Mantle Staked Ether
mETHMantle Staked Ether (mETH) is plain ETH liquid staking, structurally simpler than the restaking products that surround it, and it has the fastest verified exit of any liquid staking token we rate. Its unstake queue currently shows zero deficit with every outstanding request already fully funded, giving a roughly twelve-hour finalisation against a liquid buffer of about 21,000 ETH, close to nine percent of TVL. mETH scores 53/100 (Tier 3) on the RWTS Trust Score. What holds it back is not operations but accountability: Mantle's terms name no legal entity at all, so there is no identifiable issuer, no licence holder and no counterparty responsible for the peg. The validator set is not publicly enumerable, only aggregate balances are published, and the sponsoring treasury that would backstop any stress is 70 percent Mantle's own MNT token, which means the backstop is correlated with the risk it would be called on to cover. TVL is down 73 percent from its March 2024 peak. The related restaking wrapper cmETH is deliberately excluded from our corpus: minting was halted on 7 May 2026 and it has lost 95 percent of peak value, so rating it as a live product would mislead.
- Issuer / protocol
- mETH Protocol (Mantle)
- Backing
- Staked ETH, 1.0976 ETH per mETH, validator set not publicly enumerable
- Redemption / lock-up
- Roughly 12 hours at current funding levels, longer if the liquid buffer is exhausted
- Audit & proof of reserves
- Independently audited
- Availability
- Global
- Chain
- Ethereum
- Tier
- Tier 3 — Secured DeFi
- Contract
- 0xd5F7…ADfa
Scored on the published RWTS methodology (v1.1), reviewed quarterly and on material events. Ratings are independent and never pay-influenced.
Calculations are indicative. Actual yields may vary.
Price data from CoinGecko. Not financial advice.
Projections assume constant APY of 2.57%. Actual returns may vary. Not financial advice.
Beyond mETH's own score, two structural questions matter: what is it built on, and what has broken before in this part of the market. A high score in isolation can still carry hidden, shared exposure.
What this and similar assets are built on, and where contagion could spread.
The depegs, defaults, and exploits that inform the Track Record dimension.
Liquidity read: TVL of $583.68M indicates healthy on-chain liquidity. Lock-up: Roughly 12 hours at current funding levels, longer if the liquid buffer is exhausted.
Is mETH safe?
mETH (Mantle Staked Ether) scores 53/100 on the independent RWTS Trust Score, which places it in Secured DeFi (Tier 3). Tier 3 carries real DeFi exposure: the backing is sound but smart-contract and collateral risk are live, so size positions accordingly. Backing: Staked ETH, 1.0976 ETH per mETH, validator set not publicly enumerable. It is independently audited. The score reflects backing, verification, redeemability, audit, regulatory standing, and track record, not headline yield. We rate. You decide.
Exit routes
12/15 · right 5/8 · routes 7/7If the issuer stopped cooperating tomorrow, could you get out?
Yes, by more than one independent route
- independent
Mantle LSP unstake
Contract-enforced, subject to the Ethereum exit queue.
- independent
Agni Finance, Mantle
82.2% of volume. Mantle-ecosystem but permissionless; the issuer cannot close it.
- independent
Kraken
9.8% of volume on a venue wholly independent of Mantle.
Route 7. Right 5, a queue rather than a desk. The score falls by 1 overall, from 13 to 12: the old figure credited a redemption right that is really a contract queue.
This is the redeemability component of the Trust Score above, which stands at 53/100 (C-). Until 1 September 2026 redeemability was a single figure measuring the right to redeem while ignoring how many routes existed to exercise it. Splitting it moved this asset’s score. How the score works
Assessed 2026-09-01. Route independence asks how many ways out the issuer cannot close, not how much the asset trades.
Compare mETH
Head to head on the Trust Score with similar assets.