MANTRA Halts Blockchain After Exploit as Token Plunges to Record Low

The token of MANTRA, an Ethereum Virtual Machine layer-1 built for real-world assets such as funds and bonds, plunged 18.5% to a record low shortly before the network stopped producing blocks and was halted following a software exploit.

Chain frozen as the team investigates MANTRA fell from $0.005060 to an all-time low of $0.004126 around 11:10 p.m. UTC Thursday, according to CoinGecko.

It later recovered to about $0.0044 but remained down roughly 10% over 24 hours, while trading volume jumped nearly 600% to $24 million. The network produced its last recorded block at about 11:13 p.m. UTC, minutes after the token touched its low.

MANTRA announced the halt roughly half an hour later, saying all endpoints and transactions were frozen as a precaution while it investigated.