The Ambition of Monad: From Parallel Execution to Large-Scale Applications

2025-09-24 11:36:17

Collection

Written before Monad TGE, interpreting the focus on "high performance + full EVM compatibility" of the public chain disruptor.

This article is co-authored by K1 Research and Klein Labs

Key points:

Monad is a Layer 1 public chain focused on "high performance + full EVM compatibility," having raised over $240 million in total funding. The mainnet is expected to launch by the end of 2025 and is poised to become a breakthrough in the public chain space where "performance and compatibility cannot coexist." Its optimistic parallel EVM design is the core technological breakthrough direction.
Utilizing the "MonadBFT consensus + optimistic parallel EVM" architecture, it can achieve 0.8-1 second single-round speculative finality and 70%-80% parallel execution of transactions. The performance stability in complex scenarios still needs further validation after the mainnet launch.
Compared to other parallel EVM projects in the same track, Monad has formed a differentiated advantage with its "independent Layer 1 architecture + fully EVM native compatibility + over $240 million in funding reserves." During the testnet phase, it has already demonstrated performance potential with a 0.5-second block interval.
The ecosystem has gathered over 280 projects, with total ecosystem financing reaching $1.32 billion. It promotes ecological cold starts through hackathons, specialized accelerators, and other support mechanisms, with capital flow concentrated in DeFi infrastructure and core application layers.
With a core strategy of "Builders First" to attract developers, Monad faces controversies regarding mainnet progress and validator decentralization. However, its ecosystem friendliness and technological innovation provide support for long-term value. Moving forward, it needs to overcome key challenges related to performance commitment fulfillment and user retention.

1. New Public Chain Star Monad: Background and Development Milestones

1.1 Breakthrough Monad: Positioning, Origin, and Vision

Looking back at the development of public chains, Ethereum has built the largest ecosystem due to its EVM compatibility, but performance bottlenecks have always constrained its scalable applications. Solana, representing "high-performance public chains" with ultra-high TPS, has faced a trust crisis due to insufficient decentralization and technical stability issues. The experiences and lessons from these two leading public chains provide a clear reference for Monad's positioning.

Monad's emergence is precisely aimed at the core pain point of the current public chain track: "performance and compatibility cannot coexist." Its core positioning is as a "Layer 1 public chain that combines extreme performance with complete EVM compatibility." Unlike some public chains that sacrifice EVM compatibility for performance or compromise performance for compatibility, Monad attempts to break this "dilemma" from the bottom-up architectural design—achieving high-performance breakthroughs through innovative consensus mechanisms and execution layer optimizations while maintaining seamless compatibility with Ethereum's EVM. This allows developers to migrate applications to Monad without needing to refactor code, while providing users with low-latency, low-cost transaction experiences.

From an origin perspective, Monad's birth directly addresses the real bottlenecks of the Ethereum ecosystem. With the explosive growth of applications like DeFi, NFTs, and GameFi, the Ethereum network frequently experiences TPS dropping below 15, gas fees soaring to tens or even hundreds of dollars, and transaction confirmation delays exceeding 10 minutes during peak periods. For instance, during the "bull market" of 2021, the gas fee for a single NFT transaction on OpenSea peaked at $196, forcing ordinary users out of high-frequency trading scenarios. DeFi protocol liquidation transactions often fail due to network congestion, leading to user asset losses. Although Ethereum has alleviated some pressure through Layer 2 scaling solutions, the interaction costs between Layer 2 and the mainnet and the complexity of cross-chain solutions remain fundamentally unresolved. The Monad team consists of engineers with years of experience in blockchain infrastructure development, who have deeply participated in optimizing Ethereum's core protocol and debugging Solana's performance. Its core members are acutely aware that to achieve large-scale commercial use of blockchain, it is essential to simultaneously tackle the three major challenges of "performance, compatibility, and decentralization" at the Layer 1 level, which has also become the core motivation for launching the Monad project.

