Following the recent flash crash of its OM token, which saw a 92% drop on April 13, troubled DeFi (Decentralized Finance) platform, Mantra, has issued an official statement. However, the statement, published on April 16 and titled “Statement of Events: 13 April 2025,” seemed to have left several questions unanswered despite addressing the reasons for the crash.
Mantra clarified that the project had not sold any tokens and that the team remains fully operational, continuing to probe the incident. Despite earlier comments from Mantra CEO John Mullin about a forthcoming post-mortem analysis, the new statement provides scant new information regarding the rapid transfer of OM tokens to exchanges and the ensuing liquidation cascade.
The statement also highlighted the existence of two variants of OM tokens; one is Ethereum-based (ERC-20) and the other operates on Mantra’s mainnet. As per the statement, “The incident almost exclusively involved ERC-20 OM, as ERC-20 OM makes up nearly the entire liquid market.”
The original ERC-20 OM token, launched in August 2020, has a capped supply of 888.8 million OM. As of April 15, 99.9% of these tokens were publicly circulating. On the other hand, Mantra mainnet OM tokens had a circulation of only 77.5 million, following the minting of an equivalent amount of OM by Mantra Chain in October 2024.
Mantra’s statement also noted a discrepancy in OM spot prices on OKX and Binance starting around 6:00 pm UTC, approximately an hour before the OM token crash. Mantra anticipates that more information from its exchange partners will “shed more light on these events,” and added, “We call on our centralized exchanges partners to help provide more transparency on trading activities during this period.”
The DeFi platform confirmed it is devising a support plan for OM, which includes a token buyback and supply burn. However, no specific timeline for the plan’s implementation was given. Following the crash, Star Xu, OKX CEO, labeled Mantra a “big scandal.” Meanwhile, Mantra CEO Mullin identified Binance as the largest holder of the OM token, referencing Etherscan records.
When Cointelegraph reached out to Mantra’s team for additional commentary on the April 16 statement, no response was received by the time of publication.
