Mantle
MNT#43MNT is the coin of Mantle, an Ethereum layer-2 network backed by a large DAO treasury, used to pay fees and vote in governance.
- Market cap
- $2.15B
- Volume 24h
- $35.9M
- All-time high
- —
- Circulating supply
- 3.3B of 6.22B
Passes our 8 Shariah criteria. Needs caution: business model and excessive uncertainty (gharar).
- 6 pass
- 2 caution
- 0 fail
Verdict history
- HalalCurrent
First publication
Fundamentals, market picture and news will appear here.
Halal analysis
Can a Muslim hold Mantle?8 Shariah criteria
6 pass · 2 caution · 0 failHolding MNT pays nothing, and there is no protocol staking or interest paid to holders.
Riba means interest or any guaranteed increase on a loan. MNT is used to pay transaction fees on Mantle and to vote on proposals; simply holding it earns nothing. Mantle blocks are produced by a single operator (the sequencer), not by validators staking MNT, so there is no native staking reward either. Islamic Finance Guru (IFG) rates MNT permissible, and the plain token involves no interest, so the criterion gets the maximum score.
Interest in products around MNT (mETH's Aave buffer, the treasury's approved loan to Aave, lending of deposited MNT) is judged under business model and trading mechanisms.
MNT is the gas and governance token of a working Ethereum layer-2, but official religious bodies disagree on whether cryptocurrency is property (mal).
Mal is property that Islamic law recognises as having value and that can be owned and traded. Mantle is a working network: it has run since July 2023, carries about $551 million of stablecoins, and MNT is required to pay its transaction fees and to vote in its governance. Islamic Finance Guru (IFG), the first authoritative source in Liberandum's list, rates MNT permissible, and Sharlife and CryptoUmmah agree.
Some tier-1 bodies (Egypt, Turkey, the UAE, Indonesia's MUI) doubt cryptocurrency in general, but none names Mantle, so that dispute is reflected in confidence and the 'disputed' flag rather than in this score.
- Resolutions of the Shariah Advisory Council of the SC - Securities Commission Malaysia
- Ruling on trading and dealing in Bitcoin - Dar al-Ifta al-Misriyyah
- Shariah rules and crypto disputes: UAE court judgment and official Fatwa invalidate cryptocurrency transaction - Wasel & Wasel
- Kripto paraların kullanımının dini hükmü nedir? - Din İşleri Yüksek Kurulu (Diyanet)
MNT has no chance-based mechanics, and on its main exchange spot trading is larger than futures.
Maysir is gambling: winning or losing by chance rather than through productive exchange. Ordinary price swings are not maysir, and MNT has no lottery or chance-based payout. Speculation does not dominate: on 27 September 2026, on Bybit, the main market for MNT, 24-hour spot turnover was about $12.8 million against about $10.8 million on the MNT/USDT perpetual contract (a single-day snapshot), and memecoin trading is not a large part of on-chain activity. No concrete gambling problem was found, so the criterion gets the maximum score.
Fees pay for a real service, but the treasury is mostly its own token, governance has approved an interest-bearing ETH loan to Aave, and its products earn partly from lending interest; the revenue mix is not published.
This criterion asks how the issuer or protocol earns, and whether any of that income is impermissible. Network fees on Mantle are paid in MNT for processing transactions (about $1.3 million over 30 days), which are permissible service fees. Mantle's larger economic base is its treasury, about $2.8 billion on 27 September 2026, 75% of it MNT itself. Some of Mantle's income is shown to come from interest: mETH takes about 10% of rewards that come both from Ethereum staking and from a Liquidity Buffer that supplies ETH to Aave for lending interest.
On 8 May 2026 MNT holders also passed MIP-34, which allows the treasury to lend up to 30,000 ETH to Aave DAO at the Lido staking rate plus 1% a year, a loan with a return, which is riba; whether it was executed was not confirmed. IFG rates MNT permissible, but because interest income is documented by Mantle itself and Mantle does not publish its revenue mix, the 5% threshold cannot be checked and the status stays caution.
Supply and treasury are disclosed, but one operator runs the chain, a multisig can upgrade it instantly, the token keeps a governance-controlled mint, and the treasury holds about half of all MNT.
Gharar is excessive uncertainty or hidden information in a deal. Some things are clear: about 6.22 billion MNT were issued at launch with no inflation schedule, the treasury is shown on a public dashboard, and treasury MNT is released through budget proposals voted by holders. The status stays caution for concrete reasons. L2BEAT rates Mantle Stage 0: a single operator proposes all blocks and a 6-of-14 multisig can upgrade the contracts with no delay, so users have no window to exit before an unwanted change.
The MNT token also keeps a governance-controlled mint function (MIP-22, 0% by default) and can be upgraded by its owner, and the treasury's roughly 3 billion MNT (about half the supply) can reach the market if large holders approve budgets. IFG rates MNT permissible; these points are disclosed rather than hidden, but they are real uncertainty for holders.
Mantle carries stablecoins and real infrastructure, but interest-based lending and yield vaults are most of its DeFi deposits.
This criterion looks at what the network is actually used for. Most of it is permissible: about $551 million of stablecoins circulate on Mantle, the Bybit exchange keeps about $723 million in wallets on Mantle as a settlement rail, and MNT itself is used for fees and governance. The score is lowered for a concrete impermissible share: of about $197 million in non-exchange DeFi protocols on 27 September 2026, lending markets such as Aave V3 held about $53 million and the CIAN yield aggregator about $97 million.
That is a notable part of the small DeFi sector, but well below the stablecoin and settlement use, so it is not the main purpose of the network.
Fully paid spot MNT is available, and it can be held in one's own wallet.
This criterion asks whether the asset can be owned in a permissible way. MNT trades spot, with full payment and delivery, on exchanges such as Bybit, and it is an ordinary token on Ethereum and on Mantle that can be withdrawn to a self-custody wallet; Kazakhstan's central bank includes it in its list of authorised digital assets. Ownership does not depend on derivatives or leveraged wrappers, so the criterion gets the maximum score; liquidity concentrated on one exchange is not a Shariah issue.
Mantle offers cheaper Ethereum transactions and showed useful safeguards, while its harms are mainly centralisation risks rather than abuse.
Maslahah weighs public benefit against harm. The benefit is real: Mantle makes Ethereum applications and stablecoin transfers cheaper, zero-knowledge proofs cut withdrawals to Ethereum from 7 days to 12 hours, and in the February 2025 Bybit hack the 8-hour withdrawal delay in mETH Protocol let the team recover 15,000 cmETH worth about $43 million from the attackers. No evidence was found that the network is mainly used for fraud or sanctions evasion, so the criterion gets the maximum score; the trust required in a centralised operator is counted under gharar.
How you can use it
Tap a card for the ruling and sourcesBuying MNT with full payment and immediate delivery is available on exchanges such as Bybit, and coins can be moved to a self-custody wallet. Spot is acceptable for a HALAL asset.
No regulated spot fund holding MNT was found. Any exchange-traded product on MNT must be checked for how it holds the token, whether it lends it out and whether it earns interest.
Tier-1 bodies such as Indonesia's MUI rule that using cryptocurrency as currency is not permissible, and paying with crypto is not allowed in Indonesia (Bank Indonesia) and is banned in Turkey. MNT is used to pay network fees rather than for everyday purchases.
MNT has no protocol staking: blocks are produced by a single operator, not by MNT stakers. 'Staking' or 'earn' products for MNT on exchanges or in Mantle apps are not payments for validation work; their rewards come from sources that must be checked product by product, so they are caution at best. This is separate from mETH, which stakes ETH, not MNT.
Margin trading in MNT is offered on exchanges but is never acceptable: it is a deferred exchange with borrowed money and leverage (AAOIFI SS 20).
MNT perpetual futures trade on Bybit with about $48 million of open interest on 27 September 2026. Futures, perpetuals and options always fail under AAOIFI SS 20: deferred exchange without delivery, usually with leverage.
Lending MNT on platforms such as Aave on Mantle or through exchange lending programmes pays depositors interest from borrowers. This is riba.
MNT yield products built on lending, leveraged looping or basis trading pay interest or interest-like returns and fail. Because MNT has no native staking, no MNT yield product was found whose return comes only from network validation work.
Scholars quotes
The opinion on this is the same as doing the same with any halal assets such as shares – 1) is permissible, 2) is more debatable and there are differing opinions on short-term trading.As I mentioned at the beginning of this article it is not necessary to substantiate the permissibility of something as long as there are no prohibited factors involved in it or surrounding it.Penggunaan cryptocurrency sebagai mata uang hukumnya haram, karena mengandung gharar (ketidakjelasan), dharar (bahaya) dan bertentangan dengan Undang-Undang nomor 7 tahun 2011 tentang Mata Uang dan Peraturan Bank Indonesia nomor 17 tahun 2015 tentang Kewajiban Penggunaan Rupiah di Wilayah Negara Kesatuan Republik Indonesia.Sebagaimana mata wang yang lain, mata wang digital hendaklah tidak digunakan sebagai bayaran kepada barangan, perkhidmatan dan aktiviti tidak patuh Syariah seperti pembelian dadah, pelacuran, perjudian dan pendanaan aktiviti keganasan serta penggubahan wang haram.The SAC has also resolved that investment and trading of Digital Assets that fulfil the above requirements and which are traded on Digital Asset Exchange (DAX) registered with SC are permissible.Third: In light of the above and given the significant risks associated with this type of currencies and the instability of their transactions, the Council of the Academy recommends pursuing research and studies on issues affecting its ruling.Bitcoin is a digital currency that does not meet the legal and Sharia criteria that make it a currency subject to the rulings of dealing with official legal currencies recognized internationally.بناءً على ذلك: فلا يجوز شرعًا تداول عملة "البتكوين" والتعامل من خلالها بالبيعِ والشراءِ والإجارةِ وغيرها، بل يُمنع من الاشتراكِ فيها؛ لعدمِ اعتبارِها كوسيطٍ مقبولٍ للتبادلِ من الجهاتِ المخُتصَّةِ، ولِمَا تشتمل عليه من الضررِ الناشئ عن الغررِ والجهالةِ والغشِّ في مَصْرِفها ومِعْيارها وقِيمتها، فضلًا عما تؤدي إليه ممارستُها من مخاطرَ عاليةٍ على الأفراد والدول.Consequently, simply buying and holding the MNT token is rated Doubtful.According to research and opinion of experts so far, cryptocurrency is not considered ‘ maal ’ (wealth) in Sharia.Muhammadiyah memandang transaksi dan investasi kripto pada dasarnya mubah (boleh) tetapi dengan syarat tertentu.Our current position is 'tawaquf'; we can't say it is halal or haram, but we say it is better not to engage in itAI-assisted analysis checked against sources. Not a fatwa or investment advice.
Where it trades
Section in preparation
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