Introduction

Monad is a Layer-1 blockchain network designed to enhance the performance of Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible ecosystems. While maintaining full EVM compatibility, it achieves significant performance improvements through multi-layered technological innovations. The network’s core strength lies in its exceptional processing capacity of 10,000 transactions per second, approximately 1000 times faster than Ethereum’s 10 TPS. It offers single-block finality, meaning transactions are confirmed within a single block, drastically reducing wait times. Additionally, Monad’s transaction fees are extremely low, costing just fractions of a cent, making it economically viable for mass adoption and widespread use.

Team Members

Keone Hon

Keone Hon is Monad’s Co-founder and CEO. With over 10 years of experience in high-frequency trading and distributed systems, he previously worked at Jump Trading, a leading Wall Street trading firm, designing and optimizing low-latency systems. He graduated from MIT.

James Hunsaker

James Hunsaker is a Co-founder of Monad. As a former senior software engineer at Jump Trading, he worked at Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan. He graduated from the University of Iowa.

Eunice Giarta

Eunice Giarta is Monad’s Co-founder and COO. With extensive experience in traditional fintech, she previously worked in Shutterstock’s payments and infrastructure licensing division and led development teams at Broadway Technology, where she built enterprise trading systems. She graduated from MIT.

Funding Rounds

In February 2023, Monad Labs completed its first funding round of $19 million, led by Dragonfly Capital with participation from Placeholder Capital, Lemniscap, and others. Subsequently, in April 2024, the company secured a $225 million investment round led by Paradigm, with Electric Capital and Greenoaks Capital among the investors. There are also reports of additional investments from exchange-backed ventures like OKX Ventures.

To date, Monad Labs has raised a total of $244 million and is currently valued at approximately $3 billion, making it one of the highest-valued crypto projects.

Ecosystem

The Monad ecosystem is experiencing unprecedented growth, encompassing over 100 projects that form a diverse network of blockchain applications. This thriving ecosystem covers multiple key sectors in the blockchain space, creating a comprehensive and interconnected blockchain environment that offers rich opportunities for both users and developers. Below, we’ll explore the key components of the Monad ecosystem.

Liquid Staking

aPriori

aPriori is an MEV-driven liquid staking platform in the Monad ecosystem that offers users an innovative way to earn both traditional staking rewards and additional DeFi yields through liquid staking of Monad tokens. While traditional staking typically requires long-term token lockups and offers stable returns, it limits users’ ability to participate in other high-yield DeFi opportunities like lending, investing, and margin trading. aPriori solves this by issuing transferable aprMON tokens, which transform staked assets into liquid digital certificates, allowing users to participate in various DeFi protocols while continuing to earn staking rewards.

Additionally, aPriori introduces an MEV reward mechanism, utilizing MEV transactions in the Monad network to provide extra rewards and boost overall yields. Compared to traditional staking that requires running validator nodes or choosing delegates, aPriori significantly simplifies the staking process, enabling users to participate and earn multiple rewards without dealing with complex technical requirements. In essence, aPriori not only solves the liquidity constraints of traditional staking but also provides an efficient and convenient staking solution through its dual reward mechanism in the Monad ecosystem.

Magma

Magma is a DAO-governed liquid staking protocol in the Monad ecosystem that aims to ensure fair token distribution through a points system while providing secure, decentralized staking services. Through Magma’s staking pools, Monad token holders can stake their tokens to receive gMON liquid staking tokens, allowing them to earn staking rewards while maintaining liquidity and utilizing gMON across various DeFi applications in the Monad ecosystem for trading, lending, and liquidity provision.

Magma’s DAO structure balances the advantages of centralization and decentralization, fostering community participation and socially responsible decision-making. The DAO treasury supports protocol funding and technical upgrades, while service fees contribute to insurance and development funds. Additionally, Magma implements Distributed Validator Technology (DVT), first used in the Ethereum ecosystem, which significantly reduces slashing risks from node operation failures and enhances network decentralization. This technology reduces individual operator influence, promoting the security and stability of the entire Monad blockchain ecosystem.

Kintsu

Kintsu is a composable liquid staking protocol in the Monad ecosystem designed to help users earn staking rewards while participating in on-chain activities, thereby promoting Monad’s economic growth. It addresses key challenges in Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchains regarding liquidity and accessibility, eliminating competition between on-chain protocols and L1 staking for network security.

