Onchain FX and multi-currency stablecoins for global settlement
Mento Labs is building onchain FX infrastructure for local-currency stablecoins. It enables digital versions of fiat currencies — USD, EUR, JPY, KES, NGN and more — to be issued and exchanged at oracle-anchored rates, making cross-currency settlement faster and more composable than traditional correspondent banking.
Mento's core innovation is turning FX into internet-native infrastructure: stable assets plus market mechanisms that make them tradable, liquid, and interoperable across chains and applications, used in 140+ countries.
How interoperable money replaces correspondent banking
Correspondent banking solves cross-currency settlement with chains of pre-funded accounts and slow netting. Onchain FX solves it with multi-currency stablecoins, oracle-anchored exchange rates, and AMMs that quote a price for any pair at any time — no pre-funding, no settlement delay, no opaque fees. We made the full argument in Interoperable Money as the Next Layer of Value, and it's the connective tissue between our Simple Finance thesis and our broader onchain FX research.
Why LAVA invested in Mento Labs
Interoperable money is a prerequisite for scalable onchain commerce, and local-currency stablecoins are a missing primitive for many emerging markets. Mento is one of the most advanced teams we've seen tackling onchain FX with real traction, reserves, and distribution.
This aligns tightly with our thesis: stablecoins are a settlement rail, but onchain FX is the layer that makes them globally useful while preserving local parity. If Mento wins, it becomes foundational infrastructure for how value moves between currencies onchain.