In 2023, Solana made a stunning resurgence to the center of the cryptocurrency stage. From AI infrastructure to SocialFi applications, from meme frenzy to high-frequency trading protocols, the innovations and wealth effects of the Solana ecosystem have attracted attention across the entire industry. On the other hand, Ethereum’s developers and community have found themselves in a subtle divide—controversies over team structure, bottlenecks in EVM performance, and slow development efficiency have left many feeling uncertain about Ethereum’s future.
(Background: Monad Madness Bangkok winners revealed, a quick overview of 7 awarded projects)
(Background supplement: Has Solana truly surpassed Ethereum’s EVM chain? Analyzing public chain competition from the perspective of liquidity pool quality)
Monad, as one of the hottest public chains recently, is well-known for its feature of “parallel execution.” However, beyond parallel execution and innovations such as Monad DB, Monad also claims to be the “fastest EVM.”
Monad is not a simple replication of Ethereum’s code. It is compatible with the EVM ecosystem while inheriting Solana’s high throughput and low latency traits. Founded by core members from Jump Trading, it has garnered support from prominent Solana projects like Phantom, Pyth, and Backpack.
Monad’s ambition is to allow EVM developers to achieve high performance without compromise, enabling Solana’s capital and innovation to take root and flourish within the EVM ecosystem. As the testnet approaches, can Monad become the next public chain dark horse? Let us explore.
The survival rules of public chains: performance, ecosystem, and wealth effect
Success comes in many forms, while the reasons for failure are varied.
According to incomplete statistics, at least 10 public chain-level projects are set to launch tokens or roll out testnets in Q1. In such a fiercely competitive public chain arena, how can one survive and build a thriving ecosystem?
1. True product orientation, rather than empty narratives.
The success of Hyperliquid proves this point—its Layer 1 architecture, designed specifically for financial markets, meets the needs of high-frequency traders with 200,000 TPS and sub-second latency. Public chains must address real problems rather than relying on hollow marketing jargon.
True product orientation requires a solid technical foundation. A simple fork is not sufficient for a public chain to stand out or maintain long-term competitiveness. Blindly pursuing “institutional products” while neglecting performance optimization and user needs will ultimately lead to market elimination.
2. Developers are the lifeblood of the ecosystem.
Base established deep connections with developers through various outreach efforts, incentives, and Office Hours before launching its mainnet.
Solana has built new ecosystem labels around AI and SocialFi through hackathons and funding support. The development path of public chains must closely align with market trends rather than being closed off to internal innovation.
Solana’s hackathons and Sui’s Pitch Day events strongly support developers, injecting new vitality into the ecosystem and underscoring the importance of developers in the ecosystem.
3. Wealth effect is hard currency.
We must acknowledge that in the public chain arena, operational importance is as crucial as the technology itself. Reflecting on prior projects like Movement and Berachain, significant effort was placed on operational strategies, successfully attracting considerable attention.
The recent Solana meme/AI coin frenzy (e.g., BOME, WIF), the on-chain game token economy of Virtuals, and even $DEGEN on the Base chain have all demonstrated that the wealth effect is a core driving force for attracting users. The recent success of BNB Chain has further validated this point. A single “$TST” or MyShell token offering directly mobilized user sentiment.
Public chains without a “wealth creation story” are destined to struggle in breaking out of their niche.
The combination of performance advantages grounded in technological innovation, robust support for developers, and the wealth effect centered around assets must work together to achieve long-term healthy ecosystem development.
Bullish Monad: Why it may be the next disruptor?
1. Technological innovation: When EVM meets high-frequency trading engines.
Monad is not a fork; it has made four key native innovations to enhance EVM performance and address the limitations of existing Ethereum-compatible blockchains:
– MonadDB: A custom state database optimized for EVM storage patterns. Unlike traditional databases, MonadDB stores the Merkle Patricia Trie structure directly on disk, reducing overhead and enabling efficient parallel state access.
– Parallel Execution: Monad executes multiple transactions simultaneously, assuming the initial state remains consistent, thereby improving throughput. Consistency is ensured by re-executing conflicting input transactions.
– Asynchronous Execution: By decoupling consensus from execution, Monad allows the entire block time to be used for transaction processing rather than interleaving execution during the consensus process, significantly enhancing network computational bandwidth.
