Learn & Earn: MANTRA DAO and the OM Token
In this “Learn & Earn” campaign, we will be taking the important answers that John Patrick Mullin, Co-Founder and Council Member at MANTRA DAO, had given during his AMA on Krystal’s telegram group, and make it into a five-question quiz. John will introduce you to the MANTRA ecosystem, its products, and the OM token along with governance.
Remember to answer the quiz here after reading this article to have a chance to win $20!
Hi JP, thank you for taking the time to join our AMA! Can you tell us what you did before crypto and how you got into crypto?
Sure thing, so I was working at an investment bank in China doing research on FinTech companies before I started my full-time career in crypto back in 2016. However, I was a fairly early adopter of crypto, buying my first bitcoin in 2013. Back then I was lucky to have a friend who had much more foresight than I did, and we got into it together!
I’ve been working in crypto full time for roughly 4–5 years now, and have since moved down to Hong Kong, where I am currently based.
Could you briefly describe what MANTRA DAO is? What problems does the MANTRA DAO ecosystem solve for the crypto space as a whole?
Certainly. So MANTRA is a multi-chain ecosystem creating consumer financial products for our end users that are non-custodial, secure, and governed by the OM token holders. We’ve built a platform that includes DeFi staking, Validator node business, Money Market lending product, launchpad, lottery pool, and more. We are currently live on Ethereum, BSC, Polygon, Heco, and will be launched on Solana and a Kusama/Polkadot parachuting in the near future.
We believe that there is a lot of fragmentation in the DeFi space and that platforms aren’t all-encompassing. We’re creating an ecosystem for people from any Layer-1 to participate in both DeFi and Web 3.0.
The next question we would love to ask you is about MANTRA’s lending product — ZENTEREST. Can you tell us more about it? How is it different from other lending protocols like Compound and Aave?
Certainly, ZENTEREST is our native money market currently live on ETH and will be launched shortly on BSC and Polygon. It allows users to supply assets and borrow against them in an overcollateralized (and cross-collateral) fashion. Users can also earn OM for participating as a borrower or lender. We have over 50 assets currently listed and have many up-and-coming projects on the platform. $KNC is actually one of the assets! Users can earn interest on the native token & an $OM extra bonus.
The next project in the ecosystem — ZENDIT Launchpad, seems to be successful in attracting projects after projects in the last few months! Why do these projects choose ZENDIT over other platforms? Are users excited about the upcoming launches?
Great question! Launchpad’s seem to have become a dime a dozen recently, but we’re glad to have been one of the first, and also one of the strongest. We have created a comprehensive ecosystem that allows our issuing partners to not only launch their token and raise capital but also then run staking pools, integrate into our money markets, etc.
We provide a lot of additional value to the issuing partner that most launchpads don’t!
We’ve already moved on to create a V3 of our launchpad, and are moving towards a permissionless launchpad experience where we aren’t involved in the platform, and anyone can use our platform to launch tokens
Let’s talk about the $OM token: Could you tell us more about the MANTRA DAO OM Tokenomics and how you balance both inflation and deflation within your model? Do you use buyback & burn?
Sure thing. So at its heart, OM is the governance token for the MANTRA ecosystem where our Sherpa community can have a say in deciding various parameters within our system and products. Users can stake and yield farm with OM on our staking and lending products, enable it as collateral, hold it to access ZENDIT launchpads, and also spend it to enter the MANTRA POOL weekly lottery game.
We have a capped supply of 888M OM which will be emitted over 5 years minimum but will likely take significantly longer to distribute. We don’t burn OM, but we do have deflationary elements in our system such as the MANTRA POOL, where users spend OM to enter to win 25% of the week’s validator nodes revenue. So far over 1M OM has been spent in this game.
And we also buy back OM on a bi-weekly basis with 50% of the revenues and have bought back nearly 4M OM since the start of this year. These tokens are removed from supply and sit in wallets that will only be activated and reused in the future if there is a governance vote from the community.
Can you share more details about the upcoming Binance Smart Chain expansion? Do you have any plans to move the ecosystem to other chains as well?
Certainly, so we have already launched staking, ZENDIT, and MANTRA POOL on BSC and ZENTEREST should be launched there anytime now.. like within a couple days.. not weeks or months…
As I mentioned above we are active on Polygon, Heco already and exploring Solana, and of course we’ve been building on the substrate for Polkadot since our inception. We see the future of crypto and DeFi as being cross-chain and multi-chain. And we support various ecosystems through our validator business as well! We are a top node on many top layer-1s including MATIC/Polygon, LUNA, DOT & KSM, and many more!
Aside from the imminent launch of ZENTEREST on Binance Smart Chain, are there any other upcoming and exciting news from MANTRA DAO that we, as both users and developers, should pay attention to?
We’re launching a new project called SOMA.finance, which is the world’s first globally compliant multi-asset DEX and issuance platform in the near future. In partnership with a US broker dealer, we have the licensing required to allow for tokenized equities, cryptos, STOs, ETFs, commodities to be traded in a P2P and transparent fashion. Truly bringing DeFi to TradFi. OM stakers will be rewarded with SOMA airdrops over the course of several years further incentivizing the staking and holding of OM. Additionally, there will be a special ZENDIT launch only for the MANTRA DAO community
Thank you very much for your time, John!
Thanks to the Krystal team and the entire Krystal community for taking part!
