Reflecting on an extraordinary year, Mantle's Jordi (@gametheorizing), Veer (@0xVeer), and Gabe (0xGabe_) look back at the major milestones of 2023 and offer a glimpse into what 2024 holds. They discuss various topics, including $mETH, $mUSD, Mantle Journey, Citizens of Mantle and many more. The team also shares some exclusive alpha throughout the AMA.

*Some sentences have been edited for clarity and brevity.

What were some of the major announcements made by Mantle in 2023?

J: The big announcements started halfway through the year when we announced $mETH. That's something that took many months to develop, as we had to carry out extensive security checks and audits.

Apart from $mETH, we also announced $mUSD, which is something we are still working towards scaling. To remind those who might not be so familiar, $mUSD is basically like USDT and USDC. However, unlike Tether and Circle, who accrue billions of dollars of yield, the yield generated by $mUSD through Treasury bills goes directly to the holder.

V: There's still utility to stablecoins as the market heavily depends on them, but our argument is, why not generate some yield while holding stablecoins? This is what $mUSD provides.

What are the latest updates on Citizens of Mantle (CoM)?

G: There are currently 38,000 holders, and we are in the process of releasing a variety of add-on traits that will enhance the NFT for those who took part in the Mantle Moonshot campaign. It's also going to be tied in with Mantle Journey as well. For all other participants who did not win add-on traits in their mystery box, you will walk away with 200 MJ Miles instead.

What are the key takeaways from Mantle Journey Season Alpha, and what can users expect from Season Beta?

V: Mantle Journey (MJ) Season Alpha has been a fun way to help users navigate Mantle Ecosystem while collecting MJ Miles. We've also received a lot of positive feedback from protocols. They really like the idea of providing extra incentives for the users who participated and interacted with their protocol, so we can expect to see more of this going forward.

As Season Alpha has been going on for a while now, it's given the community a chance to provide a lot of feedback to us. We will take all of the feedback into consideration both from the protocol side and user side, and ensure that Season Beta delivers the best possible user experience for our community and products that are building on Mantle Network.

What are the latest developments with the ecosystem's showcase apps?

G: It's great to see some of our showcase apps finally launch and become an integral part of Mantle Ecosystem. The biggest one that launched recently was Merchant Moe. For those unaware, Merchant Moe was running a campaign to help users get hold of the $MOE token, which is Mantle native. Participants were required to bridge their $JOE tokens from Avalanche and Arbitrum, and stake them on Mantle Network. Ultimately, this helped contribute to a successful launch. Just one day post-launch, they achieved a Total Value Locked (TVL) of approximately $6.8 million.

V: I'm really excited about Butter.xyz and what they are preparing. They've been planning special types of community activities related to their DEX, which are just mini-games or almost performance art-type campaigns. I've heard from the Butter team that they are interested in doing bi-weekly creative drops and campaigns. So, I think Butter.xyz is another platform you should check out and keep up to date with what they are doing.

What other exciting apps are coming out of Mantle Ecosystem?

J: Some of the most exciting upcoming apps in our Mantle Ecosystem are centered around intents and intents-based trading. We're proud to have strong teams specializing in this area as part of our EcoFund, with more set to join.

The core idea behind intents is to enhance user experience. Currently, users on platforms like Uniswap must navigate issues like slippages and are affected by on-chain activities. Our approach with intents is to simplify these processes and make transactions more user-friendly.

The broader crypto ecosystem is beginning to recognize the value of this approach. Through our EcoFund, we've been fortunate to attract some of the most influential protocols within the intents space, such as INIT capital, which specializes in liquidity hooks, and Valent, another interesting protocol focused on intents. These developments are not only exciting for Mantle but are also drawing attention across the entire DeFi ecosystem.

What are some of the improvements that will be implemented in Mantle v2?

J: Mantle v2 is a Bedrock-style OP Stack upgrade that is set to bring many benefits to Mantle Network.

V: To give everyone a bit of context, the original design of Mantle was created in the summer of 2022 when we posted the first proposal. This was the period in which we selected OP Stack as the execution environment, and at that point, the OP Bedrock update did not exist. The OP Bedrock update only went live last summer, and now we've had time to see other chains battle-test it, it seems like a perfect time to start the upgrade.

For you technical folk, what that means is that EIP-1559 will finally be enabled on Mantle Network. This will improve user experience and lower gas fees for users and developers on the network. There will also be significant improvements in predicting gas fees for protocols. If you're interacting on Mantle with MetaMask, you will see that MetaMask cannot calculate our gas fees correctly. But once EIP-1559 is live, we will start seeing much better estimates for gas fees for MetaMask.

Here's some alpha for you guys. The v2 of Mantle will soon be live. We have an upgraded Bedrock OP stack version of Mantle live in testnet, using Sepolia testnet. We are currently battle testing it now, and we will go live and publicize it very soon, so the users can start interacting and testing it out for us. Hopefully, towards the end of this quarter, we'll do a complete migration for the main net.

Will Mantle explore deeper interoperability with other L2s or blockchains in 2024?

V: L2 to L2 user experience is very important for various reasons. However, right now, we're concentrating on our native ecosystem. Instead of focusing on L2 interoperability, which is much more complicated, we want to ensure you can securely bridge your assets to Mantle from Ethereum.

Eventually, we want to increase the user experience between L2s. There's a pretty exciting proposal coming up from Lagrange, who has been working with EigenLayer on this design called State Committee, which is also something that Mantle is involved in and is contributing to. In short, it will allow for certain designs like ZK fast bridging, significantly improving L2 to L2 interoperability.

J: We are at that stage of maturity for the Ethereum ecosystem where interoperability between L2 and L2 is starting to matter more. It was heavily L1-focused initially, because that's where all the TVL was. We now see L2s like Arbitrum with significant amounts of TVL, so it makes a lot more sense to bridge to an L2 than a year ago.

Are there going to be more native assets on Mantle Network?

J: We have an idea for another native asset, which is a very interesting basket with many great characteristics. I can't dive too deeply into it as it's still very early in development, but keep an eye out for that.

Exciting developments are in the upcoming road map as we continue to grow Mantle Ecosystem — ensure you're keeping up by following Mantle's community channels for the most recent updates. Check out the full 2023 review in our recent article here: https://www.mantle.xyz/blog/reviews/mantle-year-in-review-2023-rollup

Additionally, if you missed this AMA, you can find the entire recording on our Twitter/X.