Introduction
The NFT market exploded in 2021 as total sales for the year surpassed $40bn. Despite the recent market downturn, total sales for NFTs have already reached $37bn in the first half of 2022. NFTs continue to gain adoption in the broader crypto ecosystem and have proven to be a lot more sticky than many onlookers originally thought. AssetMantle is looking to capitalize on this growing market by building an open-source, community-driven framework for interchain NFTs on the Cosmos network.
What is AssetMantle?
AssetMantle is a multi-tenant NFT marketplace framework that enables creatives, collectors, and NFT enthusiasts to securely mint, own, and trade digital assets on its fast-finality blockchain. AssetMantle is built on Cosmos and leverages its rich ecosystem to build an inter-operable NFT marketplace that can scale and span multiple different blockchains. It is focused on improving the accessibility to NFTs for ordinary users and creating ‘no-code’ toolsets for creatives to focus on what they do best: be creative.
AssetMantle x Cosmos
Cosmos is one of the largest ecosystems in all of crypto, with over 260 different teams building unique dApps, blockchains, wallets, and explorers using the Cosmos SDK. The vision of Cosmos is to make it easy for developers to build blockchains and allow them to communicate and transact with any other chain in the ecosystem. This is achieved through open-source tools like Tendermint, the Cosmos SDK, and the Inter-Blockchain Protocol (IBC) to build interoperable blockchain applications that are secure and scalable.
This is the vision that AssetMantle is building upon, aiming to be the de-facto platform for NFTs within the diverse Cosmos ecosystem. AssetMantle is building an open-source, community-driven framework for NFTs with a comprehensive stack of modular tools that developers can use and modify to fit advanced use cases.
MantleDROP
AssetMantle has allocated a portion of the total supply to airdrop their token ($MNTL) to early supporters, community members, creators, and developers instead of the traditional ICO or IDO process. This method of token distribution incentivizes further adoption, awareness, and participation from stakeholders in the network.
$MNTL will be airdropped in the following ways:
- StakeDrop
- Osmosis Liquidity Providers
- OpenSea Users
- $MNTL Reserved for Mantle genesis creators
StakeDrop
A StakeDrop is a way to distribute the supply of a token. It works by airdropping $MNTL tokens to people that are staking their coins on other Proof-of-Stake (POS) blockchains. The idea behind this is that people that are staking their coins are usually more active participants in an ecosystem, by airdropping the tokens to these people you are essentially bootstrapping the security of the network and adoption of the token. These people are likely to spend some time researching the new tokens they got, hopefully, stake them and interact with the broader AssetMantle ecosystem.
The AssetMantle team is focused on building a strong community that is familiar with other successful projects in the Cosmos ecosystem and decided to partner with the following networks. A total of 9 million $MNTL (3% of total supply) was stakedropped to stakers in the following networks:
- Cosmos
- 2 million $MNTL
- Persistence
- 1 million $MNTL
- Terra (2.0)
- 2 million $MNTL
- Comdex
- 1 million $MNTL
- Juno
- 2 million $MNTL
- Stargaze
- 1 million $MNTL
How can I take part in the StakeDrop?
The StakeDrop campaign started on 15/03/2022 and ended on 08/04/2022 and is therefore no longer available. If you were staking any of these tokens you should check your wallet for some $MNTL tokens. The tokens have a 6-month lockup period and a 6-month vesting period.
MantlePlace
MantlePlace is a marketplace for NFTs to be traded on the MantleChain. It is the activity hub on the network where people can buy/sell NFTs in a few simple steps by creating an account using an email and password – something that will be very familiar to Web 2.0 users.
MantlePlace has spent a lot of time building an intuitive UI to make it as easy as possible for new users to start trading NFTs. The main features of the marketplace are:
MantleBuilder
AssetMantle has the vision to democratize the creation and distribution of NFTs by building a framework that empowers creators and the communities that surround them. MantleBuilder is an application that allows creators to develop their own custom-branded NFT storefronts or marketplaces. The Mantle team has focused on building an easy-to-understand user interface (UI) that uses intuitive drag and drop tools to make the process for creators as easy as possible. Consider it as Shopify for NFTs where instead of listing products on a common marketplace (such as OpenSea), entrepreneurs and artists can create their own Shopify-style stores for their specific NFT assets. The key functions of Mantlebuilder are:
- Complete customizability – Creators can customize how the marketplace looks to align with the theme of their NFT collection and can add or remove multi-media plugins as they wish.