Monad's long-term vision is not simply to replace an existing public chain but to build a "universal platform" for the next generation of blockchain infrastructure: on one hand, it aims to meet the scene demands that Ethereum currently cannot support, such as high-frequency trading, large-scale gaming, and real-time data interaction, through performance goals of 10,000 TPS, 1-second finality, and "less than 1 cent" average gas fees; on the other hand, relying on its fully EVM-compatible features, it aims to attract developers and project resources from the Ethereum ecosystem, forming a "seamless migration, efficient operation" ecological closed loop. Ultimately, through a dynamic validator mechanism and distributed storage solutions, it seeks to ensure the decentralized nature of the network, allowing ordinary nodes to participate in network maintenance. From a broader perspective, Monad hopes to promote blockchain technology from "niche experimentation" to "mass application," providing underlying support for the digital transformation of traditional industries such as finance, logistics, healthcare, and social networking, and truly realizing the industry vision of "empowering the real economy with high-performance blockchain."

1.2 A Visual Overview! Monad's "Growth Surge" Timeline

From this timeline, it is clear that Monad's "star halo" is not accidental but the inevitable result of the synergistic efforts of capital support, talent strength, and technological implementation capabilities:

In terms of financing, Monad has successfully attracted continuous support from top industry capital due to its clear technological positioning and broad development prospects. In 2023, it completed a $19 million seed round led by Dragonfly Capital, and in 2024, it secured $225 million led by Paradigm, with total funding exceeding $240 million. Notable institutions such as Coinbase Ventures and Electric Capital are among the investors, and the project's valuation has risen to $3 billion, laying a solid financial foundation for technological breakthroughs, team expansion, and ecological layout.

On the team level, core members come from leading financial and technology institutions such as Jump Trading and Goldman Sachs, possessing deep expertise in distributed system design and low-latency trading optimization. Some members have also deeply participated in the iteration of Ethereum's core protocol and performance debugging of Solana, providing key support for the project to overcome the industry's pain points of "performance - compatibility - decentralization" with their professional technical backgrounds.

In terms of technological implementation, the performance during the testnet phase further confirms its potential—after going live, the peak TPS reached 5200, processing over 334 million RPC requests within 12 hours, and the total number of on-chain addresses exceeded 300 million. This not only validates the feasibility and stability of core technologies such as parallel EVM and MonadBFT but also demonstrates strong attraction to users and developers.

The organic combination of capital, talent, and technological implementation capabilities constitutes the core driving force behind Monad's rapid development in the public chain track, enabling it to stand out in fierce competition.

1.3 Uncertainty and Future Outlook

Although Monad faces some challenges during its development, these challenges also provide opportunities for the project to refine its technology and promote ecological growth. Currently, the uncertainties surrounding Monad mainly focus on the mainnet launch timeline, changes in user activity, and the efficiency of funding usage. However, with the ongoing operation of the testnet, the gradual rollout of the mainnet will clarify the project's progress and potential. The community's doubts are more based on differences in expectations and typical issues in the early stages rather than fatal flaws in the project itself.

In the future, when monitoring Monad's development, we should not only closely observe whether its promised high-performance goals can be fulfilled on time but also pay special attention to the progress of technological delivery, the effectiveness of decentralized execution, and the actual implementation of ecological construction. As the mainnet launch approaches, these factors will determine Monad's true competitiveness in the public chain field.

Subsequent analyses will delve into various dimensions such as network data and operational metrics, technical deconstruction, competitive landscape and advantage analysis, ecological development, community culture, and builder motivations to comprehensively assess its development potential and long-term risks.

2. Network Data and Operational Metrics

2.1 Performance Metrics

Transaction throughput and success rate: The Monad Testnet Overview Dashboard shows that as of the end of August 2025, the testnet has processed approximately 255 million successful transactions, with an average success rate of 98.18% over the past 90 days. Institutional validator Twinstake's nodes achieved a 100% block proposal rate and a 100% block success rate in Testnet-2, with the average block success rate of the validation network around 98.75%, indicating stable consensus efficiency under high-performance goals.

