Joining us at the ADX is John Patrick Mullin, CEO and founder of Mantra. John, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me. Pleasure to be here.
Mantra — what is the company? It's a real world asset blockchain layer one. Can you help viewers understand what a layer one blockchain actually is and what you're doing?
Absolutely. Mantra has been around for about six years — we're actually turning six in August. We have built our own layer one blockchain, which means we have a sovereign network that enables users to trade, transact, and manage the entire lifecycle of real world assets using our technology. But Mantra is a lot more than just a blockchain network. We also hold regulatory licensing in the UAE, specifically under VARA in Dubai, with unique licensing for brokerage, exchange, and asset management specific to DeFi and on-chain use cases. We've built a perpetual futures on-chain trading application built on top of Hyperliquid, and we have our own stablecoin backed by US treasuries — a fully collateralised settlement currency within our ecosystem. All of it is focused on real world asset tokenization, with Mantra chain as the underpinning technology.
For those not clear on the benefits — why should these assets trade on-chain? What problem are you solving?
There are a number of fundamental problems. One is the illiquidity of certain asset classes — private credit, private equity, real estate. These are low-frequency, low-trading assets that generally don't have price discovery or broad access. To invest in them today, you're largely limited to large institutional investors. Tokenization enables an on-chain representation of these assets that can be fractionally owned in smaller quantities, creating on-chain price discovery for assets that cannot currently access it in their traditional form.
For ADGM-regulated issuers and funds looking to put real world assets on-chain, what are the institutional safeguards?
There are three pillars: trust, technology, and regulatory oversight. We approach regulation as a benefit and an extension of what we're building. We've seen how the DeFi space continues to suffer from hacks and exploits — that's a serious problem for anyone building in this space. So we've put both technological safeguards in place — KYC, AML, permissioned access — and leaned heavily into compliance, working with regulators in the UAE and globally to ensure our products meet the required standards.
We're seeing blockchain companies marry their technology with agentic AI. How does that story help Mantra chain?
Inveniam, our acquirer, is a private market data and AI-ready infrastructure company with deep roots in the UAE. Mantra has been heavily focused on tokenization and the DeFi side of things. When you bring these two together you get the best of both worlds. Private market data tends to be fragmented and opaque — there's limited price availability for these assets on an ongoing basis. What Inveniam wants to do is take private market data, give it real-time pricing, real-time NAV, and trustworthy valuations that can translate into price discovery in a live market. When you combine that with Mantra's technology, you enable systematic trading of private market assets on-chain in a fully closed-loop system. That complementary fit is exactly why Inveniam doubled down — they invested $20 million at the end of last year and then decided to fully acquire us. I'll be leading a digital asset arm called Inveniam Digital, focused on crypto, tokenization, and real world asset use cases supporting what they're already doing on the agentic finance and private market data side.
Congratulations. How does this acquisition transform the ecosystem for financial players in Abu Dhabi over the next three years?
It's a continuation of what both Mantra and Inveniam have been doing — marrying blockchain, private market assets, and price discovery to enable systematic on-chain trading. Both tokenization and AI have gone gangbusters in the last 12 to 18 months. We want to double and triple down on that thesis, with a clear focus on Abu Dhabi and the UAE — a hub for capital, a hub for AI, and a hub for tokenization. Our goal is to deliver the best products to market that enable the systematic trading of private market assets.
Fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us today.
