Today we will talk about a project from Binance Launchpool 44 - Manta (MANTA), a modular second-layer solution (L2) for zero-knowledge proof (ZK) applications. There are only 2 days of mining time left. The details of this mining project are as follows:

Maximum Token Supply: 1,000,000,000 MANTA

Initial circulation: 251,000,000 MANTA (25.1% of the maximum token supply)

Total mining amount: 30,000,000 MANTA (3% of the maximum token supply)

Introduction

Manta Network is a multi-module ecosystem for zero-knowledge (ZK) applications.

Manta provides two networks:

1. Manta Pacific is a unique L2 ecosystem on Ethereum for EVM-native ZK applications, providing a scalable and low-cost gas fee environment through Solidity, enabling easy deployment of ZK applications.

2. Manta Atlantic is the fastest ZK L1 chain on Polkadot, introducing programmable identity and credentials to web3 through zkSBTs.

Together, Manta Pacific and Manta Atlantic provide an unparalleled experience for next generation web3 application development and adoption through the applied use of zero-knowledge cryptography.

Manta Network was created by an experienced team of founders from renowned institutions such as Harvard, MIT, and Algorand. Manta Network has received investment from many top web3 investment funds, including Binance Labs and Polychain Capital, DCG, and (the late) Alameda. It has achieved growth through participation in the best web3 accelerators, including Alliance DAO and Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator. Manta Network is ready to bring a new chapter of web3 zkApp applications to the next generation of web3 users.

Earlier in July, p0x labs, the development team behind Manta Network, raised $25 million in a Series A funding round led by Polychain Capital.

Main components:

1. Modular data availability: Call data for each transaction is processed by Celestia, significantly reducing the cost of processing each transaction on Manta Pacific.

2. Permissionless smart contracts: Projects on Manta Pacific can be deployed using Solidity-based smart contracts that are compatible with the EVM environment.

3. Universal Circuits: Developers can build ZK-enabled applications using Manta Pacific’s Universal Circuits, which provides a universal library of pre-compiled ZK circuits for different use cases, including DeFi, GameFi, identity recognition, and more.

4.zkEVM proof: Use ZK proof to perform batch verification of transactions to ensure encryption-level security.

Manta Pacific Advantages

There is currently no platform that specifically provides support for ZK applications native to the EVM.

Manta Pacific was launched with a shared vision with Celestia and zkEVM. By leveraging the data availability layer provided by Celestia, the first modular consensus and data network, and with advanced technology developed by p0x Labs, Manta Pacific has built an accessible ZK development environment in a modular and scalable manner with multiple breakthrough advantages:

1. Modularity reduces gas fees and improves scalability: Manta Pacific’s modular stack provides unparalleled scalability for future zkApps built on its ecosystem.

2. Use Celestia’s data availability layer: Celestia serves as the data availability (DA) layer, using state-of-the-art data availability sampling—2D Reed-Solomon erasure coding and namespace Merkle trees (NMTs)—in a way that minimizes trust This method solves the L2 data availability problem. Manta Pacific using Celestia as the DA layer can significantly reduce the data portion of transaction costs for end users on the network.

3. Leveraging Celestia’s modular data availability: Manta Pacific provides a high-speed infrastructure at a very low cost by leveraging Celestia’s modular data availability. Combined with Manta’s universal circuit, it provides an ideal environment for building and launching dApps.

4. Developer-friendly, unlimited applications: Manta Pacific has launched Universal Circuits 2.0, which specifically improves the developer experience of deploying EVM-native ZK applications. Through Universal Circuits 2.0, Manta Pacific provides developers with a ZK library to easily call ZK-enabled contracts in their existing Solidity smart contracts and dApps.

5. New ZK use cases and real users: Manta Pacific provides Universal Circuits, a ZK library that enables developers to easily call ZK-enabled contracts in their existing Solidity smart contracts and dApps. The core circuit design of Universal Circuits includes zkContracts such as zkShuffle for on-chain games.

6. Non-Intrusive Compliance: Manta Network’s zkSBTs allow users to verify in a decentralized, trustless manner without exposing any detailed information. zkSBTs like zkBAB and zkGalxe Passport provide seamless on-chain KYC verification without the need to scan passports or enter sensitive personal information.

Overall, Manta Pacific works by integrating Celestia's data availability layer, adopting a modular consensus mechanism, leveraging zkEVM to achieve scalability, ensuring cost-effectiveness, and providing an accessible ZK development environment. Together, these features provide a powerful and user-friendly ecosystem for deploying and developing zero-knowledge applications on the Ethereum network.

route map

Phase 1: Manta Pacific Alpha (Ethereum L2)

At the current stage, Manta Pacific is an Optimistic Rollup based on Ethereum using Ethereum data availability. It leverages Manta Network's Universal Circuits, enabling developers to quickly build, test, and deploy ZK-enabled applications only through Solidity and the Universal Circuits SDK. Its goal is to build a dApp ecosystem based on Manta zkSBT and Universal Circuits (such as zkShuffle).