Source: Twinstake | Monad in the Wild: Institutional Insights from Testnet Deployment

TPS and fees: The panel shows that TPS peaked at 300-350 TPS during March-April 2025 (with an average of about 100 TPS per week), indicating a gap between actual throughput and the claimed theoretical value of 10,000 TPS; the median transaction fee over the past 90 days was about 0.0028 MON.
Block delay: Although the panel did not directly provide the average block time, it can be inferred from the stable transaction throughput and the absence of widespread failures between June and July 2025 that the block interval was maintained at sub-second levels, validating the stability of the testnet's parallel execution architecture.

2.2 On-Chain Data

Address and wallet activity: The Monad Foundation's panel reports a total of 310,630,141 unique addresses. The BlockRaptor panel defines "active wallets" as addresses that have made at least one successful transaction, calculating approximately 309,903,696 active wallets, with an average of about 7 transactions per wallet.

Source: https://dune.com/monad_foundation/monad-testnet-overview-dashboard

Transaction distribution and temporal evolution: The "Active Wallets & Tx By Month" chart from BlockRaptor shows that the growth of testnet users exhibits a significant "surge and drop" characteristic: active wallets in March were 86.92 million, surging to 215 million in April, then dropping to 11.28 million in May, and stabilizing at around 4 million from June to August; corresponding monthly transaction counts per wallet fell from 6 in March to 3 in April, then rebounded to ranges of 29, 83, and 111 after May. This data reveals that the massive registrations driven by "airdrop expectations" in the early stages did not translate into sustained activity.
Smart contracts and contract creators: The official panel shows that as of the end of August, a total of 36,108,124 contracts have been deployed, generated by 2,975,837 contract creators. The BlockRaptor panel's monthly statistics indicate that contract creation peaked in March-April (with 60,000-80,000 new contracts each month), then declined, but the cumulative number continues to grow steadily.
Wallet behavior distribution: The BlockRaptor panel provides a breakdown of active wallets by transaction count each month: in April, 209.5 million wallets made only one transaction, accounting for 97.5% of the total active wallets that month; only 0.9% of wallets executed more than 10 transactions within the month. Overall, by August, 293,597,158 of all active wallets had only transacted once, accounting for about 89%, further indicating that testnet users are predominantly short-term "participatory" users.

2.3 Decentralization Status

Validator nodes and contract creators: Currently, there are about 186 active validators on the Monad testnet. From the validator table, it can be seen that all validators have a uniform staking amount of 200 units, with a success rate generally close to 100%, demonstrating strong consistency. Validators come from various countries including Romania, Germany, Ireland, South Korea, and Singapore. This indicates that Monad has achieved a preliminary balance between performance and decentralization, reserving space for expanding the validator scale in the mainnet phase.

Source: https://www.gmonads.com/validators

From the comprehensive data on performance, user participation, and developer activity in the Monad testnet: the billions of accumulated transactions and over 300 million active wallets reflect early market interest, but user stickiness and genuine activity levels are relatively low; only a few users maintain high-frequency trading on average each month, and the transaction success rate remains stable above 98%, with transaction fees extremely low, indicating that the core technical architecture can support high loads but is still in the ramp-up phase.

3. Technical Deconstruction

3.1 Consensus Layer: MonadBFT------ Making High-Performance Consensus More Reliable

One of the core reasons Monad can achieve high performance is its self-developed MonadBFT consensus mechanism. It is based on the improvements of the HotStuff consensus from 2018, addressing the congestion issue of traditional BFT protocols (like PBFT) when there are too many messages and fixing the common "tail fork" vulnerability of HotStuff, laying the foundation for the high performance of the entire chain.

3.1.1 Four Core Innovations of MonadBFT

Anti-tail fork: The new leader must first re-propose the last valid block, and only when a majority of validators "have not seen that block" can a new block be proposed, ensuring that valid blocks are not lost;
Fast confirmation: A single vote constitutes "basic confirmation" of transactions, completed within hundreds of milliseconds, and will not roll back unless the proposer violates the rules;
Flexible response: No fixed block time is set; the network completes consensus in 200-300 milliseconds, quickly switching in case of leader failure;
Scalable: Validators communicate unidirectionally with the leader, and performance is not affected even with hundreds of nodes participating.

