Mantle Launches Rewards Portal With Ethena Shards Up For Grabs

Mantle, the Ethereum Layer 2 network that boasts crypto’s largest liquid treasury and nearly $900 million in total value locked (TVL), has unveiled a rewards portal that enables MNT holders to earn Ethena points, called Shards.

By locking MNT through the new Rewards Station, users can earn a share of 2.5 billion Ethena Shards from the Mantle treasury that will be distributed over the next month.

Ethena is the issuer of USDe, a synthetic dollar token backed by Ethereum liquid staking tokens hedged with short futures positions on centralized exchanges. Since launching last month, the project has amassed over $1.3 billion in TVL, although concerns have been raised regarding the sustainability of its current 30% yield.

Upbit Listing

Separately, the network’s native MNT token briefly surged more than 50% earlier today after Korean crypto exchange Upbit listed the token. MNT now ranks 33rd on Coingecko with a market capitalization of $4.2 billion.

Ethena’s Points System

In Ethena’s points system, users can earn so-called Shards by providing liquidity for the protocol’s synthetic dollar, USDe, on various DeFi protocols like Curve, Pendle and Gearbox. These Shards will convert into allocations of Ethena’s ENA token at a future date and are in high demand from DeFi investors, as can be seen by the robust activity on points marketplace Whales Market.

Ethena raised $14 million last month from prominent investors, including Dragonfly Capital and BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes.