World Liberty Financial (WLFI), a crypto investment arm linked to former U.S. President Donald Trump’s family, has acquired 3.54 million MNT tokens worth nearly $3 million. This move follows the Mantle Network’s major upgrade, which integrated EigenDA, a cutting-edge data availability solution aimed at enhancing scalability.
Data from Lookonchain and Arkham Intelligence shows WLFI bought the tokens at an average price of $0.84 per MNT, bringing its total digital asset holdings to over $340 million. Despite this sizable portfolio, WLFI currently holds a paper loss of $111 million, largely due to volatile market conditions.
Mantle’s Tech Upgrade: Boosting Scalability and Ethereum Compatibility
On March 19, the Mantle Network executed a backwards-incompatible hard fork, activating EigenDA on its mainnet. The update enhances throughput to 15 MB/s, allowing the network to process significantly more transactions per block. This upgrade also aligns Mantle with Ethereum’s upcoming Pectra upgrade, ensuring better compatibility as Ethereum evolves.
The MNT token plays a dual role within the Mantle ecosystem—it’s used to pay gas fees and for governance in this Layer 2 solution that focuses on Ethereum scalability. At press time, MNT was trading up 6% at $0.83, buoyed by strong sentiment following the network enhancements and WLFI’s investment.
Trump-Linked WLFI’s Expanding Crypto Bet
WLFI has made headlines for its aggressive moves across the crypto sector. Its portfolio spans major assets such as ETH, WBTC, TRX, LINK, AAVE, and ENA, showing a clear strategy to gain exposure across top protocols and emerging platforms alike.
The firm’s latest purchase underscores confidence in Mantle Network’s future as Ethereum’s Layer 2 landscape matures. While it’s unclear whether this is a long-term play or a strategic position ahead of Ethereum’s Pectra fork, the involvement of a Trump-affiliated entity is certain to attract political and media attention.
As institutional interest in crypto deepens, WLFI’s positioning in post-upgrade Mantle signals that major players are keeping a close watch on Ethereum scaling solutions and network innovation.