3.1.2 Comparison with HotStuff Family Protocols

3.2 Execution Layer: Optimistic Parallel EVM------ Achieving Compatibility and Performance

The execution layer of Monad adopts an optimistic parallel EVM, which is fully compatible with the Ethereum EVM ecosystem while breaking through performance bottlenecks through parallel processing.

3.2.1 Core Positioning: "Fully Compatible" to Capture Ecological Dividends

It supports the latest Ethereum instructions and pre-built features, allowing existing contracts to be deployed without modification. Common tools (like Hardhat, MetaMask) can be directly integrated, significantly reducing migration costs for developers.

3.2.2 Technological Breakthrough: Optimistic Parallel Execution and Conflict Rollback Mechanism

Monad enhances efficiency through an optimistic parallel mechanism of "execute first, verify later": it groups unrelated transactions for parallel processing, and if transactions modify the same data, it rolls back conflicting results and re-runs them in order. Tests show that 70%-80% of transactions can be processed in parallel, with DeFi scenario efficiency being 8-10 times that of Ethereum.

3.2.3 Differentiated Advantages Compared to Ethereum Rollups

3.3 Technical Synergy Value: Objective Perspective on Advantages and Realistic Considerations

The consensus layer and execution layer of Monad attempt to break the "performance, compatibility, and decentralization" dilemma of public chains through technical synergy, but its actual value needs to be viewed objectively in light of technical characteristics and implementation challenges.

3.3.1 Verified Core Advantages: Addressing Clear Industry Pain Points

From the performance of the testnet and technical design, Monad's technological combination has already demonstrated targeted improvement value:

User experience: Transaction confirmation has been compressed from "minute-level" to "millisecond-level," with gas fees only 1/20-1/30 of Ethereum's, balancing speed and stability;
Developer-friendly: Zero migration costs provide possibilities for applications such as high-frequency trading and on-chain games that Ethereum struggles to support;
Ecological capture: Directly connecting to Ethereum's $52 billion TVL and a vast developer resource pool accelerates ecological maturity.

3.3.2 Observational Realistic Challenges: Uncertainties in Technological Implementation

Performance in complex transaction scenarios: The mainnet needs to validate the processing efficiency of multiple cross-dependent transactions;
Validator decentralization: Balancing the participation threshold for ordinary nodes with consensus efficiency;
Ecological differentiation: Attracting Ethereum Layer 2 developers to migrate and strengthening scenario advantages.

4. Competitive Landscape and Advantage Analysis

4.1 Core Public Chain Performance and Ecosystem Comparison: Monad & MegaETH & BSC & Sei

4.2 Comprehensive Review: Monad's Core Competitiveness and Breakthrough Challenges in the High-Performance EVM Public Chain Track

In the differentiated competition of the high-performance EVM track, Monad has significant advantages in capital strength, technical route, and ecological compatibility, laying a solid foundation for its rapid growth in the track.

Core Barriers in Track Competition

Dual moat of capital and ecological migration: Monad has raised approximately $244 million, far exceeding MegaETH (around $43 million) and Sei, providing strong support for technological development and ecological initiation. More importantly, Monad's 100% bytecode-level compatibility with Ethereum offers an almost zero-cost contract migration path: developers do not need to rewrite contracts, and users do not need to change wallets or habits. This feature significantly lowers the barriers for the ecosystem to migrate from Ethereum to Monad, giving it the potential to rapidly gather DeFi and dApps.
Performance positioning advantage of an independent public chain: As an independent L1, Monad adopts its self-developed MonadBFT consensus and optimistic parallel EVM, targeting a throughput of 5000-10,000 TPS and performance goals of 0.8-1 second finality, striving to achieve high performance without sacrificing decentralization. In contrast, MegaETH pursues sub-millisecond latency through a single sequencer but faces significant centralization controversies; BSC's PoSA model has only 21 validators, limiting its degree of decentralization; while Sei v2 can provide 28k+ TPS batch throughput, it still needs validation on the Mainnet. Monad's positioning makes it more attractive in scenarios requiring independent security boundaries.

