Meet Monad: A New Direction for Blockchain

- Monad launched mainnet with 200+ validators, processing 39 million transactions in under two weeks

- Over 100 applications deployed at launch with ecosystem startups raising $160+ million in seed funding

- Achieved 10,000 TPS performance compared to Ethereum's 15-30 TPS through high-performance blockchain architecture

- Implemented five major technical innovations including Monad BFT, parallel execution, and asynchronous processing capabilities

- EVM compatibility enables seamless deployment of existing Ethereum applications on Monad platform

- Targeting high-growth sectors including on-chain gaming, prediction markets, and fully on-chain order books

- Monad Momentum program offers 1-to-1 matching of founder incentives for user acquisition strategies

- Accelerator programs and NYC studio space attract blockchain developers and foster ecosystem growth

This is about the technology, vision and future behind a new blockchain platform. I'm Neil MacDonald, CEO of moomoo US. Yes, today we're very lucky to be taking a closer look at Monad, a new high performance blockchain. If you follow any of the press and any of the crypto press, it's probably the most talked about blockchain launch of the year. It's a significant advancement in blockchain technology, as you know, moomoo, as new technologies emerge and develop, we'd like to keep you guys informed.

We'd like to keep you talking about the trends through our kind of clear educational content. And as Monad has gained such amazing industry attention, we made sure moomoo users could learn about it the right way, bringing you the latest developments to the community. Tina, thank you for being here. And before we dive in, could you briefly introduce yourself and your team? And to the audience, Great.

Thank you so much, Neil for the warm introduction. And hello to the moomoo community. Lovely to be here and speaking to all of you. My name is Tina and I lead the ecosystem team at Monad Foundation. As Neil said, and thank you for the great introduction to Monad. We are building a new blockchain to really bring performance to the EVM, the Ethereum Virtual Machine.

And a little bit of background on myself, I spent a lot of time before crypto in different types of industries, whether that be big pharma, FMCG and financial services. I honestly thought that the blockchain industry was really, really interesting and actually where the future of finance was. So joined the industry as a builder in the space. We like to use that word a lot in crypto builder, essentially someone who is working for a crypto startup, building an application or building some infrastructure in the space.

So I started off as a builder contributing to an early stage crypto startup in 2021. I ended up founding my own startup that was backed by Jump at the time and then ended up spending two years of my career building that out, learn a lot of lessons. When I stepped down from that, there was an opportunity to join the early team at Monad Labs and that was the beginning of last year. It's been a very, very exciting journey.

In the last two years, we have not only launched Test net, which is the test blockchain, but also establish Monad Foundation where I am at now, which really helps support the ecosystem growth of Monad the network. So that's me and I'm very excited to chat more with you today, Neil.

Thank you, Tina. That's great. So for many users, many on this platform will have heard of Monad and some people will be hearing about your company for the first time. So how do you describe what Monad is and what core challenge in blockchain are you trying to solve or have you solved? Never mind trying to solve?

Yeah. So there are a lot of blockchains out there. We are an incredibly high performant blockchain. And why is this important? So in the blockchain industries, there's typically 3 problems or what people like to call a blockchain dilemma that all blockchains are trying to solve. But the problem is, is that with the three elements of decentralization, scalability and security, typically when building a blockchain, you have to sacrifice one for the other two.

So decentralization means that no one party controls the network. We've seen a lot of blockchains be able to essentially reverse transactions when they don't like what has happened, right? Which is really not fundamentally to why blockchains exist. Scalability essentially means is the blockchain fast, can it handle a large amount of transactions, and then security means is the blockchain network secure, is it resistant to attacks? So those three things really what a lot of blockchains historically have struggled with.

For example, Ethereum, incredibly secure and decentralized, but hasn't been able to scale the base blockchain. There has been dependency to build other blockchains on top of Ethereum, but that further sacrifices decentralization for speed. Solana, another very big blockchain that many of you have heard of very, very fast, but arguably there have been debates on the level of decentralization and also there is a huge benefit of what we call EVM compatible, meaning Ethereum virtual machine compatible.

That means that all the code that someone has built to deploy an application, a company on top of Ethereum, they can be able to deploy it on any other Ethereum virtual machine compatible blockchain. So Monad not only is EVM compatible fully, but also is able to have speed without sacrificing decentralization. So we really have built this blockchain for well, when I say we, I mean the labs entity category. Labs has really focused on building a really, really strong blockchain from the bottom up as if we were building rebuilding Ethereum from the ground up.