The protocol uses non-custodial smart contracts to aggregate users’ Gas Tokens for network staking and, through a DAO-controlled decentralized validator registration system, mints sMON liquid tokens representing the core MON Gas Token. As an ERC-20 token, sMON can be freely used in DeFi applications and as collateral, while the underlying MON tokens continue earning staking rewards and securing the network. Kintsu’s composability allows developers and community members to use sMON as collateral in other protocols while earning staking rewards, breaking free from traditional staking limitations. Moreover, by aggregating user tokens, Kintsu eliminates minimum staking requirements, enabling broader participation in staking and DeFi activities, thus fostering ecosystem growth.

Lending

Euler Finance

Euler is a flexible and efficient decentralized lending platform in the Monad ecosystem that simplifies lending operations and unlocks new DeFi opportunities. Modular design and institutional-grade security measures offer users a simple yet diverse lending experience while providing developers with powerful tools to create and manage custom lending markets. Euler’s core component is a modular lending protocol built on ERC-4626 vaults, allowing market creators to link multiple credit vaults to make everything from simple collateralized debt positions to complex cross-collateral credit markets. Additionally, Euler has introduced Earn vaults, enabling depositors to delegate their funds to risk managers who can deploy capital across various yield opportunities, whether within Euler’s credit vaults or external yield products. This modular and open design provides users with flexibility and high lending yields and drives innovation in financial tools across the Monad ecosystem.

Curvance

Curvance is an innovative protocol in the Monad ecosystem designed to address DeFi challenges through improved capital efficiency and composability. It implements a risk isolation model, segregating underlying assets from different DeFi ecosystems (such as Aerodrome, Pendle, Eigenlayer LRTs, and Ethena) into separate markets. It allows users to choose markets based on their risk preferences while maximizing returns. Using ERC-4626 vault technology, Curvance enables automatic reinvestment and liquidity routing, maintaining high capital efficiency during lending and staking activities while providing seamless cross-chain liquidity and strategy optimization. The protocol includes advanced features like native MEV protection, institutional-grade liquidation engines, dual oracles, volatility circuit breakers, and a developer-friendly plugin system, enhancing platform security and flexibility. Overall, Curvance provides Monad ecosystem users and developers with a modular, composable, and efficient DeFi toolbox for discovering and utilizing various yield opportunities while maximizing asset utilization.

RWA

Accountable

Accountable is a credit verification platform in the Monad ecosystem designed for crypto lending markets. It breaks away from traditional self-reporting methods by providing real-time, verifiable asset and liability data disclosure. In the current market, borrowers often prove their asset status through unaudited financial statements, screenshots, or other forms, making credit assessment and risk control extremely difficult. Accountable introduces real-time asset ownership verification, allowing instant confirmation of borrowers’ balances across banks, custodians, centralized exchanges, and hardware wallets.

The platform also addresses potential liability concealment through privacy-protected mechanisms. Other lenders can feed in third-party loan information using signed APIs and zero-knowledge proofs, enabling verification and disclosure of borrowers’ true debt situations. Whether through fully decentralized peer-to-peer data interaction, proxy node transmission, or future on-chain proof storage, these mechanisms significantly reduce information asymmetry risks and promote transparent decision-making between lending parties. Additionally, with trusted third-party audits, Accountable enhances financial statement accuracy and provides borrowers with self-discipline mechanisms to prevent fraudulent reporting.

By building a multi-layered, decentralized, and transparent information-sharing platform, Accountable protects the privacy of both lending parties while effectively revealing borrowers’ financial conditions. This provides a secure, efficient, and reliable operating environment for crypto lending markets in the Monad ecosystem.

Mu Digital

Mu Digital is an innovative platform in the Monad ecosystem that creates pathways for Asian enterprises to access USD financing from crypto and global liquidity markets. Its mission is to break down barriers of fragmented liquidity and geographical restrictions in traditional financial systems, enabling global capital to invest more easily in high-quality Asian assets. Mu Digital promises intermediary-free access to investment products traditionally controlled by select institutions. Leveraging their deep networks in traditional finance and understanding of Asian markets, they focus on bringing the highest quality, most reliable Asian assets on-chain. The platform combines DeFi’s native features with traditional finance’s security practices to offer institutional and individual investors access to high Asian yields while safely participating in the DeFi ecosystem.

AMM

Ambient Finance

Ambient is the core decentralized exchange protocol in the Monad ecosystem, offering a superior trading experience through innovative architecture. As a crucial part of Monad’s ecosystem, Ambient leverages the chain’s high-performance infrastructure by integrating all exchange functions into a single smart contract, running AMM pools as lightweight data structures rather than traditional standalone smart contracts. This design approach enables significant gas fee savings on the Monad network, making it one of the most efficient Ethereum-compatible decentralized exchanges.

