Manta Pacific’s Long-anticipated Airdrop Failed To Meet Expectations

• Manta Pacific has carried out its long-anticipated airdrop but the airdrop has, however, failed to meet expectations.
• In addition to dashed hopes, there is controversy surrounding transfers made by the project’s team.

Over the past few weeks, Manta has gotten onto the radar of most crypto investors as excitement around its New Paradigm campaign, promising early participants rewards, saw its TVL jump over 2,000% in a month. 

However, following the conclusion of the rewards program many of the participants have been left disappointed and furious.

Manta Pacific: ‘The Worst Airdrop Ever?’

In late 2023, Manta Pacific launched the New Paradigm program to reward network participants who locked assets on the protocol and interacted within the ecosystem using receipt tokens. 

Unsurprisingly, many crypto speculators jumped in, sending the network’s TVL above $400 million on Defi Llama in the hopes of making free and potentially life-changing money. 

See Also: Ethereum Layer-2 Scaling Network Blast Announces Airdrop

However, come distribution day, most of these investors were disappointed, with some noting that they did not even get enough to cover transaction fees that they had paid on the network.

“Worst airdrop ever.. not even to cover gas fees,” one user wrote.

worst airdrop ever.. not even cover gasfees..

— McShayne🥇🦄 (@aibakandy) January 18, 2024

“I put in 1 eth a month ago and rewards didnt even cover the gas fees, let alone 400% lol,” another added.

Yer, but it didnt say those boxes would be worthless. I put in 1 eth a month ago and rewards didnt even cover the gas fees, let alone 400% lol

— Laurence Harrison (@guitarlaurence) January 18, 2024

Meanwhile, the Manta Pacific debacle does not end there. Amid the complaints over the underwhelming rewards, the project also stands accused of dumping on its holders minutes after the token was listed on exchanges.

Dumping On Holders Or Project Expansion?

During the MANTA token distribution, the South Korean crypto community accused the Manta development team of dumping on their users within minutes of the asset’s listing. 

See Also: Dymension (DYM) Airdrop In Claim Period, 3 Days To Go

The group posted proof that the project’s Korean business developer had exchanged nearly 3 million MANTA tokens to ETH within five minutes of the asset’s listing on Bithumb, which was promptly withdrawn to the team member’s wallet.

. @MantaNetwork was suspected of money laundering through Bithumb on the day of listing

– 2M $MANTA transferred to personal wallet of MANTA’s Korean BD
– 2M $MANTA was deposited into Bithumb deposit wallet, accounting for more than 75% of Bithumb’s total circulation volume.
-… pic.twitter.com/uMWq6J6D37

— Definalist (@definalist) January 18, 2024

In response to the claims, however, the Manta Network has asserted that the funds are part of an allocation to expand the project’s footprint in South Korea.

Despite the low sentiment, MANTA is still up 5.6% in the last 24 hours at the time of writing, trading at $2.22, per Coinstats data.

The Manta New Paradigm program attracted thousands of investors to the Manta ecosystem with the hopes of gaining significant rewards but will these hopes be dashed?