MANTRA froze its Layer 1 blockchain late on Aug. 20 after what the team described as an incident in the Cosmos EVM module of MANTRA Chain. All endpoints and transactions were halted, and the network was still offline as of Friday morning. About nine and a half hours after the first notice, the team said it had identified the root cause, contained the threat, and determined that the issue affected two MANTRA-managed wallet addresses. The company said it had no indication that user, exchange, or partner funds were impacted, and added that no user funds were exploited. The outage hit infrastructure positioned for regulated real-world asset settlement. MANTRA has said Securitize, the tokenization platform behind BlackRock’s BUIDL, joined its active validator set in May. The chain also hosts mantraUSD, which MANTRA says is backed by short-term U.S. Treasuries, as well as a Layer 2 that uses MANTRA’s security. The halt came while Inveniam Capital Partners was still working to complete its planned acquisition of the company. Market data showed the MANTRA token hit an all-time low shortly before the halt was disclosed. At the same time, the chain had relatively little onchain value at stake based on tracked DeFi TVL. MANTRA said it is testing a patched release on its DuKong testnet and coordinating a restart with validator partners, but has not committed to a restart time.

A daily crypto news roundup from WuBlockchain covered five separate developments across geopolitics, regulation, treasury holdings, blockchain operations, and exchange compliance. The first item focused on Washington’s plan to tighten economic sanctions on Iran, with US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent saying more measures would be announced next Monday. Iran responded with a warning that any new US threat would face a "devastating" response, while also calling the sanctions "economic terrorism." The report added that pressure on Iranian oil exports has already disrupted shipments to China and raised concern about global energy supply. The second item said Pakistan’s virtual asset licensing regime has formally gone live. The Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority said existing virtual asset service providers must file for an NOC by Sept. 5 under Section 70 of the Virtual Assets Act, 2026, or cease operations. PVARA has also opened sandbox and other licensing tracks for different categories of firms and new applicants. Other items included data showing Strategy’s 840,447 BTC position has turned into an unrealized profit of about $192 million, while BitMine’s ETH holdings remain deeply underwater; an unexplained incident that halted MANTRA Chain and froze transactions and endpoints; and a New York Times report that two Binance employees detained in the UAE have now been released.

MANTRA Chain said its earlier network pause was a decision made by the team to freeze all transactions on the network so no new changes would occur during the investigation. The team said it still cannot confirm the scope of the incident or its root cause, but the investigation has made progress. Before the network is restored, MANTRA will post updates every hour on X and on status.mantrachain.io.

MANTRA Chain, a network focused on bringing traditional financial assets such as funds and bonds on-chain, was hit by an exploit on Aug. 21 and later halted operations across the network. Before the chain stopped producing blocks, its native token $MANTRA fell as much as 18.5%, touching a record low. CoinGecko data cited in the report showed the token falling from $0.005060 in early trading to a low of $0.004126, before recovering to around $0.0044. Even after that bounce, the token was still down 10% over 24 hours, while trading volume surged nearly 600% to about $24 million. MANTRA said it froze all transactions and endpoints as a precaution and that deposits and withdrawals tied to the chain were temporarily affected. In a later update, the team said the attacker exploited a vulnerability in an upstream dependency, meaning a third-party software component used by MANTRA Chain. The team said it had identified the source of the issue and was preparing a patch, but it had not yet disclosed the exact software involved, the attack method, or whether any assets had been stolen.

MANTRA Chain said it has identified the root cause of the network pause and contained the direct threat. The company said the issue was limited to its Cosmos EVM module, affected two wallet addresses before the chain went down, and did not lead to user funds being exploited. MANTRA also described the chain halt and the upcoming patch as precautionary measures aimed at reducing further risk to users and on-chain assets. The team is now testing a fix and said the network could resume today if those tests go well, with a full postmortem to follow.

MANTRA’s OM token dropped 18.5% from its 24-hour high to a record low of $0.004126 on Thursday night, according to CoinGecko, before recovering to around $0.0044. The move came as MANTRA Chain stopped producing blocks and the project said it had halted the network as a precaution while it investigates an incident. Trading volume jumped nearly 600% to $24 million, and affected exchanges paused deposits and withdrawals. MANTRA said it has not identified a root cause or shared a timeline for restoration, and it has not said whether the price drop was linked to the incident or whether any assets were lost or at risk. The article also notes the project’s April 2025 OM collapse, June acquisition plans involving Inveniam Capital Partners, and earlier January layoffs and restructuring.

MANTRA Chain said it has paused blockchain operations after an incident affected activity on the network. The team said the halt was taken as a precaution while an investigation is underway. All interfaces and transactions are currently frozen, and users are temporarily unable to deposit or withdraw assets through MANTRA Chain. The project said it has not yet identified the root cause of the incident and has not provided a timeline for restoring services. Future updates will be released through official channels once verified information becomes available. The notice indicates that the disruption is still being assessed, with core network functions and asset transfer access remaining suspended for now.

Upbit’s trading volume over the past 24 hours fell 9% from the previous period, according to CoinGecko data cited by BlockBeats on Aug. 3. Within the Korean won market on the exchange, the USDT/KRW pair ranked first with an 11.03% share of total trading volume. The other assets listed among the top five were BTC, XRP, HYPER, and MANTRA. The update only covers the latest 24-hour change and the ranking of leading pairs on Upbit’s KRW market. No additional figures or broader market context were disclosed in the source report.