etc., but the products and technologies of ecological projects will have some limitations and cannot be iterated in time. We also apologize to the community for this. We will also learn lessons and promote the implementation of related benefits earlier. In short, Manta has a very good underlying foundation, with very low gas fees, direct deposits and withdrawals of ETH on Binance, and a very open ecological environment. But at the same time, we will also hold further hackathons, further open up the governance system and grant application mechanism, and work with the community to promote truly large-scale applications.
3) In terms of infrastructure development, we are also integrating type 1 prover, and working hard to promote manta to become the first L2 in opstack to implement multiprover. At the bottom layer of zk applications, we are also working hard to promote product integration with rwa-related scenarios. In addition, we are also exploring more decentralization in aspects such as decentralized sequencer.
Manta is in a very difficult period now, but it is far less difficult than it will be in early 2023. Manta still has a strong global community. When we walk in New York, Bali, Hong Kong and South Korea, people see the Manta logo and come to communicate with us. Manta's founders moved to Asia this year, and further cooperation with enterprises and promotion of large-scale implementation have also begun to bear fruit. We continue to build, just like we have in the past four years. We may not be the first in all fields, but we continue to deliver products so that community users and builders can participate more interestingly. We continue to hold events with ecological partners and even competitors without charging tickets to build a positive and open brand. Just like we did the first modular L2 and the first native income L2 to be launched on the mainnet before, we have been iterating quickly and launching new products quickly. There are many L2s, but just like we are participating in the new paradigm of NFT, the tier 1 backer is the least valuable, but the first modular L2 only has Manta, which comes from our team's continuous hard work and development and the community's support. I look forward to the manta ecosystem and I look forward to seeing more of you in the ecosystem.
Best,
Victor Ji
Co-founder of Manta Network