In summary, Monad has established a clear advantage in the high-performance EVM track with ample capital, complete EVM compatibility, and high-performance positioning as an independent public chain. If it can successfully fulfill its performance goals, enhance decentralization, and cultivate an application ecosystem, it is likely to become a benchmark for "high performance + full compatibility" independent public chains.

5. Ecological Development

5.1 Ecological Capital Dynamics: Top Projects Favored by Leading Capital

As a new generation Layer 1 public chain with cumulative financing exceeding $240 million and a valuation surpassing $3 billion, Monad's capital attractiveness also extends to the ecological level. Its top ecological projects have received intensive investments from leading institutions such as Pantera Capital and Binance Labs, injecting strong momentum into ecological cold starts.

Currently, Monad's ecological projects are primarily in the seed and angel rounds, with capital enthusiasm concentrated in areas with "strong technical adaptability and clear scene implementation." The following will outline representative projects within the ecosystem across multiple tracks, showcasing its diversified layout characteristics.

5.2 Ecological Expansion: Portal Acquisition and Stablecoin Layout

In July 2025, the Monad Foundation completed the acquisition of Portal, marking a key step in Monad's strategic layout in the stablecoin and payment infrastructure sectors. Portal is a company providing cross-chain stablecoin wallets and payment solutions, and its platform is already capable of supporting daily settlements of stablecoins worth millions of dollars through this acquisition.

The strategic significance of this acquisition by the Monad Foundation includes:

Rapid entry into the stablecoin market, reducing reliance on external stablecoins;
Strengthening underlying financial infrastructure, providing reliable support for DeFi, payments, and trading scenarios;
Direct investment from the foundation signals a focus on developing stablecoins and payment scenarios within the ecosystem.

Overall, the Portal acquisition event is not only a capital investment but also a forward-looking layout by Monad in financial infrastructure and the stablecoin ecosystem before the mainnet launch, providing solid support for subsequent DeFi and payment scenario implementations.

5.3 Ecological Scale: Layout Prototype and Growth Potential Before Mainnet Launch

According to official statistics from Monad in 2025, its official ecological directory has included nearly 280 projects, covering diverse fields such as DeFi, infrastructure, AI, gaming, payments, and DePIN, forming a layout characteristic of "full track coverage with a focus on key areas."

It is noteworthy that although the mainnet has not yet officially launched, Monad has attracted a large number of quality startup teams due to its technological advantages of "high performance (high throughput, low latency) + full EVM compatibility," combined with the industry influence of top capital endorsements. The ecological system has gradually transitioned from the early "concept incubation" phase to the critical preparation period of "application function testing and scenario refinement"—for example, several core applications in the DeFi field have completed testnet iterations, and infrastructure projects have achieved initial adaptation to the ecosystem, laying a solid foundation for rapid growth in user scale and transaction volume after the mainnet launch.

5.4 Ecological Composition: Multi-Track Project Matrix and Core Cases

The Monad ecosystem presents a pattern of "DeFi as the core, with multi-track collaborative extension": DeFi projects lead with a quantity of 12, becoming the most active core track in the ecosystem; wallets, as key entry points for users to access the ecosystem, have gathered 4 projects; simultaneously, "infrastructure" tracks such as identity, data analysis, and foundational infrastructure, as well as innovative tracks like AI and prediction markets, have also seen project implementations, reflecting the ecosystem's expansion logic from "core financial scenarios" to "underlying support + diversified applications."

Source: Monad

Combining financing dynamics with official support focuses on core projects within the Monad ecosystem that are capital-intensive and officially promoted, analyzing the development potential and implementation progress of each track.

5.4.1 DeFi Infrastructure and Core Applications (Capital-Intensive Area)

aPriori (@apr_labs)

Financing: Seed round + strategic investment totaling over $30 million (led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Binance Labs).
Positioning: MEV-optimized LSD derivatives platform, focusing on Monad's native staking ecosystem.
Highlights: Reduces gas costs by over 30% through MEV capture technology, supports the issuance of various types of staking derivatives; is a "benchmark project" in the ecosystem's DeFi sector, receiving key support from the Monad Foundation's "Fundraising & Foundry Program."

