Manta Pacific hits $850M TVL becoming Ethereum’s 4th largest L2
There's an expected decline in Manta's TVL after January 18 due to participants claiming rewards from the New Paradigm campaign.
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Ethereum’s layer-two (L2) blockchain Manta Pacific registered more than $850 million in total value locked (TVL) today, and it is now the 4th largest L2 by TVL, according to data aggregator L2Beat. When compared to the $35 million in TVL on December 15, 2023, this represents more than 2,300% in monthly growth.
The relevant rise in TVL can be related to Manta’s New Paradigm campaign, which started last year on December 14 and gave rewards to users who bridged Ethereum (ETH) to Manta Pacific. The rewards are ‘box pieces’ and when a user gets 25 of them, he’s eligible to open a box and get a non-fungible token (NFT). Inviting friends with referral links also boosted the rewards.
Manta Pacific is a blockchain ecosystem built by Manta Network on Ethereum. It leverages Polygon’s zkEVM technology and uses Celestia, a modular blockchain, as its data availability layer. This architecture enables Manta Pacific to function as a zero-knowledge rollup (zk rollup) for Ethereum, offering scalability and privacy benefits.
Since the start of the campaign, Manta’s TVL has soared and reached an $870 million peak on January 12. However, this number could sharply decline after January 18, when users will be eligible to claim their rewards after participating in the New Paradigm campaign.
A blog post published by Manta’s team on January 15 reveals that 50 million MANTA tokens will be distributed to New Paradigm’s participants. Another 50 million MANTA will be airdropped to users who interacted with the ‘Into the Blue’ event, which was similar to New Paradigm’s proposal.
The value locked growth was not accompanied by a rise in activity and could be seen as a sign that the money flowing into Manta Pacific is coming from investors only interested in the airdrop.
Thus, the token distribution could be seen by investors as the end of the period when it’s mandatory to lock ETH in Manta Pacific. Since 2024 is seen as ‘airdrop season’ by analysts, as Crypto Briefing reported, the money could quickly flow to other protocols where staking crypto is an eligibility requirement.
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