Coin columns · Mainnet Province
Monad (MON): A Parallel Layer 1 for Faster Ethereum-Style Apps
Own coin of a fast EVM chain that launched in November 2025
Monad is a layer-1 blockchain built to run Ethereum apps unchanged while processing transactions much faster, and MON is its own coin. Development began in 2022, and the mainnet (the live network) opened on 24 November 2025.
1. A new chain from veterans of high-frequency trading
Monad was started in 2022 by Keone Hon, James Hunsaker and others, reportedly veterans of high-frequency trading, and is developed by Category Labs (formerly Monad Labs). It is said to have raised at least $225 million from backers including Coinbase Ventures, Dragonfly, Electric Capital and Paradigm. A separate Monad Foundation supports the ecosystem.
On the Crypto Nation map, MON stands in Mainnet Province as the city-hall tower of the Monad chain, because it is a blockchain’s own coin. Its total supply is 100 billion, and it is used to pay fees and for staking.
2. Parallel processing to speed things up
Ethereum-style chains line transactions up and process them one by one, which limits speed; doing more at once means more transactions in the same time. Monad uses ‘optimistic parallel execution’: it runs many transactions at once, checks that the result matches what sequential processing would give, and redoes any that differ. Custom pieces, MonadBFT (the way validators agree on blocks), the MonadDb database and RaptorCast for passing data between validators, helped bring block time down to 0.4 seconds.
Monad is compatible with Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) bytecode, so apps built for Ethereum can move over with few changes. The Monad Foundation said a 2026 upgrade (MIP-12) cut block time from 0.4 to 0.3 seconds.
3. Where it is used, and what happened
Before the mainnet opened, the first public sale on Coinbase’s new token-sale platform sold 7.5% of the supply, with about 85,000 participants and roughly $269 million raised, and a community airdrop (free distribution) took place. From day one MetaMask and Phantom wallets, exchanges such as Curve and Uniswap, and stablecoins such as USDC, USDT0 and AUSD were ready.
In 2026 MetaMask launched a ‘Money Account’ on Monad that earns yield on stablecoin balances, the payments firm Rain connected Visa card spending, Pendle (which trades yield separately) went live, and Aave passed a governance vote to deploy, showing the number of apps growing.
4. Things to know
About 50.6% of the supply started out locked, and unlocks for the team and investors, published in advance, begin in the second half of 2026 and rise quarterly through the end of 2029. Upcoming unlocks that may weigh on the market are a risk commonly raised for new chains.
Whether usage will last at the speeds advertised remains to be seen, and competition from Solana and other high-performance EVM chains is intense. New technology such as parallel execution can produce unexpected bugs, and how widely validators are distributed also deserves checking.
Written from information public up to October 2026. It does not recommend or rate any coin and is not investment advice. If something is wrong, please tell us through the contact page.