Fastlane Labs (@0xFastLane)

Financing: Strategic round of $6 million (led by Figment Capital and DBA) and seed round of $2.3 million (led by Multicoin Capital).
Positioning: Provider of low-latency trading execution optimization solutions.
Highlights: Compresses transaction confirmation delays to sub-millisecond levels, suitable for high-frequency quantitative and derivatives trading; customizes trading packaging logic for MonadBFT consensus, serving as the "performance foundation" infrastructure in the ecosystem.

Kintsu (@KintsuFinance)

Financing: Seed round of $4 million (led by Castle Island Ventures).
Positioning: Liquidity staking service platform.
Highlights: Supports staking of Monad's native tokens and multi-chain assets, deeply integrated with Monad's consensus mechanism to ensure the security and yield efficiency of staked assets; is a core project in the "Staking layer" of the Monad ecosystem.

Curvance (@Curvance)

Support: Gained the "Ecological Pioneer" label from Monad during the testnet phase, ranking in the top 3 in community enthusiasm.
Positioning: Multi-chain lending market (focusing on the Monad mainnet).
Highlights: Supports lending of over 15 types of assets, leveraging Monad's low gas advantage to offer borrowing rates 40% lower than Ethereum Layer 2; user numbers exceeded 100,000 during the testnet phase, and it is expected to become the ecosystem's "lending hub" after the mainnet launch.

Perpl (@perpltrade)

Financing: Strategic/seed round of approximately $9.25 million (led by Dragonfly).
Positioning: Decentralized perpetual contract exchange (perps DEX), built on the Monad chain using EVM architecture, and plans to use an on-chain central limit order book (CLOB) mechanism.
Highlights: ① Plans to launch the testnet by the end of the year, allowing users to try it out early and help identify bugs; ② Utilizes Monad's low latency and EVM compatibility to enhance trading experience and compliance speed (token launches may be faster than traditional trading platforms); ③ Concentrates all liquidity in perpetual contracts rather than spreading it across multiple expiration months (unlike options with multiple expiration contracts) to enhance liquidity depth and trading experience.

Modus Finance (@Modus_Finance)

Positioning: DeFi lending protocol with high capital efficiency and composability, supporting LST, LRT, LP tokens, and stablecoins.
Highlights: Offers borrowing capabilities of up to 95% LTV, enhancing leverage and asset utilization efficiency; reduces systemic risk through a modular market and supports automated leverage strategies (Looping Vault) to help users maximize returns, particularly tailored for Monad ecosystem reward assets.

5.4.2 Infrastructure and User Entry Points

Kuru Exchange (@KuruExchange)

Financing: Series A of $11.6 million (original seed round of $2 million led by Electric Capital, followed by Paradigm leading the completion of Series A financing).
Positioning: Adjusted its business by launching the Kuru Flow smart aggregator while retaining an order book integrated with AMM, aiming to become the best spot trading venue on Monad.

Highlights: Adopts a dual architecture of "account custody + Uniswap-style Lite mode," balancing professional trading and novice users; it is one of the DEXs with the highest trading volume in the ecosystem. 2. Monorail (@monorail_xyz)

Positioning: DEX aggregator (integrating AMM and CLOB liquidity).
Highlights: The first "full-type DEX aggregator" supporting the Monad ecosystem, routing optimal prices from Kuru, CrystalExch, and other CLOB and AMM sources, reducing slippage by 20% compared to single DEX; processed over 50,000 transactions daily during the testnet phase.

Clober (@CloberDEX)

Positioning: Full-chain order book DEX based on the LOBSTER mechanism (native to Monad).
Highlights: Utilizes a LOBSTER matching engine with Segment Tree and a self-developed Octopus Heap data structure, significantly reducing matching gas costs and improving efficiency; the asynchronous settlement mechanism decouples transactions from funds, optimizing on-chain execution performance.

