MANTRA Vote Seeks Recovery of 37.96 Million Frozen Tokens

MANTRA’s Proposal 40 is open for voting on a plan to reclaim 37.96 million frozen MANTRA tokens and route them to the OM upgrade incentive allocation, addressing part of a larger shortfall.

The proposal would use the next on-chain software upgrade to recover tokens at an address tied to an Aug. 20 security incident. The address was sanctioned at the protocol level in version 8.4.0 and cannot transfer funds. Voting is open through Friday, Nov. 13.

Most of the funds had moved to a centralized exchange before the address was sanctioned, so the proposed upgrade cannot recover that portion. The team is working with Hong Kong law enforcement and the exchange operator to pursue those funds, but the recoverable amount is uncertain.

Recovered tokens would replenish about 121 million tokens previously transferred from the incentive allocation. Recovering the proposed 37.96 million would leave a shortfall of about 82.97 million. Any recovered amount above that shortfall would be permanently burned.

MANTRA’s post-incident review said an attacker exploited a vulnerability in the upstream Cosmos EVM module and transferred about 721 million MANTRA tokens. The review said about 121 million of those tokens came from a genesis multisig address linked to an incentive campaign.

After the final unrecovered amount is known, the team plans to submit another proposal by June 30, 2027, outlining further measures to mitigate the incident’s impact.