Monad: The Rise of a New Generation High-Performance Blockchain Platform

Blockchain technology is constantly evolving, with Ethereum as the pioneer of smart contract platforms, laying the foundation for the entire industry. However, as the demand for applications surges, the technical bottlenecks faced by existing infrastructures like Ethereum have become increasingly apparent, especially in terms of scalability and transaction speed. To address these challenges, Monad has emerged, promising to redefine blockchain performance standards with a throughput of up to 10,000 transactions per second. Recently, Monad Labs completed a $225 million financing round, reflecting the market's high recognition of its technological potential. This funding will assist Monad in further refining its Layer1 blockchain, bringing revolutionary changes to the industry.

Monad: A New Solution to Solve the Ethereum Scalability Problem

Ethereum occupies a central position in the Blockchain field, serving not only as a hub for research, decentralized applications (Dapps), and community development, but also boasting the highest total value locked (TVL). Thanks to Ethereum's vigorous development, its developer community has become the largest group in the cryptocurrency space, nurturing numerous innovative projects.

However, with the explosive growth of projects, the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is facing unprecedented challenges, especially with the increasingly prominent scalability issues. The single-threaded nature of the EVM limits transaction processing speed and prolongs execution time. To address this challenge, various solutions have been proposed in the industry, among which sharding technology and Layer 2 scaling strategies have garnered significant attention.

Sharding technology aims to divide the Blockchain network into multiple small shards to enhance storage capacity and performance. However, the implementation of this technology requires long-term validation and research, making it difficult to realize its potential in the short term. Layer2 scaling strategies handle transactions and smart contract executions by building additional frameworks on the main chain, thereby alleviating the burden on the main chain and improving network efficiency. However, with some well-known Layer2 projects postponing the decentralization of the sequencer, the challenges faced by Layer2 in terms of centralization are becoming increasingly severe.

In the face of these challenges, Monad founder Keone Hon proposed a unique insight. He believes that the current scalability path of Ethereum has issues. The Layer1+Layer2 hierarchical strategy may lead to the blockchain being divided into independent execution environments, undermining on-chain composability. Therefore, establishing a more efficient underlying network is the best solution, which is the background for the birth of Monad.

Monad is a high-performance L1 that is fully compatible with Ethereum, focusing on applying "parallel processing" technology at the Layer 1 level to enhance EVM execution efficiency. This means that Monad implements transaction parallel processing directly on the main chain without relying on additional Layer 2 solutions. This approach maximizes EVM processing capability and scalability without sacrificing security and decentralization, fully unleashing the potential of the EVM ecosystem. Currently, Monad has reached the capability of processing 10,000 transactions per second, with further enhancements expected in the future.

Since its establishment in 2022, Monad has completed two rounds of financing, including a $19 million seed round in February 2023 and a $225 million financing in April 2024. Currently, more than 50 institutions have participated in investing in Monad. Investors are confident about Monad's prospects, believing it will drive the adoption of cryptocurrencies in the next 2-3 years. The founder of a certain venture capital institution regards Monad as a solid foundation for stablecoins, calling it a "killer application" and expects it to continue to grow exponentially in the coming years.

Monad: Underlying Optimization and Parallel Strategies Reshaping Blockchain Performance

Monad is highly favored mainly due to its outstanding technical advantages. It did not choose to enhance scalability through layer2 solutions, but instead focused on the underlying network, improving efficiency through parallel execution strategies. The greatest advantage of this approach is that it maintains network security and decentralization, which is crucial for Monad's future development.

In terms of performance, Monad directly competes with some well-known layer 1 public chains, particularly demonstrating significant advantages in throughput and low finality time. More importantly, Monad achieves full compatibility with EVM while ensuring high performance, allowing Ethereum developers to easily port applications to Monad.

With three core advantages of decentralized aggregation, extremely high scalability, and Ethereum compatibility, Monad is expected to become a game changer in the future of the Blockchain gaming sector.

The working mechanism of Monad

The working mechanism of Monad is mainly achieved by optimizing four core areas: MonadBFT, delayed execution, parallel execution, and MonadDB. These four mechanisms work together to promote the efficient operation of Monad.

