Mantle EcoFund, promulgated through a Mantle Governance vote, MIP-24, in July 2023 as one of the largest ecosystem funds of its kind with a catalyzed capital pool of $200 million and operated by Mirana Ventures, has on Thursday announced it has completed deploying $10 million in investments from its initial capital call.
Mirana Ventures will make the second capital call of $30 million in accordance with MIP-24 to invest in new Mantle Ecosystem projects in the coming months, Mantle EcoFund said in a statement.
According to the statement, six Mantle Ecosystem DeFi projects received fresh funding — Merchant Moe, an automated market maker (AMM) decentralized exchange (DEX) built by the Trader Joe team; INIT Capital, an upcoming “Liquidity Hook” money market on Mantle Network; Butter.xyz, a Mantle-native DEX emphasizing trend-driven opportunities and fostering a transparent and fair environment; Renzo, an EigenLayer liquid restaking hub; MUFEX, a multichain decentralized perpetual exchange offering a trading experience akin to a centralized exchange (CEX); and TsunamiX, a gamified margin trading and spot DEX.
The investments further enable Mantle EcoFund to provide for the projects’ liquidity support in accordance with Mantle Governance MIP-26, which allows for up to a combined 60 million USDx (stablecoins), 30,000 ETH, and 120 million $MNT in liquidity provision for EcoFund-invested decentralized applications (dApps), with each individual allowance up to 10 million USDx, 5000 ETH, and 20 million $MNT.
Merchant Moe is an AMM DEX from the Trader Joe team, dedicated to building a liquidity hub within Mantle Ecosystem as a cornerstone DEX.
The project has made a head-turning entrance into Mantle Ecosystem, recording 4,700 active users on launch day, and attracting $25 million TVL within the first week.
“We chose to build on Mantle because it’s an exciting young ecosystem that has two unique features that make it stand out from the rest: using EigenDA technology that allows it to have very inexpensive fees and having its own staking derivative, $mETH, which comes with best-in-class native yield,” said 0xMurloc, Co-Founder of Merchant Moe.
“$mETH is currently the 5th largest LST, with almost half a billion in liquidity, and we see that growing,
“Our bet on Mantle is because we believe it will be the L2 with the most staked ETH in the future, and we want to be front and center of that,” he added.
Meanwhile, Init Capital is building a “Liquidity Hook” money market on Mantle, allowing dApps and users to lend, borrow and access yield strategies with seamless composability using liquidity hooks — permissionless plugins that allow access to larger, concentrated sources of liquidity of INIT.
“INIT is built on the belief that liquidity should be a commodity that is accessible to everyone, given borrowers can build innovative strategies with the liquidity,
“INIT is trying to democratize access to liquidity to not just DeFi users, but also protocols with liquidity hooks,” said Tascha Punyaneramitdee, Founder of INIT Capital.
“Mantle has provided incredible support for INIT Capital,
“We’re excited for the many interesting protocols that will go live on Mantle Network, and look forward to fostering Mantle to be one of the highest and most sustainable yield offering ecosystems in DeFi,” she added.
Butter.xyz, on the other hand, is an exchange tailored for self-identified degens, emphasizing trend-driven opportunities and fostering a transparent and fair environment and offering timed perpetual markets for trending coins and popular non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
“Mantle’s team has built an amazing ecosystem with both unique innovators and veteran protocols. In the month since Butter’s launch, we’ve seen increasing momentum each day. 2024 is going to be the year of Mantle,” said @butterbagel_, Chief Executive Officer of Butter.
Renzo, EigenLayer’s liquid restaking hub, is the fastest growing project on EigenLayer.
It has attracted $75 million (30,000 ETH) in its first month.
It enables ETH and liquid staking tokens (LSTs) to be restaked and utilized as DeFi collateral to earn compounding rewards, while maintaining optimal risk/reward strategies.
“Renzo welcomes Mantle EcoFund’s investment as yet another indication of Mantle’s commitment to growing its ecosystem, and expanding into new DeFi growth opportunities like restaking on EigenLayer via strong DeFi partnerships,” said Lucas Kozinski, Founding Contributor of Renzo.
Meanwhile, MUFEX is a decentralized perpetual exchange deployed across multiple chains, including Mantle Network, while also offering a trading experience akin to a CEX.
The project’s onboarding experience is secured and simplified through multi-party computation (MPC) and account abstraction (AA).
TsunamiX, on the other hand, is a DEX that offers gamified margin and spot trading.
With a unique pricing model called “dynamic liquidity pricing”, TsunamiX is able to offer safe real yield-earning strategies with their liquidity pools that reduce the risk of impermanent loss.
At the same time, it also ensures increased fee generation over time with leveraged trading that has 0% price impact, on top of swap fees.
Further bolstering Mantle Ecosystem’s status as a yield powerhouse that is printing best-in-class native yield with liquid staking protocol (LSP) and real world assets (RWA), Merchant Moe, INIT Capital, Butter, Renzo and MUFEX are integrating $mETH and $mUSD.
$mETH is the value-accumulating receipt token of Mantle’s liquid staking protocol Mantle LSP, currently the fifth largest liquid staking derivatives by TVL according to DefiLlama, while $mUSD is the rebasing wrapped version of Ondo Finance’s tokenized bearer note $USDY, which offers native yield backed by RWA such as U.S.Treasury bills and bank demand deposits.
“We are thrilled to see new ecosystem allies such as Merchant Moe, INIT Capital, Butter, Renzo and MUFEX integrate $mETH and $mUSD,
“The adoption of these yield-bearing instruments offers great benefits and rewarding experience to users, and further bolsters Mantle Ecosystem’s status as a yield powerhouse that is home to best-in-class native yield,” said David Toh, partner of Mirana Ventures, Mantle EcoFund’s operator.
According to the statement, Merchant Moe, INIT Capital, Butter, Renzo, MUFEX and TsunamiX joined Mantle EcoFund’s existing portfolio projects LiquidX, Valent and Range Protocol, announced back in September.
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