During the weekend, Mantra unveiled a new RWA savings vault in conjunction with Ondo. The vault will be powered by Ondo’s USDY - a tokenized note secured by short-term US Treasuries and bank deposits. The official announcement highlighted,
“MANTRA will feature Ondo’s flagship interest-bearing tokenized note, USDY, as a genesis asset upon mainnet launch, expected later this year.”
The multi-chain vault - that's set to go live this month on Ethereum and Base - will open the doors for USDC contributors to gain access to treasuries yield. Users who remain invested until Mantra's mainnet launch will receive ONDO and OM rewards on top of the underlying yield.
Having a fungible interest-bearing base layer of liquidity via USDY would help bolster Mantra’s on-chain liquidity profile. The latest launch is part of the chain’s “broader strategy” to work in tandem with top RWA projects to create a liquid RWA-dedicated Layer 1 blockchain.
ONDO, the largest RWA asset by market cap was up 16% on the weekly window at press time, while Mantra’s OM was up 27% in the same timeframe. Interestingly, RWA emerged to be the best-performing sector in May, leaving behind meme, gaming, DA, AI, DeFi, and DePIN assets.
Commenting on the latest development, Nathan Allman, CEO of Ondo Finance, said,
“This yield-bearing vault is an exciting step in our journey to bridge traditional finance and decentralized finance at scale.”
The Mantra chain raised $11 million in April to build its ecosystem. Shorooq Partners led the round, while other entities like GameFi Ventures, Forte Securities, Virtuzone, Three Point Capital, and Hex Trust participated alongside. Mantra is also on the verge of obtaining its license from Dubai’s VARA, clearing the path for it to build and host other projects on its chain.
From the progress point of view, Mantra’s initial testnet phase was launched in November last year. The network is currently in its security testing phase and will soon undergo audits and other functionality tests. As of now, the mainnet launch is scheduled for the second half of this year, and will be followed by the launch of Mantra’s native DEX.
