Mantle (MNT)

Mantle grew out of BitDAO, an organisation that controlled a large treasury: in the transition the former BIT token was converted into MNT and the project shifted from funding outside development to running its own layer-two network on Ethereum.

The architecture is modular. Execution follows the optimistic rollup pattern, but the data needed to verify it is published to a separate data-availability layer rather than to Ethereum itself, which lowers cost and at the same time changes the security assumptions relative to a classical rollup. The network keeps Ethereum tooling, so applications port over with little rework, while withdrawals sit through a challenge period.

MNT both pays network fees and carries governance rights, including control over the ecosystem treasury that funds projects built on the chain. That combination — gas coin plus control of a large fund — sets Mantle apart from peers where the two roles sit in different tokens, and it means the ecosystem is financed by its own holders.

Verification data is published to an external availability layer rather than to Ethereum itself — cheaper, but on different security assumptions than a classical rollup.