Mento

Reserve posture

Mento runs two backing models at once. Its documentation states that the Reserve backs the dollar and euro units, USDm and EURm, and that the Reserve holds other issuers' fiat backed stablecoins against them: USDC, USDT and USDS behind the dollar unit, and Circle's EUROC behind the euro one. The second model is a collateralised debt position system that Mento states is forked from Liquity v2, in which a user locks the dollar unit and borrows a currency token against it.

Which token sits in which model is a question about today rather than about the design. The documentation describes the borrowed side as covering GBPm and others, and says most Mento stablecoins are CDP-backed, which is the direction of travel rather than the current state. Mento's reserve dashboard reports where the supply actually sits, and on 2 October 2026 it named three borrowed markets: the pound, yen and Swiss franc units, each collateralised in the dollar unit at more than one and a half times the debt on that reading. The remaining 12 currency tokens, including the dollar and euro units, were counted in the Reserve backed set. The borrowed layer was under 2% of Mento's total supply.

The Reserve itself holds more than the documentation's list. On the same reading the dashboard showed dollar stablecoins at 60.6% of about $20.8 million in holdings, euro stablecoins (EUROP, EURC and bridged EUROC) at 10.5%, and CELO, stETH and ETH at 28.9%.

So a Mento pound is a claim on Mento's dollar unit, and a Mento naira or real is a claim on the same Reserve that stands behind that dollar unit. Neither one is a claim on a bank account holding the currency printed on the ticker, and there was never meant to be one.

That is a coherent design and it is not the design most people assume when they see a local currency ticker. The documentation names the failure modes for the borrowed side plainly: a position can become undercollateralised through movement in the exchange rate, or through the dollar unit losing its own peg. On the Reserve backed side the question is what the Reserve holds, and because it holds other issuers' stablecoins alongside CELO, stETH and ETH, a reader inherits those issuers' disclosure and the price of those assets along with Mento's. A reader evaluating a Mento token is working through one of those two questions rather than the safety of a bank account.

Sources: Mento docs: The Reserve, Mento docs: CDPs, Mento Reserve dashboard, Mento blog: Mento V3 is here (4 March 2026)

Coins issued

Mento's own reserve dashboard publishes the reserve's holdings and a collateralization ratio. It is worth reading what that ratio covers before carrying it to a coin. The documentation defines it as reserve holdings divided by the supply of the Reserve backed stables, so it is one figure for that whole set rather than a statement about any single token. The dashboard does publish a ratio per borrowed market, and that measures something else again: dollar unit collateral locked against what has been borrowed from it.

One consequence for readers comparing coins across this map: a Mento token and a fiat backed token with the same peg are not competing products with different levels of safety. They are different instruments, and a disclosure rating built to measure fiat reserves does not rank them against each other.

Sources: Mento Reserve dashboard, Mento docs: The Reserve, Mento docs: CDPs

Common questions