What happened to the OM token on April 13, 2025?

On April 13, 2025, OM collapsed roughly 90% in a matter of hours, falling from around $6 to under $0.50 and erasing several billion dollars of market capitalisation. It was one of the largest single-day token collapses of the cycle. The MANTRA team attributed the crash to reckless forced liquidations triggered by centralised exchanges during low-liquidity hours. Critics and on-chain analysts pointed instead to the token's concentrated supply and low circulating float, arguing that a structure where a large share of tokens sits with insiders and a thin float trades on the market is inherently fragile to exactly this kind of cascade. Both explanations have been argued publicly; the structural fragility is the part an allocator should focus on regardless of the immediate trigger.

Why did OM collapse so fast?

The mechanical answer, regardless of which narrative you accept, is concentrated supply meeting a thin float. When a large majority of a token's supply is held by insiders, the team, and early backers, the amount actually trading on the open market (the float) is small relative to the headline market cap. A small float means the price is set by a thin order book, and the headline market cap (price multiplied by total supply) is a number that could never actually be realised because there is nowhere near enough liquidity to sell meaningful size at that price. When forced selling or liquidation hits a thin float, the price gaps down violently because there are no bids deep enough to absorb it. This is the recurring structural failure mode across many large-market-cap, low-float tokens, and it is not unique to MANTRA, but MANTRA in April 2025 was the cycle's clearest illustration of it.

MANTRA's investor base included Laser Digital (the digital-asset arm of Nomura, the Japanese investment bank), Shorooq Partners, and other funds, with a reported strategic raise in 2024. As with the Plume case, a credible institutional cap table did not prevent the token outcome. This is the recurring lesson across dedicated RWA chains: institutional backing signals that serious money believes in the category, but it has not predicted which chains avoid catastrophic token outcomes. Laser Digital backing MANTRA, Brevan Howard backing Plume, and various institutions backing Polymesh all coexisted with severe token underperformance or collapse. Backing is necessary context, not a safety guarantee.

Is MANTRA still operating in 2026?

Yes. MANTRA continued operating after the April 2025 collapse. The team announced token-burn commitments (including burning team tokens), buyback plans, and continued building on the RWA chain thesis. A year later the project still exists, still holds its VARA licence, and still pursues tokenization partnerships, but the OM token trades at a small fraction of its pre-collapse high, and the trust damage from a 90% single-day collapse is the kind that takes years to repair if it repairs at all. An allocator evaluating MANTRA in 2026 is evaluating a project that survived its own near-death event, which is a different proposition from evaluating a project that never had one. Verify all current metrics on CoinGecko, DefiLlama, and rwa.xyz before any decision.

This is not investment advice. The honest framing: OM is a token that collapsed roughly 90% in a day, on a chain whose RWA-tokenization thesis has not yet produced the on-chain activity to justify the pre-collapse valuation, with a supply structure that was concentrated enough to enable the collapse in the first place. The bull case is that MANTRA survived, holds real regulatory licensing (VARA), has real Middle East relationships, and could rebuild. The bear case is that dedicated RWA chain tokens have a poor track record generally (CFG, POLYX, HASH, OM, PLUME all underperformed or collapsed), that trust does not return easily after a 90% event, and that the same structural fragility can recur. Evaluate the token on the standard low-float RWA-chain framework, and never confuse the chain surviving with the token recovering. They are separate questions.

What is the lesson from MANTRA for RWA investors?

Two lessons. First, check the float, not just the market cap. A large headline market cap built on a thin circulating float is a fragile structure regardless of the project's quality, because the headline number cannot be realised and the thin float is vulnerable to violent repricing. This applies to any token, RWA or otherwise. Second, separate the chain from the token, the asset from the wrapper, every time. MANTRA the chain can hold a real VARA licence and real partnerships while OM the token collapses 90%, exactly as Centrifuge the protocol can process real credit while CFG captures nothing. The recurring RWA Roast conclusion holds: judge the asset and the structure, never the logos or the narrative, and never let the existence of real infrastructure validate a token that has its own separate and often worse reality.

MANTRA (OM) one year after the $5 billion collapse: what the RWA chain looks like now

Q: What is MANTRA?

