Manta Network experiences DDoS attack amid exchange listing

Zero-knowledge proof-powered layer-2 blockchain Manta Network experienced a widespread distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack amid a successful token listing on multiple exchanges. The incident has since been resolved. 

As told by Kenny Li, co-founder of P0xeidon Labs, the cryptographic development team behind Manta Network, the blockchain’s nodes experienced over 135 million remote procedure call (RPC) requests on Jan. 18. “This is a very aggressive and timed attack,” said Li, while stating that “the blockchain is running safely” and “funds are safe.” However, Li warned that “communication between apps and the blockchain is severely limited” for the time being. The co-founder commented:

“Rest assured, we are not going anywhere. We have built for three years, and we see no end in sight. Thank you so much for your support as a community.”

The same day, Manta tokens began trading on multiple exchanges, including Binance, Bithumb and KuCoin. At the time of publication, the Manta token is valued at $2.27, indicating a fully diluted market cap of $2.27 billion. Over $686 million worth of Manta exchanged hands in the first few hours of trading.

A spokesperson for Manta Network revealed that Manta Pacific has seen an 70x increase in total value locked (TVL) within the past quarter, with its current value at $858 million. An airdrop, amounting to 5% of Manta's total supply, valued at $114 million at the time of publication, was also announced earlier this month for ecosystem users and supporters. 

On July 19, 2023, Cointelegraph reported that P0xeidon Labs raised $25 million in its Series A funding round. The firm also introduced the testnet of its layer-2 infrastructure, Manta Pacific, which entered mainnet on Sept. 12, 2023. The testnet launch in July 2023 saw the creation of 150,000 wallets and over 3.5 million transactions.

Meanwhile, Manta Atlantic’s flagship nonfungible token private offering platform launched in April 2023 and has since minted over 300,000 zero-knowledge soulbound tokens across key ecosystem partners, including Arbitrum, Galxe, Linea and CyberConnect.

Related: ZK-focused Manta Pacific opts out of OP Stack for Polygon CDK