Mantra’s Statement Following OM Token Collapse Raises Important Unanswered Questions

Troubled decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Mantra released an official statement addressing the reasons for a 92% flash crash of its OM token on April 13. An announcement on April 16 titled “Statement of Events: 13 April 2025” reiterated that the crash was not due to any token sales by the project itself, and the Mantra team remains fully operational while continuing to investigate the incident.

Although Mantra CEO John Mullin previously mentioned that the team was preparing a post-mortem, the new statement provided limited insights into the rapid movement of OM tokens to exchanges and the subsequent liquidation cascade.

Limited Circulation of Mainnet OM Tokens
The statement also clarified that there are two types of OM tokens: one is Ethereum-based (ERC-20), and the other operates on Mantra’s mainnet. “The incident almost exclusively involved ERC-20 OM, as ERC-20 OM represents virtually the entire liquid market,” Mantra explained.

Launched in August 2020, the original ERC-20 OM token has a fixed supply of 888.8 million OM, with 99.9% of these tokens in public circulation as of April 15. Conversely, Mantra mainnet OM tokens had only 77.5 million in circulation after the Mantra Chain minted an equivalent amount of OM in October 2024.

Mantra’s Conclusions
Additionally, the statement noted a divergence in OM spot prices on two exchanges. The discrepancy began around 6:00 pm UTC, approximately one hour before the OM token’s crash, according to market data.

Among its conclusions, Mantra indicated that additional information from its exchange partners will help “provide more clarity on these events,” stating: “We invite our centralized exchange partners to collaborate on providing further insights into trading activities during this time.”

The Mantra team confirmed they are preparing a support plan for OM that includes both a token buyback and a supply burn, although no specific timeline for this plan was provided.

As previously reported, OKX CEO Star Xu referred to the situation surrounding Mantra as a “big scandal” in a statement released shortly after the crash. Mantra CEO Mullin noted that Binance is the largest holder of the OM token, according to blockchain data.

Cointelegraph reached out to the Mantra team for additional comments on the April 16 statement but did not receive a response before publication.