Everyone is talking about RWAs. But no one is speaking about the elephant in the room. A $1.8 Quadrillion industry that only a few protocols are targeting. In the third part of this series, we'll focus on @Mantle_Official, which is positioning itself as a "financial hub" at the intersection of Web3 and Web2 with its latest two products: • Mantle Index Four (MI4) • Mantle Banking Before diving into them and into Mantle's vision, a bit of context: ⚙️ THE TECH Mantle Network is an EVM-compatible Layer 2 that integrates @eigen_da for data availability and @SuccinctLabs for zero-knowledge proving to provide institutions with a scalable infrastructure to build on. Both integrations were made this year and represent key steps in Mantle's shift from an optimistic to a zero-knowledge rollup. The original OP Proposer was replaced with the new Mantle Succinct Proposer, responsible for submitting ZK proofs to Ethereum L1. In parallel, @SuccinctLabs's SP1 Prover Network was integrated to delegate more compute-intensive ZKP generation tasks to a professional network, thus enhancing the chain's performance and scalability. One of the main upgrades was replacing the original OP Proposer with the Mantle Succinct Proposer, responsible for submitting ZK proofs of Mantle's state changes to Ethereum L1. In parallel, to handle more compute-heavy tasks while maintaining high performance, Mantle also integrated @SuccinctLabs’s SP1 Prover Network to delegate those tasks to its specialized network. (See image n°1 for a breakdown) About the EigenDA integration, previously used a custom solution built on top of EigenDA, while now it directly leverages EigenDA’s solution. This allows the chain to scale data availability further without compromising security. Now that we've recapped how Mantle distinguishes itself from other networks, let's dive into the core topics of this piece. 🏦 MANTLE BANKING Mantle Banking is a crypto neobank that lets you manage fiat and crypto in one account, making it easy to receive, spend, and invest in both. The platform allows users to set up a Swiss bank account and receive a globally accepted virtual debit card. While launching such a service isn’t very difficult, there are two recurring problems most startups in this vertical face: 1.) Third-parties Dependency 2.) Web3 <> Web2 Interoperability 1.) Third-parties Dependency Most startups launching these products don't control the underlying infra and, therefore, have a weak position when it comes to customer acquisition costs (CAC) and Lifetime value (LTV). This is because: 1. They pay fees to external providers (e.g., custodians, payment processors, offramps, bridges). 2. They rely on their rules, uptime, and costs. Ultimately, these two aspects increase the cost of serving customers and lower margins. On top of that, users expect everything in one place. If your platform doesn’t offer spending, saving, investing, borrowing, and so on, they’ll quickly move towards whoever provides all of these. 2.) Web3 <> Web2 Interoperability The second issue is most crypto apps can't properly connect to traditional banks or brokerages. From on-ramping limitations (high fees, geo limitations, etc.) to banks limiting you once you interact with crypto apps, the UX is horrible. Mantle nails these two problems by owning all parts of the value chain, from the blockchain to the banking one. This allows them to customize each layer of the stack and stay competitive in the market. The mantle team outlined how ultimately capturing salaries via direct deposit into their neobank is the objective they're working toward. From there, the use cases would be many, such as: • Swap & send fiat currencies (USD, EU, SGD, etc.) • Pay across platforms and merchants • Interact with Mantle's DeFi Ecosystem (Check image n°2) 🌐 THE PAYFI VISION • The global payments industry records an annual transaction volume of $1.8 quadrillion. • Total revenue across the sector reached $2.2 trillion in 2023 and is projected to surpass $3 trillion by 2030. • Cross-border payments exceeded $150 trillion in volume in 2023. • Digital wallets account for over 50% of global e-commerce payments and are expected to rise to 60% by 2026. This is the scale of the payments industry today. However, most of this value still moves on traditional infrastructure. And that's where the concept of PayFi comes in. PayFi, aka Payment Finance → the merge of stablecoins, tokenized assets, and DeFi with legacy payment rails. PayFi is based on the principle of the Time Value of Money, the idea that a dollar today is worth more than its value in the future because it can be invested or lose value due to inflation. I'm briefly outlining this because it's exactly where Mantle wants to position itself with the Banking platform. We're entering the phase where CEXs, L1s, and L2s will scale from targeting traders and DeFi users to the masses. This won't be done by creating some crazy DeFi apps that most of the population wouldn't be able to understand but by serving them what they already use daily. Onchain and offchain worlds are converging, with CEXs, ecosystems, and FinTech giants racing to capture their share of the pie. 📈 MANTLE INDEX FOUR (MI4) Simply put, the yield-bearing S&P 500 of crypto. MI4 is a tokenized fund that offers diversified exposure to yield-bearing assets, with @Securitize as the tokenization partner, @FireblocksHQ as the custody provider, and the Mantle Treasury as the main investor by committing $400M from its balance. The reason MI4 is very interesting is its institutional-focused approach, as it provides a relatively low-risk, index-based product that’s familiar to traditional investors. On top of that, it bakes in yield generation, making it even more attractive to asset managers and funds. The yield comes from blue-chip staking strategies like: • @mETHProtocol's mETH • @Bybit_Official’s bbSOL • @ethena_labs’ sUSDe These allocations are rebalanced quarterly, and the current fund's structure looks like this: • BTC - 50% • ETH - 28% • USD - 15% • SOL - 7% What's remarkable about MI4 is that it's @Securitize’s largest tokenized fund, demonstrating Mantle's commitment to attracting more institutional participation and expansion beyond a generic-purpose L2. 🌱 INITIATIVES TO DRIVE THE INDUSTRY FORWARD Lastly, as we did in the previous pieces, it's worth mentioning the initiatives Mantle is carrying out to increase ecosystem adoption and global expansion. 1.) Mantle EcoFund - Launched in 2023, it's a $200M fund investing in startups building in the Mantle ecosystem. The fund is also invested in Synergy, a $5 million initiative in collaboration with TON Ventures to advance cross-chain developments between the two networks. 2.) LATAM Expansion - In partnership with @odisealabs, Mantle is engaging with local developers, entrepreneurs, and communities, providing resources and support to accelerate Web3 adoption across the region. This is also part of a bigger vision, in which LATAM will be a main propeller of Mantle Banking's adoption.