Mantra Labs CEO John Mullin Aims to Earn Community Confidence by Permanently Removing the Team's Tokens from Circulation

To restore faith after OM's downfall, CEO John Mullin says he will eliminate the 300 million OM tokens reserved for the team.

Mantra's CEO is aiming to earn back community confidence following the unexpected drop in the Mantra (OM) token on April 13.

Plans to burn all tokens held by his team were announced by CEO John Mullin to win back the community's support after the downfall of OM, which saw its price fall sharply from $6.30 to $0.52.

"I'm planning to burn all of my team tokens and when we turn it around the community and investors can decide if I have earned it back," Mullin said via X on Friday.

The team and core contributors at Mantra received 300 million OM tokens, which amounts to 16.88% of the total supply of approximately 1.78 billion.

According to the April 8 blog post, the tokens remain inaccessible and were meant to unlock in multiple phases from April 2027 to October 2029.

CoinGecko data shows that OM's sharp fall on April 13 slashed its market value by over $5.5 billion, dropping the team's token worth from $1.89 billion to about $236 million, with OM now trading around $0.78.

Community members responded to Mullin's vow with mixed reactions, with some welcoming it and others expressing concern that it might signal reduced long-term investment in the real-world asset tokenization platform.

"This would be a mistake. We want teams that are highly motivated. Burning the incentive may seem like a good gesture but it will hurt the team motivation long term," said Crypto Banter founder Ran Neuner.

The community could decide how to burn the 300 million tokens through a decentralized vote, according to Mullin.

To ensure openness with the community, Mullin promised to publish a detailed post-mortem on the situation.

"I will be posting a more detailed analysis of the situation and own up to any mistakes we made. We are working on a plan to turn things around and we will share that with the community as well. For now, we are focused on stabilizing the token price and providing liquidity to the market. We will continue to provide updates as they become available," he said.

Mullin outlined his plan on Thursday to use the $109 million in the Mantra Ecosystem Fund for token buybacks and burns, aiming to stabilize the OM price, which had fallen as low as $0.52 after plummeting from $6.30.

Moreover, Mullin's company brushed aside rumors that it controls 90% of OM's token supply and is engaging in market manipulation or insider trading.

Mantra maintains that "reckless liquidations" caused OM's price to plummet and clarifies that the incident did not tie to any team-driven actions.

"We had no part in liquidating any positions or attempting to manipulate the market in any way. Our actions were driven by a desire to build a great product and a valuable company that provides value to the community," the company stated.

Just prior to the OM token collapse, platforms like OKX and Binance saw a noticeable increase in trading activity.

Responding to community queries, OKX and Binance asserted that they did not cause the collapse, instead linking it to the tokenomics revisions in October and the unusual volatility that sparked high-volume liquidations on April 13.