MANTRA is a real-world-asset-focused Layer 1 blockchain, positioned for regulated tokenization with a particular focus on the Middle East market. Its native token is OM. The project holds a VARA (Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority) licence and announced a high-profile tokenization partnership with DAMAC Group, a major Dubai real-estate developer. CEO is John Patrick Mullin. MANTRA is one of several dedicated RWA chains (alongside Plume, Polymesh, Centrifuge, Provenance) competing on the thesis that real-world asset tokenization needs purpose-built chain infrastructure rather than general-purpose Ethereum.

Q: What was the DAMAC deal?

In early 2025, MANTRA announced a partnership reported at around $1 billion to tokenize real-world assets from DAMAC Group, a major Dubai-based real-estate and luxury-development conglomerate. The deal was a centerpiece of MANTRA's RWA narrative and its Middle East positioning. As with many large announced tokenization partnerships, an allocator should distinguish between the headline value of an announced deal and the value of assets actually tokenized, traded, and generating activity on chain. Announced partnership value and realised on-chain activity are different numbers, and the gap between them is one of the recurring themes across the RWA Roast series.

On April 13, 2025, the OM token lost roughly 90% of its value in a matter of hours. It fell from around 6 dollars to under 50 cents and erased several billion dollars of market capitalisation in an afternoon. It was one of the largest single-day token collapses of the cycle, and it happened to a project that had been telling one of the most credible-sounding RWA stories in the market: a regulated Layer 1 for real-world asset tokenization, a VARA licence in Dubai, a reported billion-dollar deal with DAMAC, and Nomura's digital arm on the cap table.

Everything in that sentence except the collapse was a reason to take MANTRA seriously. That is exactly why it belongs in this series. MANTRA is not a story about an obvious scam that fooled nobody. It is a story about how a project with real licensing, real partnerships, and real institutional backing can still hand its token holders a 90% loss in an afternoon, and what structural fact made that possible.

What MANTRA Actually Is

MANTRA is a real-world-asset-focused Layer 1 blockchain. The pitch is the same dedicated-RWA-chain thesis covered in the Plume Roast: real-world asset tokenization needs purpose-built, compliance-aware chain infrastructure rather than general-purpose Ethereum, and MANTRA aims to be that chain for regulated markets, with a particular focus on the Middle East. The native token is OM. CEO is John Patrick Mullin.

MANTRA's differentiators were regulatory and regional. It secured a licence from VARA, Dubai's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority, which is a genuine regulatory credential in a jurisdiction actively courting tokenization. And it positioned itself as the RWA chain for the Gulf, anchored by a reported billion-dollar tokenization partnership with DAMAC Group, one of Dubai's best-known real-estate developers. On paper, this was a chain with regulatory standing and a marquee real-asset pipeline in a region that wanted exactly what it was selling.

That is the setup. The regulatory licence is real. The DAMAC announcement was real. The collapse was also real, and it is the part that teaches.

What Happened in April 2025

The mechanics of the day are still argued, but the outcome is not. Over a few hours on April 13, 2025, OM cratered roughly 90%. Holders who went to sleep with a position worth six figures could wake up to five. The headline market cap, which had been quoted in the billions, was gone.

The MANTRA team's explanation was that the crash was triggered by reckless forced liquidations initiated by centralised exchanges during low-liquidity hours, closing out positions in a way that cascaded the price down faster than the market could absorb. In this telling, MANTRA was the victim of exchange behaviour, not of its own structure.

The counter-explanation, argued by on-chain analysts and a good part of the market, was that the collapse was a symptom of MANTRA's own tokenomics: a concentrated supply with a thin circulating float, the structure that makes a token look enormous by market cap while actually being thinly traded and therefore fragile. In this telling, the exchange liquidations were the trigger, but the gun was loaded by the supply structure long before.

You do not have to resolve which narrative is more correct to take the useful lesson, because both lead to the same place: the token was fragile to exactly this kind of event, and an allocator who had checked the float rather than the headline market cap would have seen the fragility regardless of what eventually pulled the trigger.

The Structural Fact: Market Cap Is Not the Float

This is the part worth internalising, because it applies to every token you will ever be pitched, RWA or otherwise.

A token's headline market cap is its price multiplied by its total supply. But if a large majority of that supply is held by insiders, the team, and early backers, then the amount actually trading on the open market, the float, is small relative to the headline. A token can show a 6 billion dollar market cap while only a few hundred million dollars of it actually float.

Two things follow, and both are dangerous. First, the headline market cap is a number that can never be realised, because there is nowhere near enough liquidity to sell meaningful size anywhere close to the quoted price. Second, a thin float means the price is set by a shallow order book, so when forced selling hits, the price gaps down violently because there are no bids deep enough to catch it. The market cap was always a fiction of the price times a supply that mostly could not trade; the collapse just revealed it.

The low-float failure mode

Large total supply + small circulating float = a headline market cap that cannot be realised and a price that gaps violently when forced selling meets a shallow book. MANTRA in April 2025 was the cycle's clearest illustration. It was not the first and it will not be the last.

This is not unique to MANTRA. It is the recurring structural failure mode of large-market-cap, low-float tokens across every cycle. MANTRA in April 2025 was simply the clearest and most expensive illustration of it in the RWA category, which is exactly why an allocator should take the lesson and apply it to the next RWA chain token that shows a huge market cap and a suspiciously quiet order book.

The Backing Did Not Help

MANTRA's cap table included Laser Digital, the digital-asset arm of Nomura, the Japanese investment bank, along with Shorooq Partners and other funds. This was not a tourist cap table. It was institutional money in a project with a real regulatory licence.

It did not prevent the outcome. And this is the same lesson that runs through the Plume Roast, where Brevan Howard and Apollo backing coexisted with a 95% token drawdown, and through the broader pattern across dedicated RWA chains. Institutional backing tells you that serious money believes in the category. It does not tell you that the token is safe, that the supply structure is sound, or that the chain will capture the value it tokenizes. Backing is context. It has never been a guarantee, and MANTRA is one of the more expensive proofs of that.

What Plume, Centrifuge, and MANTRA Have in Common

Three dedicated RWA chains, three different stories, one shared structural truth.

Chain	The real thing	The token reality
Centrifuge (CFG)	$1.5B+ tokenized credit, Janus Henderson partnership	CFG holders historically received $0 of protocol revenue
Plume (PLUME)	SEC transfer-agent first, Brevan Howard + Apollo backing	~95% below ATH, $61/day chain fees, 40% supply unlock
MANTRA (OM)	VARA licence, DAMAC deal, Laser Digital backing	~90% collapse in a day, concentrated supply, thin float

In every case the chain had something genuinely real, and in every case the token had its own separate, worse reality. This is the single most important pattern in the RWA category, and it is why the conclusion of nearly every roast in this series is the same: judge the asset and the structure, never the logos and the narrative, and never let the existence of real infrastructure launder a token that has its own independent and often grim numbers. The detailed versions are in the Centrifuge Roast and the Plume Roast.

What MANTRA Gets Right

Three things deserve credit, because a fair roast does not pretend the project is nothing.

The VARA licence is real and not trivial. Regulatory standing in Dubai is a genuine credential, and most projects making RWA-chain claims do not have it.

The project survived. After a 90% single-day collapse, many projects simply disappear. MANTRA continued operating, announced token-burn commitments including team tokens, pursued buyback plans, and kept building. Survival after that kind of event is not nothing.

The Middle East thesis is coherent. The Gulf is genuinely investing in tokenization infrastructure and regulatory frameworks, and a regulated RWA chain positioned for that region is a defensible idea. The idea was never the problem. The token structure was.

The Scorecard

Category	Score	Notes
Team	4/10	Survived the collapse and kept building; serious operators. But a 90% event on your watch is a permanent line on the record.
Funding / cap table	6/10	Laser Digital (Nomura), Shorooq, others. Credible institutional backing that did not prevent the outcome.
Regulatory positioning	7/10	VARA (Dubai) licence is a genuine credential in a tokenization-friendly jurisdiction.
Tokenomics	2/10	Concentrated supply, thin float, the structure that enabled a 90% single-day collapse. The core failure.
Partnerships	5/10	DAMAC ~$1B announced deal is real as an announcement. Announced value vs realised on-chain activity is the open question.
Trust / track record	2/10	A 90% collapse is the kind of trust damage that takes years to repair, if it repairs.
Survival	6/10	Still operating a year later, still licensed, still building. Genuinely survived its near-death event.
Transparency	4/10	Public team and licensing; the collapse explanation remains contested. Verify all metrics on CoinGecko, DefiLlama, rwa.xyz.
Overall	4.0/10	Real licence, real survival, real region. A token whose structure failed its holders catastrophically and whose trust may never fully return.

The Four Questions

Does the yield survive real math? Not applicable to a chain token directly. OM is a chain and governance token, not a yield product. Any yield on assets issued on MANTRA belongs to those assets, not to OM. And OM staking rewards, like most chain tokens, should be checked for whether they are earned fees or emissions before being counted as return.

