Mumbai, Accra, Manila.

You may have never set foot in these cities, but in some corner of these cities, there are always one or two small Money Changers that provide seemingly inconspicuous yet crucial services: exchanging dollars for local cash, or vice versa.

Why are the currency exchange points in these cities so dense?

Because for a large number of people living in countries with "unstable local currency", currency exchange is a survival instinct👇

// The currency depreciates too quickly, and the salary you receive today won't be worth anything tomorrow;

// The banking system is undercovered, and cross-border transfers are expensive and slow;

// Government capital controls are severe, and legal channels are restricted;

// Receiving US dollars and spending local currency has become the "default financial path" in reality.

So they relied on these seemingly simple small shops to complete the daily economic cycle with cash for cash. These Money Changer actually constitute the most primitive and grassroots foreign exchange system in the real world.

Without Wall Street's algorithmic trading, market makers, clearing houses, and complex KYC processes, it is flexible, accessible, and available around the clock, providing liquidity for billions of people without bank accounts.

Mento brings everything on chain
@MentoLabs is trying to redefine this matter. We can imagine Mento as the "people's IMF" on the chain, aiming to provide a fair, stable, and open on-chain foreign exchange infrastructure for everyone excluded from finance.

——That's right, even in 2025, this is still very necessary. This is the necessity of Crypto.

After entering the V3 version, Mento is no longer content with issuing stablecoins pegged to fiat currencies and doing swaps. Its goal has become:

// On-chain Forex Anchor

// Multi-chain local "central bank" system

// Provide composable liquidity for the next generation of global payment systems

// Stablecoin + Oracle = Zero Slippage Exchange Experience

In terms of underlying design, Mento has discarded the traditional AMM model and adopted a mechanism combination that is very suitable for foreign exchange needs:

Fixed Price Market Maker (FPMM) + Oracle Pricing

You are not trading with the counterparty of the pool, but rather with a real-time exchange rate oracle, with prices fed by the on-chain oracles of @chainlink / @redstone_defi. There will be no slippage regardless of the amount, even for a transaction of 10 million dollars.

This makes it particularly suitable for:

// Native currency stablecoin exchange

// Cross-border remittance

// Commercial Public Settlement

// Stablecoin arbitrage between multiple chains

In other words, it does not rely on TVL to roll the market, but rather on precise exchange rate anchoring capability and on-chain clearing and settlement efficiency, in building a cross-chain foreign exchange "highway".

The most important step of Mento V3 is the introduction of the CDP (Collateralized Debt Position) system.
You can stake assets such as ETH, BTC, CELO, USDC, etc., to directly mint local currency stablecoins:
For example:

- Use SOL as collateral to mint Philippine Peso (PUSO)
- Use ETH as collateral to mint Nigerian Naira (cNGN)
- Use BTC as collateral to mint Indian Rupees (future support)

This is no longer just a stablecoin exchange, but a replica of the local on-chain currency issuance mechanism.
Mento has turned into a series of "on-chain central banks", building a permissionless, on-chain auditable, and scalable monetary system for each currency zone.

This is also its unique foothold in the "on-chain RWA exchange rate system." It's not just talk; Mento has successfully implemented real-world scenarios.

Unlike most stablecoin projects that are still in the white paper phase, Mento has been deeply integrated into real-world payment networks.

It is the core settlement engine of MiniPay (a mobile wallet powered by Celo's infrastructure), primarily targeting non-crypto users in the African market, directly connecting the USDC → local currency payment path.

As of now, Mento has achieved the following remarkable accomplishments:
// 700 million on-chain transactions
// 8 million+ real users
// The total settlement amount exceeds 15 billion USD

These transactions are not bots inflating volume, nor are they airdrop interactions, but real people in the world using stablecoins to pay for utilities, rent, dining, and transfers.
This is what "financial inclusion without intermediaries" should look like.

To achieve all of this, Mento does not stick to a single chain. It already supports including:

- Celo (mainchain)
- Ethereum
- Solana
And through collaboration with Wormhole, realized stablecoin cross-chain circulation between 40+ chains.

This means:
You can mint cZAR (South African Rand) on Solana, spend it on Ethereum, and finally withdraw to your local wallet on Celo through MiniPay.

To some extent, this is a combination of on-chain SWIFT + Visa + MoneyGram.

Token Economics: Not Launched but Clearly Structured

Although Mento's governance token has not been launched yet, the mechanism is already clear: all transaction fees will be used for repurchase + burn, and system revenue is linked to protocol growth.

The TGE plan has not yet been announced, perhaps waiting for the ecosystem to complete the V3 rollout before officially starting. This means that as more trading volume, CDP collateral demand, and cross-chain exchanges occur, the protocol's revenue will directly drive the scarcity of governance tokens.

For long-termists, this will be a very clean value capture model linked to the real world.

Overall: Mento should be seen as an on-chain foreign exchange infrastructure, rather than another "DeFi that plays with stablecoins". In the current era where stablecoins are prevalent, it could potentially become a universal global currency settlement system.