sell-off began when 3.9 million OM was deposited on OKX by a wallet linked to Mantra team. Crypto analyst Max Brown said the team allegedly holds almost 90% of the token’s

1) Sherpas, OMies, and broader crypto community,

First off, the team and I greatly appreciate the support that we have received over the past several hours, which we believe is a testament to the strong support MANTRA has among its investors and community.

We have determined that the OM market movements were triggered by reckless forced closures initiated by centralized exchanges on OM account holders. The timing and depth of the crash suggest that a very sudden closure of account positions was initiated without sufficient warning or notice.

That this happened during low-liquidity hours on a Sunday evening UTC (early morning Asia time) points to a degree of negligence at best, or possibly intentional market positioning taken by centralized exchanges.

Centralized exchange partners play an important role in providing liquidity to projects like ours. We work closely with them, however they continue to exercise enormously high levels of discretion. When discretionary powers are exercised without due internal and external oversight, dislocations like what recently happened can and will occur, hurting both projects and investors alike.

To be clear, this dislocation was not caused by the team, the MANTRA Chain Association, its core advisors, or MANTRA’s investors selling tokens. Tokens remain locked and subject to the published vesting periods. OM’s tokenomics remain intact, as shared last week in our latest token report. Our token wallet addresses are online and visible.