Mantra post-OM token crash statement leaves key questions unanswered

Update (April 16, 6:50 pm UTC): This article has been updated to add a comment by Mantra CEO John Mullin.

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 April 16 announcement titled “Statement of Events: 13 April 2025” reiterates that the crash did not involve any token sales by the project itself, and the Mantra team remains fully functional and continues investigating the incident.

Although Mantra CEO John Mullin previously said that the team was preparing a post-mortem, the new statement offered few new details about the reasons behind the rapid movement of OM tokens to exchanges and the subsequent liquidation cascade.

Source: John Mullin

“The purpose of the announcement was to share an updated analysis on the key factors that caused the price movement and verifiable data about the circulating supply,” Mullin subsequently told Cointelegraph, adding that the investigation is still underway.

Reasons for the OM crash

In the update, the Mantra team pointed to “significant amounts of OM tokens moved onto exchanges for use as collateral” and "forced OM position closures" as the main factors that triggered liquidations, including automatic ones.

“We believe those are the reasons for the event, but we are still looking into the details of how and why the events transpired,” the Mantra CEO told Cointelegraph.

As the investigation unfolds, the Mantra team plans to share a formal post-mortem, Mullin added.

Mantra teams up with unnamed blockchain analysts

In order to proceed with the investigation, Mantra has teamed up with unspecified blockchain analysts to get insights on the underlying causes of the crash, Mullin told Cointelegraph.

“We have done so, although the details are confidential,” the CEO stated.

Mantra has also been considering hiring a forensic auditor following the April 13 events. According to Mullin, the discussions involved professionals, including the business consultancy firm FTI Consulting, but no decisions have been made so far.

Related: Mantra CEO plans to burn team’s tokens in bid to win community trust

Mullin also told Cointelegraph the Mantra team has about 90 full-time employees, adding:

“Our entire team is currently heads down, focused on the health and future of the company. We are not anticipating layoffs at this time.”Limited circulation of mainnet OM tokens

In the post, Mantra reiterated that there are two types of OM tokens, with one being Ethereum-based (ERC-20) and the other running on Mantra’s mainnet.

“The incident almost exclusively involved ERC-20 OM, as ERC-20 OM represents virtually the entire liquid market,” Mantra said in the statement.

Details on the OM circulating supply. Source: Mantra

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 being in public circulation as of April 15.

However, 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 post mentions a divergence in OM spot prices on OKX and Binance. The discrepancy began around 6:00 pm UTC, around an hour before the OM token’s crash, according to CoinGecko.

Among its conclusions, Mantra stated that further information from its exchange partners will “provide more clarity on these events, adding:

“We invite our centralized exchanges partners to collaborate on providing more clarity on trading activities during this time.”

The Mantra team confirmed that it is preparing a support plan for OM that includes both a token buyback and a supply burn. No timeline for the rollout of this plan was provided.

As previously reported by Cointelegraph, OKX CEO Star Xu called Mantra a “big scandal” in a post published hours following the crash. Mantra CEO Mullin also said Binance is the biggest holder of the OM token, citing Etherscan records.

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