So we're really excited about the performance. We've had actually 39 million transactions in less than the last two weeks and also launched with 200 plus validators from day one of launch and will only be scaling from there. So it's been incredibly exciting, an incredibly long journey to get to day one. And now the real journey is beginning after main net launch.

That's a fantastic overview, Tina. Thank you very much. That really helps set the stage. Many people on this who are listening in may be new to the whole blockchain infrastructure. So that was a great explanation, a very, very clear problem statement. Thank you so much. And we see the numbers, we know that ether is 15 to 30 transactions per second and I'm seeing numbers of 10,000 transactions per second, which is really a significant step change. So could you walk us through in simple terms how you've improved the speed, scalability and overall user experience?

Yes, for sure. Before I go into a bit of the technicals, I'd love to share a little bit about the team as well. That was actually one of the reasons I ended up joining the team was seeing that the founding core team actually has a background in high frequency trading. So for those not familiar, those who have built systems in high frequency trading, they are essentially trying to build systems for trading firms where the nanoseconds are important, right? That is probably the fastest systems engineers that you would find.

What our Co founders, our three Co founders really noticed back three years ago when Monad Labs was formed was that no one was trying to make the EVM faster. A lot of people were focusing on Solana, which James and Keoni, 2 of the Co founders had a lot of experience in early in Solana defi protocols, but no one was focusing on the EVM. So they saw this huge opportunity to bring speed and scalability to the EVM.

And I think that that has actually been one of the core differences of what Monad is really known for and special, special because of the founding team. And while you know, a lot of the technical stuff sounds very complicated, I'll try break down a few of the concepts. So there really have been five major innovations that the Category Labs team has built out in monad, the blockchain to allow it to be incredibly fast.

I'll list these out and I might just select one or two to explain a little bit about because I know that sometimes it can be a little bit confusing. And I really want to make sure that these innovations get their spotlight. So the five innovations are Monad BFT, Raptor cast, asynchronous execution, parallel execution, and MonadDB, which means Monad database. My favorite ones that I'll talk about. OK, maybe I'll choose 3. Neil, if you don't mind, I'll choose three to speak about.

My favorite one to always talk about is asynchronous execution. So typically how blockchains have worked is every time there is a transaction, there's a batch of transactions one has to happen in completion before the next one starts. And the easiest way to explain why this is very slow is taking an analogy of laundry. So we've all done our laundry. When you do your laundry, you have to take all your laundry in a basket. You put it in the machine, you wash it and then you take it out and then you dry it or you hang it up and then you fold it.

And imagine if every time you were to do laundry, you can only start a load of laundry where you've finished all folded it and put it in your wardrobe. No one does laundry like that because it's incredibly slow. So what happens when it comes to block chains is that is essentially what has historically happened. Asynchronous execution that Monad has introduced has allowed for essentially when you do your laundry and you have something in the dryer, you have already started another load in the washing machine. So all of their transactions can get processed way faster. Does that, does that analogy resonate with you Neil, when you think about the laundry?

The whole sort of parallel process and I think most people have a grasp on from my experience of trying to start on a crypto exchange myself and coming from high frequency trading and quant trading on the equity derivative side, the speed gap was ridiculous between low micros nanos. I was used to so like high millies or seconds for some of the blockchain stuff. So I think that's a very, very clear breakdown. High performance architecture can sound abstract, but the way you explained it makes it much more approachable you mentioned. So go ahead.

One thing I wanted to add was, I think asynchronous execution as a concept is really not new in terms of computing like in terms of systems as you mentioned, but it has been really new in block chains and it's actually taken a while for the EVM to adopt it. So I think that's one of the big innovations as well. And I could go on for the others, but I'll definitely let you ask your next question. Neil.

No, no, what you, well, you mentioned EVM compatibility, right? So I know you've seen developers show early interest in Monad. What kind of applications or use cases do you expect to see built in the near term and then in the coming years?

Yes, so we actually maybe I'll talk a little bit about what we've seen already. So I think ultimately the foundation of any blockchain ecosystem is the financial activity that occurs, whether that be through payments or whether that be through trading on chain. So I think that there is a lot to be improved in the on chain trading experience. For example, there are a few teams actually building fully on chain order books. This has not been something that we've seen prior because it's really hard to build an on chain order book because you need incredibly performance systems.

