CoinW Research

1. Project Introduction

Monad is a high-performance Layer 1 public blockchain that is fully compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Its core goal is to enable Ethereum developers to deploy their applications in a faster, lower-cost, and lower-latency environment without modifying their code.

Technically, Monad's innovation lies primarily in the combination of parallel processing and EVM compatibility:

1. Parallel execution: It changes the way Ethereum processes transactions sequentially, processing multiple transactions simultaneously like a multi-core CPU, greatly improving throughput.

2. MonadDb: A next-generation state database designed for parallelization, optimizing data storage and retrieval efficiency.

3. Asynchronous I/O: Separates computation from data read/write operations, avoiding mutual waiting and fully releasing hardware performance.

4. Delayed Execution: Optimize the consensus and execution process to achieve faster final confirmation of transactions.

This combination of "Ethereum's ecosystem and Solana's speed" theoretically puts Monad in an excellent market position. Currently, its testnet performance data shows a TPS (transactions per second) of approximately 10,000 and a block time of only 0.8 seconds. The network is supported by 174 validators across 25 countries, and more than 300 projects in the ecosystem have already deployed it.

2. Market Dynamics

Monad was the first token offering project launched on Coinbase's new public offering platform, with participation available in over 80 countries/regions globally, including Hong Kong. Therefore, this offering was widely seen as Coinbase's first step in resuming "open, transparent, and compliant issuance," naturally attracting significant industry attention. The public offering launched on November 17th, coinciding with a significant market correction, with Bitcoin prices falling to around $90,000 and overall market risk appetite noticeably contracting. Coupled with Monad's relatively high offering price ($0.025, a fully diluted valuation of approximately $2.5 billion), the subscription rate in the first six hours was only 45%. Pre-market trading prices also fell from $0.07 to $0.04, reflecting weakening short-term market sentiment. However, as more users participated, the total subscription amount has now exceeded $100 million. This phenomenon demonstrates that even in a generally weak market environment, the market still maintains enthusiasm for such landmark projects.

On the one hand, as a public offering project of a top-tier exchange, Monad is inherently attractive to the market, especially given its previous funding of over $200 million, which further amplifies its popularity. On the other hand, this public offering is also seen as a significant experiment by Coinbase, marking its first attempt in many years to restart its public offering mechanism in the United States. Its significance extends beyond the project itself, symbolizing a crucial signal as to whether compliant public offerings can return to the mainstream stage. Many participants believe this is similar to the logic behind CoinList's rise to prominence during the bear market, with the general consensus being: "First-day offering + new public offering platform = potential for the next wave of wealth effect."

3. Team Background

Monad's core team background is arguably its biggest asset. Its members primarily come from Jump Trading, a top institution in the traditional high-frequency trading field, possessing extensive experience in developing financial-grade low-latency systems. Industry insiders generally believe that Monad's true advantage lies not only in its high-performance metrics on paper, but also in the fact that its team has built truly financial-grade infrastructure. This has led many observers to anticipate that if the next batch of high-performance Layer 1 public chains emerges between 2025 and 2027, the teams behind them will likely come from this traditional system development field.

Co-founder introduction:

• Keone Hon (MIT): Over 10 years of experience in low-latency systems, former head of high-frequency trading infrastructure at Jump Trading.

• James Hunsaker: Former Senior Engineer at Jump Trading, previously worked at JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs.

• Eunice Giarta (MIT): Previously worked at Broadway Technology building enterprise-level trading systems and also worked on Shutterstock's payment system.

In terms of financing, Monad has successfully completed two major rounds of financing, totaling over $244 million, demonstrating top-tier investors' high recognition of its technological path and team capabilities.

• 2023 Seed Round: $19 million (Dragonfly);

• April 2024: A massive $225 million funding round (led by Paradigm, with participation from Coinbase Ventures and others).

4. Competitive Landscape

Facing competition from existing high-performance public chains such as Solana, Sui, and Aptos, Monad's path to breakthrough will revolve around the following core aspects:

1. Opportunities and Advantages:

Combining performance and compatibility: Monad directly rivals high-performance chains such as Solana, Aptos, and Sui. Its uniqueness lies in maintaining EVM bytecode-level compatibility while achieving tens of thousands of TPS, making it extremely friendly to Ethereum's massive number of developers.

Top-tier team and capital: The engineering team from Jump Trading and ample funding provide strong support for the implementation of its technology.

Compliance-based issuance narrative: As a Coinbase public offering launch project, it comes with inherent advantages in terms of traffic and compliance trust.

2. Risks and Challenges:

Mainnet performance remains to be verified: While the testnet data is impressive, its biggest challenge is whether it can maintain high performance and stability in real-world, complex environments after the mainnet goes live.

Competition intensifies: The high-performance public blockchain sector is already extremely crowded. Monad needs to attract truly killer applications and users, build a thriving ecosystem, and achieve sufficient total value locked (TVL) to stand out.

Token unlocking pressure: Despite the strict lock-up by the team and investors, the large total supply of tokens and linear unlocking may still put potential pressure on the secondary market in the long run.

3. Future Outlook:

Monad has undoubtedly become the focus of the new round of public blockchain competition thanks to its team, technology, and funding. Its short-term success depends on whether its mainnet can stably deliver on its performance promises; its long-term value depends on whether its ecosystem can truly thrive. If both of these points are achieved, Monad is expected to become the leader in the "high-performance EVM" track, competing fiercely with companies like Solana.