MANTRA Chain, which focuses on putting traditional financial assets such as funds and bonds on-chain, was hit by an exploit earlier on Aug. 21. Before the network went down, its native token $MANTRA fell as much as 18.5% and touched a record low. The blockchain was then forced into a full halt, stopped producing blocks, and saw trading, deposits, withdrawals, and cross-chain functions affected.
$MANTRA fell to $0.004126 before rebounding
According to CoinGecko data cited in the report, $MANTRA dropped from $0.005060 early on Aug. 21 to a low of $0.004126. It later recovered to around $0.0044, though it was still down 10% over the past 24 hours. Trading volume jumped nearly 600% to about $24 million at the same time.
Within minutes of the price hitting its low, MANTRA Chain also entered a halt. The team later confirmed that the network had experienced an incident and said it had taken precautionary steps to prevent broader damage. Those steps included freezing on-chain transactions and network endpoints, while major crypto exchanges also suspended deposit and withdrawal services for $MANTRA.
In its notice, MANTRA Chain said: 「We're aware of an incident affecting MANTRA Chain and have halted the chain as a precaution while we investigate. All endpoints and transactions are currently frozen. This means deposits and withdrawals to/from MANTRA Chain are temporarily affected.」
So far, the project has not confirmed whether the sharp decline in $MANTRA was directly tied to the exploit.
Team says attacker used a flaw in an upstream dependency
In a later update, the MANTRA Chain team said the attacker exploited a vulnerability in an 「upstream dependency」, meaning a third-party software component used by MANTRA Chain but developed externally. The team said it has identified the source of the flaw and is preparing to release a patch.
Validators responsible for maintaining MANTRA Chain remain offline for now. After the fix is completed, the development team still needs to coordinate with other validators before restarting the blockchain, and that will only happen after testing and security checks are completed.
MANTRA Chain also said it is tracking fund flows and working with major exchanges to assess the impact. As of now, however, the team has not disclosed the specific software that was exploited, the attack method, or whether any assets were stolen.
The team said: 「We are still fully assessing the overall scope of the impact, and at this stage we cannot confirm the full extent of the damage.」
Token had previously been split and renamed
The incident has put market attention back on $MANTRA. Its predecessor token, $OM, saw a sharp sell-off in April 2025, when the price fell more than 90% in a single day and more than $5 billion in market value was wiped out.
According to the report, $MANTRA completed a token split and rebrand in 2026. The original $OM was renamed to $MANTRA after a 1-for-4 split and became the native staking token of MANTRA Chain.
Separately, Inveniam Capital Partners, which invested $20 million in MANTRA Chain last year, said in June this year that it planned to acquire MANTRA Chain. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of this year.