Mantle Network is voting to form a $200 million ecosystem fund

Mantle Network has put forth a governance proposal aiming to set up a $200 million ecosystem fund. The intended use of this fund is to support the development of decentralized applications on its Ethereum Layer 2 network throughout the next three years. 

The proposal was jointly put together by the Mantle core team with one of its backers Mirana Ventures. Dubbed MIP-24, the proposal is seeking community approval to allocate $100 million from the Mantle's $2 billion treasury towards this fund. 

In an attempt to reach the $200 million target, the proposal further seeks to raise an additional $100 million from "strategic venture partners," it stated.

With current DAO votes at 99.92% in favor of the proposal, it appears likely to be approved. The voting on the proposal is scheduled to conclude on July 15. In 2022, BitDAO furthered the development of Mantle, a Layer 2 network, which now stands in competition with platforms like Optimism and Arbitrum that employ Optimistic rollups. These rollups consolidate transactions on an off-chain layer to boost the scalability of Ethereum applications. 

Just last month, BitDAO made a strategic decision to merge and rebrand as Mantle, with an aim to focus all its efforts on the Layer 2 network. The project maintains one of the largest community treasuries in crypto, holding over $2 billion, including $1.2 billion in Mantle tokens, $500 million in ether and $300 million in stablecoins, according to data from DeepDAO.

In 2021, BitDAO raised $230 million through a private token sale led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, and Dragonfly Capital, intended to fund cryptocurrency-related projects as a decentralized autonomous organization.