MonadBFT is the core of the Monad consensus algorithm, drawing on the essence of classic consensus algorithms while making innovative improvements. Compared to the traditional three-phase commit process, MonadBFT adopts a more efficient two-round leader-centric fan-out and fan-in approach. This mechanism ensures rapid confirmation and finality of the Blockchain, while reducing communication overhead and latency.

The delayed execution mechanism separates consensus from execution, allowing nodes to quickly reach an agreement on the order of transactions without waiting for the execution of transactions to be completed. This approach greatly improves resource utilization efficiency, enabling Monad to handle more transactions.

Parallel execution achieves concurrency through optimistic execution, where Monad optimistically handles transactions to determine dependencies. In the optimistic execution phase, Monad starts processing transactions without waiting for the previous transaction in the block to complete, while tracking the inputs and outputs of each transaction. This approach reveals dependencies between transactions, enabling efficient re-execution.

MonadDB is a database developed by Monad itself, optimized and natively compatible with the Patricia Trie data structure, supporting parallel execution and asynchronous I/O operations. By leveraging the latest advancements in asynchronous I/O, MonadDb avoids the bottleneck issue that may arise when the system waits for one transaction to complete before moving on to the next.

Although Monad was established only two years ago, its potential cannot be ignored. The Devnet internal testnet has reached 10,000 TPS, which is a high starting point. According to the project's plan, Monad may expand to 100,000 TPS in the coming years. If this expectation is realized, Monad will become a disruptor in the blockchain industry, and its representative parallel execution and superscalar pipeline framework may also become the mainstream development direction of public chains.

Monad Ecosystem Hot Project Review

Monad Labs recently raised $225 million in Series A funding, with a valuation of $3 billion. Monad has become the largest parallel EVM blockchain by financing scale, with a throughput of 10,000 transactions per second, far exceeding other EVM-compatible blockchains.

Although the mainnet has not officially launched, Monad has attracted numerous developers. Currently, more than 80 projects are deployed on Monad, and it is expected that there will be 150 projects choosing to build on this platform when the mainnet launches. Here are a few Monad ecosystem projects worth noting.

aPriori

aPriori is a liquidity staking platform within the Monad ecosystem, focusing on miner extractable value (MEV). It offers users efficient staking solutions while maintaining asset liquidity, allowing users to flexibly utilize their assets while participating in staking.

aPriori completed a $8 million seed round of financing in 2024. Its core features include:

• Liquid Staking: Users receive liquidity tokens after staking their assets, which can be used in other DeFi protocols to enhance asset utilization efficiency.
• MEV Optimization: Optimize transaction order through smart contracts to maximize user profits.
• High-performance support: Utilizing the high throughput of the Monad network, supporting up to 10,000 transactions per second, ensuring fast processing and efficient execution.

Kintsu

Kintsu is a liquidity staking protocol in the Monad ecosystem, providing users with a flexible staking experience. Users can flexibly utilize these assets while staking, meeting their liquidity needs.

Kintsu completed a $4 million seed funding round in July 2024. Its core features include:

• Liquidity Staking: Users receive liquidity tokens after staking, which can be used in other DeFi applications.
• Decentralized Validator Mechanism: Supports permissionless joining of validators, enhancing the decentralization and security of the network.
• Composability: Liquid staking tokens can be easily integrated with other DeFi applications, creating more opportunities for yield.

Kuru

Kuru is a decentralized order book exchange (CLOB) within the Monad ecosystem, providing a single platform for users to discover, research, and trade on-chain spot assets. Kuru utilizes an efficient order book mechanism to offer better capital efficiency and liquidity.

Kuru completed a $2 million seed round financing in July 2024. Its core functions include:

• Decentralized trading: Users can trade in a decentralized environment, ensuring transparency and security.
• Diversified financial products: Offering various products such as lending, liquidity mining, and insurance to help users optimize asset allocation.

Monad Pad

Monad Pad is a token and NFT launch platform based on Monad. It supports project parties or developers to initiate early fundraising through presales or public offerings. It provides an easy fundraising channel for emerging projects, helping them obtain the necessary financial support.

Monad Pad completed a $945,000 seed round financing in July 2024. Its core features include:

• Token and NFT issuance: Support project parties in early fundraising, lowering the startup threshold for projects.
• Original NFT Series: Launch the "Purple Frens" NFT series, where holders can receive a share of the platform's revenue, enhancing user engagement and profit potential.