Mantra Cuts Staff Less Than a Year After OM Crashed 90%

Mantra, a Layer 1 blockchain for real-world assets (RWAs) that had a market cap as high as $8 billion last spring, announced a staff reduction just nine months after its native token OM lost more than 90% of its value in a sudden crash.

In an X announcement today, Mantra founder and CEO John Patrick Mullin called the decision “one of the most difficult” the project has faced, citing a challenging year and a need to restructure. “This includes reducing our team size and parting ways with a number of talented colleagues,” Mullin said.

As Mullin explained, the company has already cut non-essential spending and optimized processes, but these steps “aren’t enough to align our runway and operations with the focused path ahead.”

Mullin didn’t disclose the total number of employees impacted, but said the cuts span business development, marketing, HR, and support teams.

OM Token Crash

Mantra’s troubles trace back to April 2025, when the project’s native token OM plunged from $5.50 to $0.35 in just 20 minutes following what Mullin described at the time as “reckless forced closures initiated by centralized exchanges.”

The crash erased billions in market value and shook confidence in the project’s ability to stabilize its RWA ecosystem. “The timing and depth of the crash suggest that a very sudden closure of account positions was initiated without sufficient warning or notice,” Mullin wrote in an X post at the time.

Following the crash, the total value locked (TVL) in Mantra — most of which was in stablecoins — also fell sharply, dropping from $4.26 million to less than $590,000 in just two weeks, according to DefiLlama. As of press time, Mantra’s TVL remains below $865,000, while OM is trading up 3.6% at around $0.08, still down about 98% on the year.

In today’s post, Mullin claims the restructuring is aimed at helping the project transition toward sustainability, pledging to emerge “stronger, more resilient, and better positioned for success.”