Reasons why Monad is gaining attention: a combination of technology, team, and compliance initiatives

A Strong Team Background Builds Trust

Monad’s greatest competitive advantage lies not in the project itself but in the people behind it. Co-founders Keone Hon, James Hunsaker, and Eunice Giarta are all experts in high-frequency trading infrastructure. Notably, engineers from Jump Trading form the core team, bringing over a decade of practical experience in building financial-grade low-latency systems.

This background is entirely different from that of typical blockchain developers. Experience at traditional financial institutions such as Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and Broadway Technology signals that Monad is a “serious” technical team. Industry observers anticipate that if the next-generation high-performance blockchain emerges between 2025 and 2027, its roots will likely be traced back to these traditional system development fields.

Funding also supports this. After raising $19 million in a seed round in 2023, in April 2024, they secured an additional $225 million led by Paradigm, bringing the total to over $244 million. This is clear evidence that top-tier capital believes in their technological capabilities.

Core Technology: Combining EVM Compatibility and Parallel Processing

Monad aims to maintain full Ethereum Virtual Machine(EVM) compatibility while targeting speeds comparable to Solana. To understand why this “two birds with one stone” approach is important, one must recognize the vastness of the Ethereum developer ecosystem. Hundreds of thousands of developers are already coding on EVM, and Monad enables them to migrate to a faster, cheaper environment without changing a single line of code.

The technical elements that make this possible include:

Parallel Execution - Moving away from Ethereum’s sequential transaction processing to handle multiple transactions simultaneously, like a multi-core CPU.

MonadDb - A state database designed for parallelization, maximizing read/write efficiency.

Asynchronous I/O - Separating computation from data access to reduce latency.

Delayed Execution - Redesigning consensus and execution processes to speed up final transaction confirmation.

Currently, the testnet processes approximately 10,000 transactions per second(TPS), with a block time of just 0.8 seconds. A network of 174 validators across 25 countries supports it, and over 300 projects have already been pre-deployed into the ecosystem.

Coinbase Public Offering: A Signal of Compliance

Monad’s status as the first issuance project on Coinbase’s newly launched public offering platform is symbolic. It suggests that transparent, regulated public issuance is returning to the mainstream, not just a new token launch.

The offering started on November 17, during a market correction where Bitcoin hovered around $90,000. Since Monad’s offering price was $0.025(with a fully diluted valuation of about $2.5 billion), initial reactions were cautious. Six hours before the start, subscription rates were only 45%, and futures trading prices dropped from $0.07 to $0.04.

However, as more participants joined, the total subscription exceeded $100 million. This indicates that interest in such a symbolic project remains strong despite the weak market environment.

Competitive Landscape with Solana, Sui, and Aptos

The high-performance blockchain space is already highly saturated. For Monad to stand out in this crowded market, it must:

Short-term success: Reproduce testnet-level performance and stability on the mainnet in real-world conditions. This is the biggest test.

Long-term success: Speed alone is insufficient. Monad must attract true “killer apps” and build a thriving ecosystem with sufficient total value locked(TVL).

Token supply risks: While the team and investors’ tokens are currently locked tightly, they could gradually unlock over time, potentially exerting selling pressure on the secondary market.

Outlook: Between Promise and Reality

Monad is undoubtedly a noteworthy project. It has the technology, team, capital, and a positive narrative of regulatory compliance through public offering. Many participants expect a “first issuance project + new public offering platform = wealth effect.”

However, success depends on clear conditions. In the short term, verifying mainnet performance is essential, and in the medium to long term, the ecosystem must truly thrive. Passing both challenges could see Monad competing fiercely with existing giants like Solana and becoming a leader in the “high-performance EVM” space.