- No-code drag platform – The platform utilizes drag and drop tools that make it easy for people with limited technical know-how to build and design their marketplace.
- Plug and play experience – Creators can build their NFT storefront with a few clicks and import their own branding and design into the NFT storefront.
- Built-in templates – Templates make it even easier for creatives to set up their NFT storefront by dragging and dropping their content into the pre-set designs.
Inter-NFT Protocol and AssetMantle
What is it?
The Inter-NFT Protocol (INP) is a community-led initiative that is developing interchain standards to make NFTs interoperable across blockchain networks. The INP is designed to complement the Inter-blockchain Communication Protocol (IBC) developed by Cosmos, enabling cross-network discovery, authentication, control, and usage of NFTs and their Metadata resources.
Why do these standards need to be blockchain agnostic?
The future is multi-chain, assets will flow from one chain to another in a seamless way and so will NFTs. The INP is a collective effort to build common standards to make this a reality.
Participating teams
The Interchain Foundation is facilitating the talks between participating projects that are interested in contributing to the INP, some popular projects that are involved are:
- ICF/Cosmos
- Ixo World
- Persistence One
- Secret Network
- OMG Network
- Kusama/Polkadot
- Energy Web Foundation
- Centrifuge
- Akash Network
Why does it matter?
NFTs are playing a pivotal role in the adoption of Web3 technology and we’ve only scratched the surface when it comes to the use-cases that are made possible through this technology. Developing a standard framework to interact with NFTs makes it possible for NFTs to be interoperable across blockchains and can bring new possibilities to Web3.
How does AssetMantle compare to OpenSea?
OpenSea is the most popular marketplace for trading NFTs, it has maintained the majority market share amidst fierce competition from projects on other chains. High-quality creators (and scammers) have flocked to the Ethereum-based marketplace to grab a piece of the pie as the vast majority of NFT volume is still being traded on OpenSea.
It is important to note that most NFT traders and creators have stuck to Ethereum, even though the gas fees are significantly higher than other chains. This ‘sticky’ behavior has persisted since NFTs rose to the big stage and is likely to continue as NFTs sell for a substantially higher price on Ethereum than on other chains.
AssetMantle is one of many projects that is trying to draw market share from OpenSea and other NFT marketplaces on Ethereum. AssetMantle is focusing on creators and scaling MantleBuilder which will (hopefully) attract traders onto MantlePlace and the broader Cosmos ecosystem. The key difference between AssetMantle and OpenSea is that the former is building an inter-operable NFT marketplace that can scale and span multiple different blockchains. The INP can be a catalyst for NFTs in the Cosmos ecosystem and bring new use-cases by enabling cross-network discovery.
Founders
AssetMantle was founded by Deepanshu Tripathi and Abhinav Kumar who worked together at Persistence, a project focused on building an economy around liquid Proof-Of-Stake (POS) assets. Deepanshu co-founded Persistence and worked as the CTO before launching AssetMantle. Abhinav worked as a blockchain developer at Persistence and now mostly works on core product development and growth at AssetMantle.
Funding
AssetMantle is self-funded by the founders and has not yet received any external funding from investors.
Journey/Roadmap of AssetMantle
AssetMantle was conceptualized by Deepanshu Tripathi in 2018, while he was working with the team from Comdex – a decentralized enterprise commodity trading platform. He worked as the Chief Blockchain Architect at Comdex went on to later pursue the vision of AssetMantle and built the first minimum viable product in Q1 of 2021. In Q3 2021 the proof of concept was developed with the first testnet being launched in Q4 of 2021.
