Mantle Bags Back $204M After KelpDAO Got Rekt, MNT Pumps 4% CATEGORY: Industry News

Mantle (MNT) is looking marginally less depressed these days after climbing 4.1% over the past 24 hours to roughly $0.6456, giving Bitcoin a run for its money in a classic altcoin rotation shuffle. Bitcoin managed a modest 2.26% gain over the same stretch, but the real party appears to be happening in higher-volatility land. Coins like Stellar (XLM), Toncoin (TON), and MemeCore have been posting gains in the 5% to 7% range, suggesting capital is wandering away from the orange coin and into racier bets. MNT is currently stuck in a $0.62-to-$0.66 corridor as the market slowly forgets—or at least partially forgives—the KelpDAO debacle.

The KelpDAO exploit went down around April 17-18, siphoning off roughly $11 million that made it across the bridge and into sell orders, with about $9.4 million still lounging in the attacker's wallet. The incident promptly broke KelpDAO's rsETH token peg and sent total value locked tumbling like a poorly designed DeFi project. On the bright side, Mantle confirmed its actual network, official bridge, and core assets came out unscathed—the mess was contained to KelpDAO's rsETH setup like a fire that only burned one room in the apartment. The team has been chatting with DeFi protocols, including Aave, about cleanup duty and managing whatever risk exposure is still lurking from the whole affair.

On-chain sleuths report that roughly $204 million in core USD liquidity got repaid within about 48 hours post-incident, with around $5.5 million in ETH assets already retrieved. Mantle's internal treasury stepped in to patch the initial liquidity hole and stabilize the situation, with the full recovery roadmap expected to play out over the next 30 to 60 days. This quick pivot helped cool short-term panic, letting price action drift back toward following macro vibes instead of bleeding out from exploit-induced terror. For the record, MNT still sits at a net 7-day loss of around 4% and a 30-day deficit of 11.74%, so the recent bounce looks more like a dead cat bounce's recovery than any grand reversal.

Mantle is currently lurking near the bottom of its recent range after the recovery phase, with $0.69 serving as the obvious ceiling to crack. A decisive break above that level would beef up the recovery structure and give short-term sentiment a confidence boost. But if sellers show back up and MNT slips below $0.62 support, things could deteriorate fast, with $0.58 sitting there as the next demand zone worth watching. Trading volume has actually shown up to the party, crossing $1.11 billion daily, meaning this move has real legs rather than just thin-air pumped prices. All told, the short-term vibe remains cautiously bullish, but the real test is whether Mantle can hold above $0.62 and gather enough momentum to go pick a fight with resistance above $0.66.