Balancer

Balancer is a key decentralized automated market maker protocol in the Monad ecosystem. It focuses on efficient fungible asset trading and yield-generating liquidity solutions. Balancer v3 features a clean, flexible, and scalable architecture design. It moves core design patterns from pools to vaults and formally defines custom pool requirements, enabling an optimal decentralized trading experience in Monad’s high-performance environment.

In the Monad ecosystem, Balancer’s unique value lies in its flexibility. Compared to other protocol pools, Balancer pools introduce innovative features like “Hooks” and “Dynamic Swap Fees,” allowing for higher customization. These features perfectly complement Monad’s high throughput and low latency characteristics, providing users with an exceptional trading experience.

DEX Aggregators

Azaar

Azaar is an advanced DEX aggregator in the Monad ecosystem focusing on optimal trade routing and deep liquidity optimization.

Its core strength lies in its sophisticated routing engine, which analyzes the most efficient trading paths in real-time while optimizing gas fees, slippage, and cross-exchange liquidity to ensure users get the best possible prices.

For user experience, Azaar offers flexible interface options: a simple view for quick trades and an advanced view with price charts, routing analysis, and cross-exchange price comparisons. The platform also provides customizable settings for slippage tolerance, gas preferences, and exchange selection to meet diverse user needs.

Bean Exchange

Bean Exchange is a natively built hybrid orderbook-oracle perpetual DEX in the Monad ecosystem. It aims to integrate SocialFi and gamification elements into trading, offering innovative products, stable yields, and strategic hedging while simplifying the trading process for broader cryptocurrency and derivatives participation. Features include seamless trading through a high-performance matching engine, diverse market access, and a gamified trading platform with rewards through trading seasons and tournaments. Bean Exchange is committed to unlocking the full potential of decentralized derivatives while providing users with secure, stable organic returns and cross-asset hedging tools.

Advantages and Challenges

As a newcomer to the blockchain space, Monad faces intense competition. The market is already crowded with high-throughput blockchains and Layer 2 solutions vying for developers and users. Notable competitors include Solana, known for fast transactions, low fees, and its extensive DeFi and NFT ecosystem; Aptos and Sui, which use the Move programming language to enhance transaction efficiency; and Layer 2 solutions like Arbitrum and Optimism that leverage Ethereum’s security while reducing costs and increasing speed.

However, Monad distinguishes itself through its unique combination of competitive advantages with high-performance L1/L2s like Aptos, Sui, and Solana. Its core strength lies in full EVM compatibility, allowing direct access to Ethereum’s massive capital base and developer resources - something non-EVM chains like Aptos, Sui, and Solana lack. Monad easily attracts EVM liquidity through canonical and third-party bridges while leveraging Ethereum’s mature development tools, wallets, and infrastructure, significantly reducing barriers for developers and users. Beyond EVM compatibility, Monad introduces innovative technical solutions to address traditional EVM bottlenecks. These include parallel execution for faster transaction processing, decoupled consensus and execution through delayed execution, and purpose-built optimizations like MonadDB and MonadBFT consensus. These innovations enable Monad to compete with and outperform chains like Solana, Aptos, and Sui in key metrics like throughput, block time, and finality.

Potential Challenges

As a newcomer competing against established blockchains, Monad faces certain limitations. It lacks the battle-tested reliability of mature blockchains like Solana and the long-term security track record of Ethereum-based L2 solutions. New blockchain projects typically undergo rigorous security and stability scrutiny. Until Monad can demonstrate consistent performance and security over time, it may face skepticism from developers and users. Additionally, Monad’s ecosystem has limitations, including a limited number and quality of dApps, incomplete developer tools, and a scarcity of infrastructure providers (such as node operators and oracles).

However, these early limitations will likely be addressed as the Monad ecosystem grows. Through continuous technical iteration and community building, Monad can gradually accumulate operational experience and establish security credentials. Developer incentive programs, quality application incubation, and comprehensive technical documentation will attract more developer participation. Partnerships with existing infrastructure providers will accelerate ecosystem enrichment. As the user base grows and the developer community expands, network effects will emerge, enabling Monad to establish its market position in the competitive blockchain space potentially, ultimately achieving both technical and ecosystem value enhancement.

Conclusion

As a Layer-1 blockchain designed to enhance EVM ecosystem performance, Monad shows tremendous potential through its exceptional processing capabilities, minimal transaction fees, and compatibility with Ethereum’s vast ecosystem. Its ecosystem rapidly expands across key areas, including liquid staking, lending, and RWA, offering users and developers diverse options. While Monad faces fierce competition from established high-performance blockchains and Layer 2 solutions, and still needs time to prove itself and develop its ecosystem, its unique technical advantages and positive momentum suggest it could secure a significant position in the blockchain space while driving continued innovation and growth in the EVM ecosystem.