5.4.3 Innovative Scenarios and Niche Tracks

CrystalExch (@CrystalExch)

Positioning: The first on-chain CLOB exchange in the EVM ecosystem (native to Monad).
Highlights: The order book is fully on-chain, with transparency comparable to centralized exchanges; utilizing Monad's high throughput, matching speed is 10 times faster than Ethereum's CLOB.

Zona Finance (@zona_io)

Positioning: RWA (Real World Assets) super application.
Highlights: Supports on-chain prediction, lending, and trading of RWAs such as real estate and commodities; combined with Monad's low-latency features, RWA price oracle update speed reaches "second-level," making it a core attempt to "link traditional finance" within the ecosystem.

Levr Bet (@Levr_Bet)

Support: Awarded the "Most Innovative Project" at the "Monad Madness" hackathon.
Positioning: Decentralized leveraged sports betting platform.
Highlights: Offers 5x leveraged sports betting, achieving "on-chain fair settlement" through smart contracts; during the testnet phase, it partnered with data providers for NBA and Premier League events, becoming a benchmark in the ecosystem's "Web3 sports" track.

Plato2Earn (@plato2earn)

Positioning: "Eat-to-Earn" platform.
Highlights: Users can upload receipts after spending at partner restaurants to earn $FAT token rewards; combined with Monad's low-cost features, on-chain reward settlement gas fees are less than 1 cent, making it an innovative case of "real life + on-chain" integration within the ecosystem.

RareBetSports (@RareBetSports)

Positioning: Daily fantasy sports platform (Web3 version of DraftKings).
Highlights: Users create on-chain fantasy sports teams and participate in event predictions through token incentives; during the testnet phase, it reached over 50,000 users in the first week, ranking in the top 5 in community votes for "most anticipated mainnet launch projects."

Kizzy Mobile (@kizzymobile)

Positioning: Social betting and mobile entertainment application (native to Monad).
Highlights: Users can make predictions and bets on social media content, receiving rewards through on-chain smart contracts; combined with Monad's low-cost and high-throughput features, users can instantly receive rewards on-chain through mobile spending; it is an important practical case of "real life + blockchain" integration within the ecosystem.

5.4.4 Community Culture and GameFi

Nad.fun (@naddotfun)

Positioning: Meme coin launchpad (Monad version of Pumpfun).
Highlights: Supports users in issuing custom meme coins, with built-in "PVP trading competitions"; deeply tied to Monad's community "meme culture" (frequent secondary creation coins like mascot molandak, chog), creating a community heat record of a single coin rising 1000 times in 24 hours during the testnet phase.

Fantasy (@fantasytop)

Support: Awarded the "Best GameFi Project" at the "Monad Madness" hackathon.
Positioning: On-chain card competitive game.
Highlights: Combines NFT cards with DeFi staking mechanisms, allowing users to earn whitelist NFTs through competitions; exceeded 50,000 users in the first week of the testnet launch, becoming a core project in the ecosystem's "GameFi + DeFi" integration.

6. Community Culture and Builder Motivations

6.1 For Builders: Full-Link Empowerment and First-Mover Opportunities

Monad's core strategy of "Builders First" distinguishes it from the traditional public chain logic that is investor-oriented. By integrating "capital-resources-technology-traffic," it forms a unified support system, creating a "Founder Magnet" effect that provides early projects with a low-competition, high-growth development environment, which is key to its rapid ecological expansion.

