Manta Network (MANTA) Review: OG Score & Community Audit

Manta Network caught my attention because the idea looked stronger than what the market eventually showed, the project has built something and there are still signs of people using the ecosystem, which separates it from many projects that disappear after the hype fades.                                                                   
My concern is what happens when incentives become less attractive, crypto has seen many networks look active during strong market periods, only for activity to slow when rewards disappear, I also keep an eye on liquidity and decision making, if a small group controls too much of the activity, it can become harder for the market to trust the project over time.
  There are good things here, but the market has already become more selective, Manta needs to prove that people stay because they find value, not only because there are opportunities to earn.

In May 2026 the team officially ended the staking rewards program. While they claimed this was to curb token inflation it effectively destroyed the primary reason public token holders were keeping the asset locked up. Without staking yields there is almost zero organic demand to keep this token off the open market.
Furthermore the protocol is currently undergoing a massive and risky transition. They are preparing to completely sunset the Manta Atlantic network by August 2026 forcing existing users to migrate. This kind of structural overhaul almost always leads to a massive loss of total value locked as frustrated users simply cash out instead of moving their funds.
Beyond the terrible user retention metrics the foundational development activity looks deeply concerning. Public code repositories show that core protocol commits have practically stalled since early 2025. When an infrastructure project stops shipping public code and pivots to becoming a decentralized application incubator it is a glaring red warning that their original blockchain thesis failed to gain sustainable traction.
To their credit the team operational security is sharp as the founder actually thwarted a highly sophisticated deepfake Zoom attack by the Lazarus Group in 2025. However solid operational security does not replace a dying economic engine. Spot buyers are basically catching a falling knife acting as exit liquidity for early investors who are abandoning ship before the network sunset.
The truth is, Do not let the legacy zero knowledge buzzwords blind you to the current facts. Keep your capital far away from this asset until there is clear verifiable proof that the new Manta Labs pivot can actually generate real protocol revenue and bring organic volume back to their ecosystem.

Manta Network insiders and early venture backers completely stripped the network of its alignment on day one, while mercenary yield farmers have completely drained the ecosystem's capital, leaving a tragic $3.73 million inside the native chain TVL ledger. With a pathetic $9 flowing into the daily chain revenue books and a ghost town count of just 268 active addresses, the native $MANTA token is a highly illiquid asset floating on fading metrics. The protocol layer, Manta Pacific, is equally dead in the water, holding a cratered $22.78 million in protocol TVL while a stagnant $138,198 trickles through its 30 day bridge volume ledger.
Do not deploy your hard earned capital here. The project was permanently compromised at launch by an egregious insider scandal, where 2 million tokens were routed straight to a Korean representative’s personal wallet and instantly dumped onto the Bithumb exchange during an engineered price spike to secure a corrupt $5 million cash out. This extraction was hardcoded into the project's DNA from the beginning the official tokenomics reveal that over 55% of the entire supply was gifted directly to the team, advisors, and private VCs, setting up a brutal dilution wall for public market buyers. The modular scaling technology was beautifully engineered at the start, but without organic users trading or real economic activity, it has transformed into a stagnant shell for corporate wealth extraction. Keep your investment capital far away.

Manta Network is a specific blockchain built to make crypto applications cheaper, and more secure and privacy focused it uses a highly advanced security technology called Zero knowledge ZK proofs this tech allows apps to verify information like proving user has enough money for a transaction without actually revealing your identity data to the public blockchain.
So MANTA is core and main currency in Manta Network and can be bridged on Ethereum chain, it's mainly used for transaction fees, governance voting and staking also gas fees are extremely cheap compared to Ethereum because MANTA network uses system called Celestia which has significantly reduced network operating costs.
It is backed by well known ventures as Binance labs and polychain capital which helped network gain trust of community and investors, but still even after big investing project is risky due to major portion of supply locked which will be released in few years but if network won't keep community interacted the price will fall more because for more supply needs more buyers to absorb token and prevent token inflation in market.
When it was launched it gained huge hype andd processed billions of dollars but at current moment it has lost big part of community as users moved to other Ai agents and automated bots platforms, because it is an infrastructure altcoin its price swings wild based entirely on whether Bitcoin is going up or down so basically it's tied to bitcoin's market performance.
While there are no hacks or malicious exploits but on the day when the MANTA token launched in January 2024, the network suffered a massive DDoS Distributed Denial of Service attack malicious hackers flooded the network with fake traffic, making the blockchain freeze and slowing down token withdrawals it caused massive panic for users trying to trade.
The project has lost a lot of its early hype to newer trends like AI tokens, meaning future price growth depends entirely on whether they can bring back community.

Manta has good tech, but that hasn't stopped it from losing community trust. The project is still trying to shake off the controversy surrounding its launch, when a Korean BD wallet sold millions of MANTA shortly after listing, sparking accusations of insider dumping that still resurface on X whenever the price struggles. Since then, the shutdown of Manta Atlantic and the removal of staking rewards have added to the frustration, with many users feeling the project's direction keeps changing. Sentiment across X  remains mixed, with critics questioning transparency and long-term commitment even though no protocol-level hack has occurred.

Manta smells like a boardroom rug. When you dump millions of tokens onto an exchange during a listing and funnel the cash to a personal wallet, you aren't expanding, you're cashing out. I don't care about the MIT degrees or the heavy funding; if the influencers are sprinting for the exits and the security is this leaky, you’re just exit liquidity for the elite:- https://www.chaincatcher.com/article/2203756

Manta was one of the most hype-driven launches in 2024. They ran an NFT campaign called New Paradigm and distributed over 5% via airdrop, along with 3% through the Binance Launchpool—bringing total circulation at TGE to around 25%, which is relatively high. They also executed a massive marketing push before the token launch creating strong hype around the project. Eligible participants received one of the largest airdrops. However, despite the generous distribution, the token started to bleed slowly after TGE. The token utilities weren’t particularly unique mainly governance and staking, with no real value capture mechanism for long-term holders. Those who sold into the hype were the real winners. Once token unlocks began, the price decline accelerated further. Just another classic listing playbook: create hype → drive TVL → airdrop → list → then let it slowly bleed.

Well Manta’s is building its ZK ecosystem real tech, real users, smashed milestones like millions of transactions and $1.5B+ TVL what i do is most activity spikes still come from incentives:) Worth watching for ZK innovation.