1. Summary
DAO treasuries need stablecoins to fund operations, grants, liquidity incentives, and ecosystem investments. The most direct path - selling native tokens - is often unpopular because it can create immediate market pressure and dilute holder confidence.
This post explores a Token Backed Mortgage (TBM) pilot for Mantle: Mantle would convert a limited amount of treasury MNT into stablecoins, then lend those stablecoins to aligned MNT holders on fixed-term, fixed-rate, overcollateralized terms. Borrowers would lock MNT collateral, receive stablecoin liquidity without selling, and repay principal plus interest on a defined schedule.
If designed conservatively, the structure could:
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Generate recurring stablecoin cash flow for Mantle operations.
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Remove 200% of the MNT treasury selloff from circulation.
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Give long-term MNT holders a predictable, low-risk way to access liquidity.
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Build a new financial utility around MNT.
2. About OWN
OWN (own.casa) builds onchain mortgage infrastructure: fixed-rate, multi-year defi loans with transparent terms and onchain servicing. PWN is the underlying peer-to-peer lending protocol. PWN is trustless, permissionless, immutable, and oracle-less protocol for structured lending products in DeFi - enabling instalment based fixed rate loans with optional liquidations based on repayment schedules.
3. Proposed Mechanism
The loop is intentionally simple:
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Treasury conversion. Mantle sells a defined amount of treasury MNT into stablecoins.
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Origination. Mantle offers fixed-term stablecoin loans to MNT holders. Loans are overcollateralized by MNT.
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Collateral lock. Borrowers lock MNT collateral for the loan term.
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Repayment. Borrowers repay principal and fixed interest on a defined schedule.
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Cash flow to Mantle. Yield supports operations or grants; principal repayments can be recycled into new loans or retained.
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Default handling. If a borrower defaults, Mantle repossesses the locked MNT collateral. Effectively acquiring it at discount compared to the initial selling price.
4. Illustrative Example
| Parameter | Example |
|---|---|
| Loan book size | $10.0M |
| LTV at origination | 50% |
| Fixed APR | 8.00% |
| Term | 5 years |
| Repayment | Monthly amortization |
| Required MNT collateral value | $20.0M |
| Required MNT collateral (tokens) | 47.2M MNT |
| MNT sold to fund program (tokens) | 23.6M MNT |
| Collateral locked / MNT sold | 2.00x |
| Payments monthly | $202,764 |
| Repaid annually | $2.43M |
| Total interest over term | $2.17M |
| Avg. annual yield on lent capital | 4.33% |
| Monthly payment / collateral value | 1.01% |
Key observations:
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At the base case, Mantle would lock $20M of MNT collateral against a $10M loan book - twice the value of MNT initially sold.
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Monthly debt repayments is roughly 1% of pledged collateral value in the base case, which is a modest affordability signal for long-term holders.
5. Risks Considerations
The main economic risk is reflexivity in the treasury. Mantle would be selling MNT, then lending stablecoins against MNT collateral, while already holding substantial MNT exposure.
Protocol risk should also be reviewed. DeFiScan review ( PWN Analysis - Stage 1 | DeFiScan | DeFiScan ) of PWN V1.3 rates the protocol Stage 1, marks PWN’s contracts as immutable, gives low centralization-risk scores for upgradeability, autonomy, and exit window, and notes that DAO-controlled parameter or contract-list changes do not affect already existing loans. Multiple independent protocol audits are available for review at: Audits | PWN Developer Docs .
6. Current MNT Lending Market
Aave’s Mantle WMNT market is highly constrained and does not provide meaningful MNT-backed liquidity today. WMNT is enabled as collateral, but only with 40% max LTV, 45% liquidation threshold, and a 10% liquidation penalty. At the time of writing, Aave shows only $678.75k reserve size, 1.69M WMNT supplied out of a 2.40M WMNT supply cap, $0 available liquidity, 0% utilization, and 0% supply APY. This makes the current market effectively unusable for serious MNT borrowing.
7. Conclusion
We would like to gather feedback from MNT holders, delegates, and treasury contributors on whether this structure is worth exploring further as a limited pilot.
At this stage, this is not a final proposal or request for approval. The goal is to determine whether there is enough community interest to schedule a pilot case of the allocation.