Mantle history: a DAO that built its own network
BitDAO and the Bybit pledge
In June 2021 BitDAO sold more than 230 million dollars of its BIT governance tokens to investors including Peter Thiel, Founders Fund, Pantera Capital and Dragonfly. The exchange Bybit pledged 2.5 basis points of its futures trading volume to the DAO treasury on top of the token sale.
One brand, one token
In May 2023 BIT holders approved proposal BIP-21, which folded BitDAO’s governance and treasury into Mantle, a network the DAO had been funding. The token took the name MNT, and a follow-up vote set the conversion at one BIT for one MNT.
July 2023: the network goes live
Mantle launched its mainnet on 17 July 2023 at EthCC in Paris, alongside a 200 million dollar ecosystem fund. It is a layer 2 on top of Ethereum: transactions run on Mantle and settle on Ethereum, and you pay fees in MNT.
The 2025 record
MNT spent its first months near the bottom; on 17 October 2023 it fell to 0.308 dollars, its all-time low on CoinGecko. In September 2025 Bybit added 21 MNT trading pairs and fee incentives, and the token climbed past its old highs. It peaked at 2.86 dollars on 8 October 2025, then gave most of the gain back.