Mantra DAO’s Controversial Past Resurfaces After Recent Crash

Back in 2021, MANTRA DAO (OM) made its debut on Binance’s Innovation Zone—fast forward to 2025, and it’s once again grabbing attention, but not the kind anyone wants. 

After a steep price crash of over 90% , the project’s being slammed with fresh fraud accusations, bringing back the same doubts people had right from the day it got listed.

On March 8, 2021, Binance introduced MANTRA DAO (OM) with trading pairs OM/BTC, OM/BUSD, and OM/USDT, allowing users to trade the token via its Innovation Zone—an area dedicated to high-risk assets. 

The listing came with the usual warnings: high volatility, potential risk, and the need for user due diligence. The listing fee for OM was 0 BNB.

MANTRA DAO described itself as a community-run DeFi project focused on staking, lending, and building cross-chain tools. While it started on Ethereum, the team had plans to expand onto Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, and Polkadot. Its native token, OM, was said to be used for things like governance, staking, and other features within the platform.

However, even in 2021, the project stirred controversy. Chinese crypto reporter Wu Blockchain tweeted that Binance had listed a “ fraud project, ” citing that many in the Chinese crypto community were outraged. 

Back then, Wu had also pointed fingers at the project’s founder for links to online gambling and claimed that many team members had shady ICO histories.

Fast forward to 2025—and it feels like déjà vu.

Following OM’s latest price nosedive, doubts around MANTRA DAO’s legitimacy are flaring up all over again. Wu Blockchain posted a fresh tweet, stating, “WuBlockchain warned the risk of MANTRA DAO in 2021. It is composed of several core members of the online gambling platform 21Pink. OM once falsely claimed to have received FTX investment but FTX later denied the information.”

On social media, users are openly blaming Binance for giving questionable projects a stamp of credibility just by listing them.