– Monad BFT: A Byzantine Fault Tolerance consensus mechanism based on HotStuff, which reduces the communication phase from three rounds to two, advancing rounds based on actual network latency to enhance performance. This consensus mechanism requires only moderate hardware, enabling easy node execution for anyone.
For more details, refer to: https://docs.monad.xyz/
These innovations enable Monad to achieve exceptional performance while remaining fully compatible with EVM, ensuring developers can easily migrate their applications without any modifications. This not only breaks through the performance bottleneck of EVM but also provides strong support for innovation within the developer and ecosystem, attracting more developers to join and laying a solid foundation for ecosystem vitality.
2. Ecosystem support: Builder-centric approach providing limitless innovation space.
Mach, Foundry, Madness, Jumpstart, Monad 101, evm/accathon… As an emerging public chain, Monad offers the widest variety of support programs for developers and projects.
– Mach: Through online Mach-1 & Mach-2 acceleration programs, providing guidance, financing, and other related support for teams.
– Foundry: Offers co-working spaces for project partners to inspire each other’s ideas and innovations.
– Madness: A large-scale offline project roadshow event organized by Monad, with successful editions held in New York and Bangkok, where over 10 projects received nearly a million dollars in funding support. Monad Madness Hong Kong will be held in April.
– Jumpstart: Invites outstanding Web3 Builders to provide development guidance for Monad ecosystem projects.
– Monad 101: Offline events within the Monad ecosystem, providing opportunities for developers and communities to connect.
– evm/accathon: Collaborates with multiple ecosystem partners to provide top-notch support from the Monad team and leading figures in the crypto field.
Through diverse ecosystem support and community building, Monad empowers developers comprehensively. Clearly, Monad is not in a hurry to go live but focuses on nurturing the ecosystem and incubating innovation, especially supporting native projects. This reflects Monad’s long-term vision.
The Monad ecosystem has already seen several iconic projects emerge, including:
– The innovative CLOB protocol Kuru;
– The MEV&LSD protocol aPriori with over ten million in financing;
– The gamified Launchpad Nad.fun, turning token issuance into a “team up to fight monsters” game;
– Mozi Wallet, which integrates with Telegram and gamifies yield management to lower the barrier for Web3 usage;
– Narrative, a trading “story” that can leverage additional funds.
Although these projects may find it difficult to surpass Solana’s leading applications in the short term, they are constructing a unique ecosystem label and innovation for Monad.
3. Capital logic: Solana genes and capital support.
The founding team of Monad comes from Jump Trading, a high-frequency trading giant that was an early major supporter of Solana. Jump’s background injects two significant genes into Monad:
– Technical strength: From parallel execution to pipelining optimization, Monad’s architectural design clearly bears the imprint of high-frequency trading;
– Capital network: Backpack/Phantom wallets have publicly announced their immediate support for Monad, and the Pyth oracle will also prioritize support for Monad… These “old friends” of the Solana ecosystem are paving a golden path for Monad.
Additionally, Monad’s $225 million funding (from top institutions like Paradigm and Dragonfly) provides ample resources for its ecosystem support. Just as Multicoin cultivated the Solana ecosystem, Monad’s capital is replicating this path.
Standing at the crossroads of EVM and Solana, reshaping EVM’s spring.
Injecting Solana’s performance into EVM is not merely a narrative.
Solana represents high efficiency; EVM signifies developer-friendliness.
More importantly, Monad is not just any fork; it has redesigned the underlying architecture of EVM through native innovations, allowing EVM to achieve performance that can compete directly with Solana for the first time.
It is neither a replacement for Ethereum nor a replica of Solana but a “new species” attempting to bridge the ecological divide between the two.
For developers, Monad offers a performance upgrade without compromise;
For capital, it represents the continuation of Solana’s genes in the EVM ecosystem;
For users, it serves as an entry point for low-barrier, high-interactivity on-chain life.
Challenges remain: How to balance decentralization with high efficiency? How to avoid being caught in accusations of “capital games”? How to establish unique advantages amidst competition with Solana and Hyperliquid?
Can Monad rebuild the golden age of EVM?
The emergence of Monad injects a shot of adrenaline into the EVM ecosystem. When the fastest EVM meets Solana’s capital and innovation, this experiment may redefine the rules of public chain competition.