On Manta Pacific, developers benefit from the low gas fees and scalability of Manta’s Universal Circuits and OP Stack to build unique ZK-enabled dApps that are unprecedented in existing Layer 2. In particular, Manta Pacific provides Universal Circuits for popular use cases (e.g., card shuffling/dealing and private on-chain voting), Solidity smart contracts for on-chain ZK logic, and a Typescript SDK for front-end integration.

Based on Manta's Universal Circuits, developers without a ZK background can easily develop dApps with built-in ZK functions without spending years of engineering efforts to customize ZK circuits. Unlike Starkware and Aztec, which redesigned domain-specific languages ​​(DSLs) for ZK (such as Cario and Noir), Manta Pacific achieves EVM equivalence by adopting the code base of OP Stack Bedrock. As a result, all existing Ethereum smart contracts can be seamlessly migrated to Manta Pacific while enabling ZK-based functions to reveal new application scenarios such as verifiable private DID/KYC, fully on-chain games based on ZK, and synergies between DeFi and decentralized private identities, including whitelists and offline channels based on zkSBT.

阶段2:Blanket Pacific Alpha II(+Celestia DA)

At this stage, Manta Pacific will achieve data expansion by integrating Celestia’s modular DA, thereby significantly reducing gas fees for users interacting with dApps in the Manta Pacific ecosystem.

Manta Pacific currently uses calldata in settlement, and its cost scales linearly with Ethereum’s gas price and fluctuates based on Ethereum usage. In contrast, Celestia’s cost scales sublinearly with Ethereum’s gas price and will be much cheaper than existing costs on Ethereum. While there are plans to reduce gas fees through EIP-4844, it will still be more expensive than Celestia’s cost, and in the future, block space will still be an emerging issue.

Phase 3: Manta Pacific Beta (+ Transition to zkEVM)

During this phase, the goal is to fully transition to zkEVM by leveraging Polygon CDK. At the same time, Manta Pacific may explore a transition period to safely transition to full zkEVM using a multi-prover framework. Multi-prover will integrate Polygon's ZK prover as well as the existing OP Stack Rollup, allowing Manta Pacific to enjoy the advantages of both the Polygon ZK prover cluster and Manta's existing cluster, bringing benefits in multiple dimensions. The multi-prover architecture during the transition period will enhance the robustness of the network; combined with Celestia DA, Manta Pacific's multi-prover system will still provide users with a low-cost L2 system.

Manta Pacific intends to fully transition to zkEVM and utilize Polygon’s ZK prover. The final stage of the network architecture will be Manta’s Universal Circuits for built-in ZK functionality to enable a variety of ZK applications, while combining Celestia DA and zkEVM with Polygon CDK for scalability.

Phase 4: Manta Pacific Mainnet Production I (+ Universal Circuits 2.0)

For Manta Pacific Mainnet, Manta Pacific will further upgrade Universal Circuits to reduce gas costs, support more use cases, and provide a better user experience. First, Manta Pacific will integrate ZK proof aggregation to significantly reduce the gas cost of on-chain proof verification and increase the throughput of ZK processing.

Secondly, Manta Pacific will integrate more ZK solutions and corresponding smart contracts to support more ZK-enabled practical functions. Thirdly, Manta Pacific will provide a better user experience through cooperation with account abstraction projects. Finally, Manta Pacific will achieve modularity, decentralization, high scalability, low gas costs, and full EVM equivalence, while leveraging novel ZK technology to open up new application scenarios.

Ecological Construction

There are currently hundreds of ecological APP projects, including DEFI, infrastructure, social, identity, chain games, wallets, tools, etc.

Token Economy

As I said before, the total amount is 1 billion. In terms of token distribution, the ecosystem owns 21.9%, the foundation treasury 13.5%, the team 10%, public sales 8%, strategic investment 6.17%, institutional investors 5%, airdrops 5.60%, consultants 8.1%, Binance launchpool 3%, New Paradigm (airdrop 2) 6.5%, initial circulation 25%, and the remaining tokens will be released in 3 years.

The project has raised $60.4 million through private and public token sales. In the private token sale, 24.11% of MANTA tokens were sold at a price of $0.025 to $0.5 per MANTA, while in the public sale, 8% of MANTA tokens were sold at a price of $0.36 per MANTA.

Currently, the TVL on the chain is also increasing rapidly, currently around 500 million US dollars.

Finally, let's summarize this project. This wave of bull market will definitely be a bull market for L2. It can be seen from the TVL on major L2 chains that it has the fastest growth rate and the largest volume. The reason is simple. Where the money is (where the investment institutions invest their money), then there will be an explosion (there will be more opportunities). In the OP series of L2, the current leaders are already occupied by OP and ARB. The subsequent struggle will definitely focus on the ZK series of L2. In addition, TIA is a modular new narrative + L2, so this story is better, and the investment institutions behind it are also very powerful, so there is no problem with the fundamentals of the project. Then we predict the price, because we have seen that the private sale amount has reached 0.5 US dollars/manta before, and whether it is L1 or L2 that has been launched recently, the initial valuation is about 10 billion US dollars, so the corresponding currency price is about 10 US dollars.