MANTRA announces layoffs after the collapse of its $6 billion token and market pressure

Source: Yellow Original Title: MANTRA announces layoffs after the collapse of its $6 billion token and market pressure

Original Link: MANTRA, John Patrick Mullin, the CEO, announced on Wednesday a company-wide restructuring and staff reduction, citing an unsustainable cost structure following the project’s token collapse in April 2025 and prolonged market challenges.

The real-world asset tokenization platform will reduce staff in business development, marketing, HR, and support functions as part of what Mullin described as a shift toward capital efficiency and more focused execution.

The OM token is currently trading 99% below its all-time high, while the total value locked in the platform has fallen to $864,857 from a peak of $4.51 million in February 2025.

What happened in April 2025

MANTRA’s OM token plummeted approximately 90% on April 13, 2025, dropping from over $6 to less than $0.50 within hours, wiping out more than $6 billion in market capitalization.

The company attributed the collapse to reckless forced liquidations by centralized exchanges during low-liquidity trading hours, although the event sparked widespread speculation about internal sales and token concentration issues.

Mullin referred to these events on Wednesday as “incredibly unfortunate and frankly unfair,” acknowledging that, combined with increased competition and changing market dynamics, they made the company’s cost structure unsustainable.

Recovery efforts and current situation

Subsequently, MANTRA burned 300 million OM tokens, including 150 million from Mullin’s personal allocation, in an attempt to restore community trust and reduce circulating supply.

Last week, the platform launched mantraUSD, a stablecoin backed by short-term U.S. Treasury bills, designed as the required currency to access real-world asset products within the MANTRA ecosystem.

The company also reminded users that the ERC-20 version of OM must be migrated to the native MANTRA Chain token before January 15, 2026.

Mullin stated that the restructuring aims to align operations with short-term realities while maintaining the platform’s focus as a regulation-compliant Layer 1 blockchain for real-world asset tokenization.