What do you actually own? A chain token with gas, staking, and governance utility, and a roughly 90% drawdown from its high in its history. Not a claim on the DAMAC deal, not ownership of any tokenized real estate, not a share of MANTRA the company. A governance token on an RWA chain, with everything that implies.

Can you actually exit? Yes, on exchanges, which is exactly the problem the collapse exposed: the exit is only as deep as the float, and the float was thin enough that a wave of selling moved the price 90%. An allocator should assume that the liquidity to exit at the quoted price does not exist for any meaningful size in a low-float token.

Skin in the game? The concentrated supply that enabled the collapse means insiders held a great deal of the token. Post-collapse burn commitments, including team tokens, were announced. Verify the current supply distribution and remaining vesting before reading the cap table as alignment rather than as overhang.

The Bottom Line

MANTRA is the most expensive lesson in the RWA category about the difference between a market cap and a float. A project with a real Dubai licence, a real marquee partnership, and real Nomura-affiliated backing still handed its holders a 90% loss in an afternoon, because the token's supply was concentrated and its float was thin, and a thin float cannot absorb forced selling without gapping down.

A year later, the chain survived, the licence stands, and the team is still building. That is genuinely more than many post-collapse projects can say. But the token trades at a fraction of its high, the trust damage from a 90% day is the kind that rarely fully heals, and nothing about the structural lesson has changed: a huge market cap on a thin float is fragile no matter how good the logos look.

If you are looking at OM, or at any RWA chain token, do the one thing that would have flagged MANTRA before April 2025: check the circulating float against the total supply, and ask whether the headline market cap could ever actually be sold. If the answer is no, you are looking at a number that exists only until the first wave of real selling, exactly as MANTRA's did.

Real licence, real survival, real region. A token structure that failed its holders, and a lesson that applies to every token after it.

I hold no OM or MANTRA-related tokens. This is not investment advice. Do your own research, and verify every current metric on neutral sources before any decision.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is MANTRA?
A real-world-asset-focused Layer 1 blockchain positioned for regulated tokenization with a Middle East focus. Native token OM. VARA (Dubai) licensed. CEO John Patrick Mullin.

What happened on April 13, 2025?
OM collapsed roughly 90% in hours, from around $6 to under $0.50, erasing several billion in market cap. The team blamed exchange forced liquidations; critics blamed concentrated supply and thin float.

Why did it collapse so fast?
Concentrated supply meeting a thin float. A large headline market cap built on a small circulating float gaps down violently when forced selling hits a shallow order book. See the structural section above.

What was the DAMAC deal?
A reported ~$1B tokenization partnership with DAMAC Group, a major Dubai real-estate developer. Announced value and realised on-chain activity are different numbers; treat the gap with caution.

Who backed MANTRA?
Laser Digital (Nomura's digital arm), Shorooq Partners, and others. Credible institutional backing that did not prevent the token outcome, the same lesson as Plume.

Is MANTRA still operating?
Yes, a year later it still exists, still holds the VARA licence, and still builds, with announced burn and buyback plans. The token still trades far below its high. Verify current metrics on CoinGecko, DefiLlama, rwa.xyz.

Should I buy OM?
Not investment advice. A token that collapsed 90%, on a chain whose RWA thesis has not yet produced activity to justify the old valuation, with a supply structure that enabled the collapse. Evaluate on the low-float RWA-chain framework and never confuse chain survival with token recovery.

What is the lesson?
Check the float, not just the market cap. And separate the chain from the token every time: MANTRA the chain can survive while OM the token collapses, just as Centrifuge the protocol earns while CFG captures nothing.

Daniil Kozin structures tokenized real-asset deals in Europe and writes the RWA Roast series to cut through the conference slides. Previous roasts: Plume, Justoken, Reental, GromaCoin, Centrifuge, Chainlink, Figure, Stellar, Kelp DAO, Syrup, Ondo, Canton. Full archive at daniilkozin.com/blog.

Disclaimer: I do not hold OM tokens or any MANTRA-related tokens. This is not investment advice. The April 2025 collapse mechanics remain publicly contested between the team and market analysts; this piece presents both and focuses on the structural lesson. Verify all current metrics on neutral sources before any decision. Do your own research.

Sources:

Data and event details as of June 2026. The April 2025 collapse mechanics remain contested; verify current metrics on neutral sources before any commercial decision.

MANTRA (OM) one year after the $5 billion collapse: what the RWA chain looks like now.