The team is currently working on ‘Phase 01 – Trench’ of their roadmap and is preparing to launch MantlePlace V2 which brings feature improvements and gives users a better overall UX. In addition, ‘Genesis Stores’ are being onboarded in preparation for the mainnet launch in the next phase of the roadmap.
$MNTL Tokenomics
Token Utility
$MNTL is used for governance and securing the network through staking. It is also used to pay for various transactions in MantlePlace:
- Minting
- Trading
- Royalties
- Fees
The token will initially be used to onboard genesis creators, reward liquidity providers, and incentivize adoption and usage through airdrops.
Token Distribution
There is a total genesis supply of 300 million tokens. 50% of the initial supply is allocated to the community to incentivize adoption and ecosystem growth while the other 50% is allocated to the foundation and team.
Release Schedule
78 million $MNTL (26%) of the total supply was released at launch. The majority of this (54%) went to MantleDrops while the remainder was split amongst the foundation (23%), community treasury (19%), and strategic partners (4%). The token supply starts to rise dramatically after the first 6 months and slows down again after 18 months.
There are a few notable unlocks coming up:
- Team
- 10%
- 12-month lockup
- 36-month linear vesting schedule
- Community Treasury
- 30%
- 10% has already been unlocked
- 6-month lock-up (5%) and (15%)
- 6-month (5%) and 18-month (15%) linear vesting schedule
In addition to this, $MNTL has a 75% inflation rate with a halving schedule every two years. Given an initial supply of 300 million and assuming a 67% bonding rate, the total supply of $MNTL will increase to 6 billion over a period of 20 years.
Staking
AssetMantle is built using a modified version of the base POS consensus mechanism offered by the Tendermint Core. $MNTL tokens can currently be staked on their staking portal for an APY of 144.97%. There are currently 45 active validators on the network and 53% of the total supply is being staked:
Validators
The AssetMantle team runs the top five validators which represent a voting power of 43.38%. This is part of the bootstrapping process to get the network off the ground but presents a centralization risk for the time being. These validators have a total delegation of 75 670 585 $MNTL, which represents 44% of the total staked tokens. This means that only ~30% of the total supply is currently staked by investors.
What can AssetMantle improve on?
AssetMantle has made some good progress since it launched and is starting to build a tight-knit community around them. However, there are a few things I believe AssetMantle will need to improve on the following to continue growing and gaining market share against the fierce competition:
User experience and design
The team has made it quite clear in their marketing that they are building something that is attractive and easy to use for creators. The current MantlePlace design and UX needs to be improved for creators that have no prior experience in NFTs, while also catering to native NFT creators. The UX can be a key differentiator from other projects because often times the UX leaves much to be desired and can slow down adoption.
Differentiation
AssetMantle has an opportunity to become a leader in the NFT space on Cosmos by building true NFT interoperability between chains. If they get this right, it could bring huge adoption to the project and become the hub for NFTs in the broader Cosmos ecosystem. This can become a key differentiator between them and similar projects. There is still a lot of work to do if the Inter-NFT standard is to work, but the opportunity is still there and the value capture will be very large.
Attracting talent
AssetMantle is betting on high-quality creators coming to their platform and launching their projects using MantleBuilder and being traded on MantlePlace. They are in competition with a plethora of other NFT marketplaces and there is a limited amount of quality creators. The team needs to focus on providing the best possible creator experience by delivering on everything they are promising in MantleBuilder, if they succeed in doing that then the degen NFT traders will come and with that will come adoption. As it stands, there is no live version of MantleBuilder that creators can experiment with, once their first version is released it will be a strong indicator of the future success of the project.
Conclusion
AssetMantle is positioning itself in a strategic position by pioneering in the inter-chain NFT space. The Cosmos ecosystem is well established with a number of popular chains that have attracted active users, however, NFTs on Cosmos is still relatively untapped. AssetMantle has an opportunity to become the premier marketplace for creators and NFT traders on Cosmos. If the inter-NFT Protocol can be developed and accepted by more chains in the ecosystem, it could become the framework for interoperable NFTs and put AssetMantle at the forefront of a new wave of adoption.