6.1.1 Full-Cycle Support: "Close Escort" from Concept to Implementation

To lower the entry barriers for developers, Monad has built a support system covering the entire project lifecycle, deeply integrating its original ecological driving plan into builder services:

Capital and resource matching: Through the "Foundry Program," it integrates capital resources, market channels, and product strategy guidance to help projects advance from the concept stage to product-market fit (PMF), for example, connecting early DeFi projects with capital from Pantera Capital, Binance Labs, and other institutions;
Technical support: Provides a complete EVM-compatible toolchain, SDK, and developer documentation to ensure "zero-cost migration" for Ethereum developers; also collaborates with Mach Accelerator, evm/accathon, and other organizations to launch specialized accelerators, matching teams with experienced mentors in distributed systems, smart contract optimization, and other fields to resolve technical bottlenecks;
Traffic and exposure activation: Hosts the "Monad Madness" hackathon (with a prize pool of up to $1 million), focusing on high-performance public chain adaptation scenarios (such as high-frequency trading, real-time on-chain games), attracting hundreds of teams globally to participate, with winning projects receiving community traffic and ecological resource support.

6.1.2 Core Attraction: Overlapping Technical Dividends and First-Mover Advantages

Builders choose Monad, fundamentally recognizing the dual value of "technical performance" and "ecological opportunities":

Technical performance dividends: The "MonadBFT consensus + optimistic parallel EVM" architecture achieves second-level finality and a throughput target of over 10,000 TPS on the basis of complete EVM compatibility, supporting scenarios such as high-frequency trading, complex DeFi, and real-time on-chain games that Ethereum struggles to accommodate;
Ecological first-mover opportunities: Referencing cases like Magic Eden and Tensor that rose with Solana's early ecosystem, Monad developers generally view the value of "pre-mainnet layout"—with low competition for traffic in the early stages of the mainnet launch, projects have the opportunity to quickly occupy niche track entry points (such as becoming the first order book DEX or the first liquidity staking platform in the ecosystem), even defining track standards. This "first-mover dividend" is difficult to provide in mature ecosystems (like Ethereum and Solana).

6.2 For Community Users: Refined Operations and Inclusive Co-Building

Monad does not limit itself to "developer services" but instead fosters user consensus through refined user operations and inclusive community strategies, even converting "doubters" into community members, forming unique community vitality.

6.2.1 Monad Card: Point-to-Point Activation of Core Users and FOMO Effect

During the ecological operation period in 2025, the Monad team launched the "Monad Card" operation activity, becoming a key node for the community's heat explosion:

Precisely screening core groups: The team manually selected about 5,000 influential users from over 10,000 X (formerly Twitter) accounts, including blockchain OGs, developers, KOLs, and investors, granting them exclusive Monad cards in a point-to-point manner to strengthen their identity recognition;
Nomination mechanism triggering FOMO: Cardholders can nominate others, creating a layer diffusion effect. Non-cardholders actively participate in testnet interactions and project feedback to compete for eligibility, boosting community activity by 3 times and significantly enhancing testnet user retention;
Inclusive strategy converting doubters: The team intentionally included critics and skeptics in the card distribution, allowing them to shift from "external questioning" to "internal suggestions" due to identity recognition, even participating in governance discussions, achieving "reducing opposition, expanding consensus."

6.2.2 Community Tension and Transparent Communication

Currently, there remains a tension within the Monad community between "enthusiastic anticipation and rational skepticism," but this tension has instead become a driving force for community activity:

Supporters' perspective: They recognize the combination of "EVM compatibility + high performance" as the next-generation public chain benchmark that "fills the compatibility gap of Solana and breaks through Ethereum's performance bottleneck";
Skeptics' focus: They concentrate on the mainnet launch timeline, the efficiency of using massive funding, and potential centralization issues due to validator hardware thresholds;
Team response: By regularly releasing technical reports (such as RaptorCast papers, Testnet-2 progress), monthly AMAs, and public validator rules, they maintain transparent communication and gradually build community trust.

6.3 Summary: The Bi-Directional Logic of Ecological Growth

The core of the Monad ecosystem lies in its bi-directional strategy of being "friendly to builders and refined for users": providing builders with full-cycle support and dual dividends of technology and first-mover advantages, while designing refined operational mechanisms and an inclusive community atmosphere for users. This strategy avoids the risk of "heavy technology and light ecology" and the short-term traps of "heavy enthusiasm and light service," building long-term growth certainty by solidifying "hard power" (developer empowerment) and "soft power" (user consensus), significantly distinguishing it from public chains that rely solely on capital or technical narratives.