Monad: debut and performance of the MON token in the crypto markets

Yesterday, the new MON token by Monad was launched on the crypto markets. It is the native cryptocurrency of the Monad blockchain, introduced with the aim of becoming a kind of “turbo-Ethereum” to address Ethereum’s main issues such as slowness, high fees, and poor scalability.

Being a new project, however, not much can be said about it as of today, except for what its creators have promised. 

The High-Performance Layer-1 Monad

Monad is effectively a new layer-1 blockchain. 

Its mainnet was launched yesterday, coinciding with the launch of its crypto MON. 

It aims to be much faster and much cheaper than Ethereum, while being 100% compatible with EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine).  

It indeed aims to achieve 10,000 transactions per second, with a finalization time of less than a second and fees lower than a cent. 

To achieve this, it is primarily based on the so-called parallel execution, which allows transactions to be processed all at once (in parallel) instead of one at a time as on Ethereum.

Additionally, it employs a new consensus algorithm called MonadBFT, similar to HotStuff, described as super-fast and secure, and a new custom database called MonadDb, which makes reading and writing on the blockchain hundreds of times more efficient.

Finally, it has a clear separation between transaction execution and consensus achievement, making everything faster.

The interesting thing is that being 100% compatible with Ethereum, Monad can be used on wallets like MetaMask, or platforms like Uniswap and Aave without changing anything.

The Monad blockchain is designed for high-frequency DeFi, blockchain games, NFTs, SocialFi, and any app that is currently slow or too expensive on Ethereum.

It is noteworthy that this is the most funded layer-1 project of the past two years, thanks to $244 million provided by major funds such as Paradigm, Electric Capital, and Coinbase Ventures. 

The Launch of the MON Token

The token MON is the native cryptocurrency of the Monad blockchain. 

Its total supply is 100 billion tokens, of which only 10 have already been put into circulation.

MON is primarily used to pay fees on Monad and for staking, as is naturally expected, but also for potential future governance. 

At the time of its launch on the crypto markets yesterday, its initial price was approximately $0.033, but after a few hours, it had plummeted to $0.022.

In the evening, however, it reached a peak of $0.37, before settling around the current $0.032. 

For now, it seems to be a fairly volatile crypto, although it has shown resilience during downturns. However, it is too early to conduct a price analysis. 

Technically, the native token of Monad powers its network, therefore, in theory, if this crypto project succeeds, MON could also succeed in the markets. 

For now, it has already achieved a market capitalization exceeding $300 million on the very day of its launch, although to be honest, these figures are not particularly high for today’s crypto markets. 

Coinbase

Note that Monad was the first ICO conducted on Coinbase.

The American company is directly involved in this project thanks to the investment by Coinbase Ventures that took place more than a year and a half ago, even though technically ICO and investment are two separate things. 

Coinbase has previously launched a similar project, or at least with similar ambitions, but it was a layer-2. 

It’s called Base, and it has become one of the main layer-2 solutions on Ethereum in terms of usage, thanks to its very low transaction fees. 

However, the recent success of Hyperliquid has demonstrated that with a layer-1, there are significantly greater development potentials, thus paving the way for many imitators. 

Therefore, while Base continues to exist and function well, Coinbase has decided to also invest in a layer-1, perhaps with the future goal of launching a platform like Hyperliquid on it.