This is the story of how Mantra secured a lucrative RWA tokenization deal – and then lost it.

Mantra has been making great strides in the rapidly growing field of real-world asset tokenization. Earlier this year, the Layer 1 blockchain announced a partnership with MAG Group to democratize access to luxury UAE real estate using yield-bearing vault products.

This deal, which was reported to be worth $500 million, was widely covered by the crypto media and signaled Mantra’s ambitions to become a major player in the tokenization of real-world assets.

However, despite the initial fanfare, there has been little to no news on the status of the deal in recent months. This has led to speculation that the deal may have fallen through or that it is still in the works but has hit a snag.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, the deal resurfaced this year. But this time it had been awarded to a different Layer 1 blockchain whose name starts with M - and its value had multiplied by 6x along the way.

On July 3, 2024, Mantra announced that it would be partnering with MAG to launch a new series of vault products that will offer investors the opportunity to invest in a portion of the mega-mansion at ‘The Ritz-Carlton Residences, Dubai, Creekside’ development, part of the Keturah Resort.

Investors participating in the vault product will benefit from a compelling reward structure. They can expect to receive a combined yield, with an estimated 8% APY generated from stablecoins, further augmented by MANTRA’s native token, $OM.

The news was also picked up by CoinDesk, who reported that the deal would be valued at $500 million and would be the largest tokenization deal in the Middle East.

Later that year, the deal was still active, even if Mantra wasn’t actively posting about it. For example, in November, JP Mullin mentioned the partnership in a tweet. His final post on the topic occurred in January, when he tweeted: “Wild looking back at 2024: Started with a tokenomics proposal...Ended with Google Cloud, BlackRock, and MAG.”

And then, out of nowhere, a wild Mavryk appeared.

On May 1, it was revealed that MAG Group had signed a deal with Mavryk Dynamics to tokenise $3 billion of real estate assets.

The assets in question are the same ones that were being used in the original Mantra deal: the Ritz-Carlton in Dubai, part of the Keturah Resort, and an investment will be included in MAG’s Village properties. But this time, the real estate group is going further and putting an entire $3 billion of its property portfolio on the line, with the assets to be issued on Multibank’s new RE platform operating on Mavryk.

Now, Mavryk and Mantra have a lot in common: they’re both RWA Layer 1s. They share the same broad mission and they even have broadly similar names. In American Psycho terms, one’s Paul Allen and the other’s Patrick Bateman. The question of who’s got the better haircut and business card is still to be determined. But with the Dubai property deal now looking to have passed to Mavryk, it’s clear who’s managing the Fisher account, so to speak.

Aside from the size of the deal increasing six-fold, most of the other details appear to have remained unchanged from the original Mantra deal, such as the opportunity for token-holders to earn yield on the underlying real estate, all paid out onchain.

Given Mantra’s silence since first announcing its own deal last June, followed by Mavryk’s jubilation upon unveiling its own this month, it appears that MAG has jumped ship - or is it simply hedging its bets?

It’s easy to speculate as to why MAG Group may have elected to move ahead with the RE tokenization deal using a different blockchain and launch partner. The most benign of these being a desire to get the ball again after the original Mantra deal appears to have stagnated. Be it for technical reasons, financial ones, or some other complication, the assets MAG Group’s been wanting to tokenise have been left in limbo for close to a year.

But another possible reading of the situation is that MAG Group hasn’t jumped ship: it may have simply hedged its bets and elected to move ahead with Mavryk while also keeping the Mantra deal on the table. A hint as to this can be found in a tweet from Mantra’s JP Mullin in March, when he wrote: “I believe Dubai has a plan to tokenise & trade fractional RE assets within the 1st half of this year.” When asked whether the assets would be tokenised on Mantra or another chain, he replied “Probably both.”

Wherever the truth lies, this much can be said with confidence: Mavryk now has a deal allowing it to tokenise one of the largest real estate portfolios in RWA history. And with MAG Group seemingly determined to