- Manta Pacific has carried out its long-anticipated airdrop.
- The airdrop has, however, failed to meet expectations.
- In addition to dashed hopes, there is controversy surrounding transfers made by the project’s team.
Over the past few weeks, Manta has gotten onto the radar of most crypto investors as excitement around its New Paradigm campaign, promising early participants rewards, saw its TVL jump over 2,000% in a month. However, after the rewards program’s conclusion, many participants were disappointed and furious.
Manta Pacific: ‘The Worst Airdrop Ever?’
In late 2023, Manta Pacific launched the New Paradigm program to reward network participants who locked assets on the protocol and interacted within the ecosystem using receipt tokens.
Unsurprisingly, many crypto speculators jumped in, sending the network’s TVL above $400 million on Defi Llama to make free and potentially life-changing money. However, on distribution day, most of these investors were disappointed, with some noting that they did not even get enough to cover transaction fees that they had paid on the network.
“Worst airdrop ever.. not even cover gasfees,” one user wrote.
“I put in 1 eth a month ago and rewards didnt even cover the gas fees, let alone 400% lol,” another added.
Meanwhile, the Manta Pacific debacle does not end there. Amid the complaints over the underwhelming rewards, the project is accused of dumping on its holders minutes after the token was listed on exchanges.
Dumping on Holders or Project Expansion?
During the MANTA token distribution, the South Korean crypto community accused the Manta development team of dumping on their users within minutes of the asset’s listing. The group posted proof that the project’s Korean business developer had exchanged nearly 3 million MANTA tokens to ETH within five minutes of the asset’s listing on Bithumb, which was promptly withdrawn to the team member’s wallet.
. @MantaNetwork was suspected of money laundering through Bithumb on the day of listing
– 2M $MANTA transferred to personal wallet of MANTA’s Korean BD
– 2M $MANTA was deposited into Bithumb deposit wallet, accounting for more than 75% of Bithumb’s total circulation volume.
-… pic.twitter.com/uMWq6J6D37— Definalist (@definalist) January 18, 2024
In response to the claims, however, the Manta Network has asserted that the funds are allocated to expand the project’s footprint in South Korea.
Despite the low sentiment, MANTA is still up 5.6% in the last 24 hours at the time of writing, trading at $2.27, per CoinGecko data.
On the Flipside
- The Manta community can not unlock their bridged deposits till March 2024.
- Airdrops rarely ever go through without hiccups.
Why This Matters
The Manta New Paradigm program attracted thousands of investors to the Manta ecosystem, hoping to gain significant rewards.
Read this for more on Manta:
Here’s Why Manta’s TVL Is up Over 2,300% in the Past Month
Read this to learn more about Polygon’s latest CDK upgrade:
Polygon’s Layer 2 Kit Bolstered With NEAR Data Availability
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