MANTRA Halts Network Transactions Following Unspecified Incident

The MANTRA Chain network paused its operations on August 21 while investigating an unspecified incident, halting transactions and stopping assets from being transferred in and out of the RWA-oriented Layer 1 blockchain network. Initially, the company called the shutdown a preventative measure. In a recent status update, the company has said that the network is still down as engineering and security teams are carrying out investigations with the help of their partners. Components that are affected include validators, public blockchain nodes, MANTRA Bridge migration processes, and the MANTRA-run Inter Blockchain Communication relays. Deposits and withdrawals through affected exchanges have also been paused.

MANTRA Keeps Blockchain Offline as Investigation Continues

The reason behind the problem is still unknown, as MANTRA has not disclosed it yet. Neither the block number from where the problem started nor the information about the attacker gaining access to funds has been revealed. No information about any stolen, minted, or compromised coins has been provided. The shutdown means that the validators cannot process any new transactions, so users will be unable to transfer or interact with applications or move assets through affected bridges while the halt remains active.  

There was no need for any user action according to MANTRA. Also, it warned about “recovery” help from individuals who try to scam through blockchain interruptions. “We will not resume the network until we are confident it is safe to do so,” the team said. “We don’t have a root cause or timeline to share yet”

The project has notified other exchanges and partner networks. Upbit is one of the exchanges that has halted deposits and withdrawals of its native token, MANTRA. However, trading will be done independently on the centralised exchanges, and this is possible since internal orders do not need transactions on the MANTRA Chain. It is important to note that MANTRA did not label the issue as an exploit, validator error, or consensus issue. Claims assigning a cause remain unverified until the team publishes technical evidence. 

The price of MANTRA was $0.0045 (roughly Rs. 4.78) at the time of writing and had dropped by about 9.8 percent from the last 24 hours as per CoinGecko. It had declined by 12.8 percent over the last 7 days. The trading volume surged by 591 percent to more than $22.7 million (roughly Rs. 2,172 crore). 

This increase highlights market action but does not provide any evidence as to whether all transactions were directly prompted by the network downtime. The price of this token hit the lowest point in 24 hours at around $0.00413 (roughly Rs. 3.82). The market capitalisation of this token amounted to about $27.8 million (roughly Rs. 2,660 crore), assuming a circulating supply of 6.3 billion tokens.