How did Mantle TVL enter the top four in L2?

Author: Haotian

Looking through the data of @l2beat, it is found that the total TVL of @0xMantle, which mainly provides mainnet native income for ETH assets, has reached $1.82 billion, surpassing Blast to become the fourth layer2 in terms of locked value. It can be regarded as one of the "Four Heavenly Kings" of layer2. Many people will be curious about how Mantle counterattacked step by step through the combination of mETH+cmETH+Cook? Next, let me sort it out systematically:

mETH's two-sided linkage: L1 native income + L2 unified interoperability

1) L1 native income

Mantle is a layer2 chain directly constructed based on the OP Stack Codebase. When it was first launched, Ethereum layer2 as a whole suffered from the lack of "native income". Therefore, Mantle and Blast adopted a similar Tokenomics economic model design. The core concept is to allow users to deposit ETH in layer2 to generate native income on the Ethereum mainnet. For example, you can deposit ETH in LiDO and enjoy an APY income of about 4% of POS staking.

Therefore, Mantle launched the Ethereum liquidity pledge protocol mETH on the Ethereum mainnet, which has accumulated 483,000 ETH so far, ranking behind stETH, wBETH, and rETH.

Mantle layer2's main native income comes in part from mETH's POS pledge income. The key is that mETH, as a key LSP protocol, will also be integrated into other LRS protocols including Eigenlayer, puffer, Renzo, Kelp, etc., and enjoy their points and ecological governance and other mining rewards. In addition to on-chain income, Mantle cooperated with Bybit Exchange to connect the funding needs of C-end users and B-end AMM market makers, and obtain off-chain income generated by leasing funds.

In short, the goal of the mETH protocol is to connect as many diversified revenue sources as possible and provide a lasting Pump pump for its layer2 Tokenomics. For example, its liquidity protocol will also cover alt-layer1 such as Bearchain and Fuel.

The logic is not difficult to understand. In addition to the stable revenue of Ethereum POS, the revenue of the LRT platform is dynamically unstable and has no sustainable revenue. In order to tell the story of the main network revenue feeding layer2, mETH must expand the possibility of diversified revenue.

2) L2 unified interoperability

In addition to the native revenue attributes of the underlying mETH, Mantle introduces another core feature to its layer2 chain: layer2 interoperable liquidity center. Recently, @VitalikButerin and a number of layer2 project parties have been working together to drive the liquidity integration of Ethereum layer2. This shows that the current fragmentation of Ethereum layer2 liquidity has become the core challenge of the Rollup-Centric grand strategy.

In fact, Mantle has taken "interoperability" integration as its underlying technical framework since its inception. Specifically:

Mantle adopts the atomic cross-chain logic provided by @LayerZero_Core. The main contract is deployed on Mantle to control the total Supply, and the sub-contract is deployed on each layer2 to control the local supply and cross-chain casting instructions. If the user crosses the ETH on Arbitrum to Optimism, he can first pledge ETH on the Mantle chain, and the main contract will cast mETH to increase Supply. At the same time, the relay node of layerZero will synchronize the message to the sub-contract of Optimism. After receiving the instruction, the sub-contract will cast mETH corresponding to the user's recharge address.

The existence of mETH assets is based on the interoperability of layer2, especially when a large amount of ETH funds are idle on other layer2s. With the characteristics of the underlying atomic lossless cross-chain, users will naturally tend to aggregate ETH assets to the mETH of the Mantle chain to earn income. Use Omini Contract to achieve atomic cross-chain, and use APY income as an anchor to attract users to pool funds.

mETH has been designed seamlessly from upstream funding sources to downstream commercial closed-loop logic.

cmETH+Cook is destined to be: Activate the operation of the L2 DeFi economy

The question is? What considerations are based on the emergence of cmETH? If there is only mETH, will the market think that Mantle, as the leader, has gathered other L2s to launch a "vampire" attack on the Ethereum mainnet?

Obviously not, the destiny of layer2 is to provide blood transfusion to the main network, so L2 must have the ability to generate its own blood. cmETH is the key to mETH's self-generation.

Users can convert mETH into cmETH to participate in the DeFi project Restaking on L2 to obtain the income generated by the L2 DeFi ecosystem. Although cmETH bears an extra layer of re-staking risk compared to mETH, it also enjoys L2's more radical incentives and mining income expectations. For example, Mantle launched the Methamorphosis event, where users can get Powder equity certificates by re-staking mETH to obtain the future de-protocol governance token $COOK.

Many people will be surprised, since $MNT is born, where does $COOK come from? This has to start with the dual-token model designed by Mantle. MNT is the native token of the Mantle layer2 network, which is used to pay network gas fees and ecological governance, as well as the POS network income to maintain the security of its chain. Its goal is to maintain the economic operation of the Mantle chain.

And $COOK will cover the unified rights and governance of mETH in the main network and layer2 interoperable unified layer. It is a pan-protocol mETH exclusive governance token, mainly used for mining rewards and community incentives at the liquidity level. According to the overall mETH and cmETH planning, it may eventually flow into the overall layer2 liquidity system, while also enjoying the yield possibility of the entire layer2 ecosystem.

The above.

The reason why Blast, which was once famous, has attracted much attention, in addition to its huge capital absorption capacity, is that it is expected that its funds can be injected into layer2 to produce a catfish effect, giving a breakthrough point to the current difficulties of the layer2 economy. Mantle, which also has a huge amount of funds and excellent token model design, aims to bring "variables" to the layer2 industry.

I have the impression that everyone's definition of the four kings of layer2 is still biased towards "technology", and the current situation is that Starknet and zkSync, which have excellent technical foundations, are falling behind, while Base and Mantle, which are good at operations and TVL, are overtaking.