So I'm really excited to see that take shape in the Monad ecosystem and for teams building in the Monad ecosystem to be leaders in that category. And I personally have a lot of views of what the future of on chain applications looks like. I think a lot of it will be focused on what people like to use every day for fun. I'd like to see Monad bring in a resurgence of on chain gaming where there are a lot of games that are not only fun, but have a mechanism that like gamifies trading or makes things easier through the lens of gaming.

And of course, a really hot topic that we all are seeing in the news now is prediction markets. We've recently seen huge valuations of Polymarket and Kalshi. I think it's such an incredibly exciting time because ultimately at the end of the day, these are trading venues, right? We are trading predictions and I think the next step of what predictions markets look like and what we really want to bring on Monad is also prediction market teams building more innovations in this category.

An example of which is I would love to see also permission list creation of markets as well, right? Right now when you go to Kalshi Polymarket, you have to look and see if there's a market that you want to be able to put a bet or put a prediction on. There will come a time where there are avenues where you can actually create markets yourself and liquidity is easily sourced too. I'm super excited about that and I think Monad is the perfect place for that because you need an incredibly permissionless and decentralized infrastructure as the basis of those markets.

Thanks, Tina. That's really interesting. I think the categories you've mentioned there, especially prediction markets and so forth, exactly what we're seeing on the Moo Moo platform, a lot of our users questions and curiosity, right? So many of our users really follow emerging tech. So hearing what developers are thinking about exploring and what you see as what the developments on the blockchain are going to be, but it helps them understand where things may be heading. So I think you've touched on us a bit, but you know, we all know Solana, we all know Ethereum how you've touched on some of the differences, but you know, how is Monad different from other blockchain platforms people may have heard of and what makes its design unique? And apologize if you've answered some of those already.

No, that's totally fine. I'm always excited to talk about the novel architectures of Monad as well. Actually one of the really underrated pieces of the monad architecture is what we call monad BFT. And actually for those who are interested and want to read more docs.monad.xyz is where you can read all the detail. But I might explain a little bit about monad BFT. So essentially it is a consensus mechanism which solves the tail forking problem, which I think for you. You might not understand, Neil, but I'll break it down a little bit simply.

So for example, right now, the way where validators essentially vote and agree on whether a transaction is valid or not has a lot of issues. And one of these issues is called tail forking, where essentially think about how is a good way I can visualize this, where the chain keeps kind of splitting at the end and it slows down whether or not the validators could come to consensus. And Monad BFT is essentially a new mechanism that allows validators to reach an agreement faster. So this doesn't happen. I could definitely go into more, but that's at a very high level.

And I think that this is incredibly important because this really hasn't actually been solved anywhere in blockchain technology. And this actually influences how people can build applications because they are able to come to transactions, are able to come to consensus faster. And that's one of the reasons why Monad is able to be much more performant. A second one, which I personally like the name of is called Raptor cast. It kind of sounds a little bit dinosaurs to me, reminds me of a dinosaur, which is actually why it is my favorite.

So this has been a smarter way that the Category Labs team has created for blocks to be shared across the network. So think about this. Let's say I'm sending you and 100 other people a huge e-mail file, like a huge one. It's going to take so long to process. And what Raptor cast does is essentially breaks this huge piece of data into smaller pieces so it can be distributed way more efficiently. So Monad BFT, which is the consensus mechanism, and Raptocast are two of the innovations that we've brought to the EVM and has actually gotten a lot of recognition from the EVM community as well outside of those who are interested in just Monad.

So that has been super exciting and we are incredibly humbled and also excited to continue contributing to the performance of the EVM.

That's great Tina. So obviously there's lots of excitement around Monad at the moment with the launch. So if you think about the Moo Moo client base, you know, we'd like to know what's going on right now, but a lot of our clients really like to look forward and see what's coming for a company. We have a lot of long term investors rather than just, you know, day traders, people who want to buy, hold, learn more about the company, but more importantly understand whether the company's going to be in a year or two years. So what are the major milestones in Monad's long term direction?

Yes, I'm really glad that you're asking about the long term because I would say that a lot of the feedback that we got from the broader blockchain industry is that the team and the contributors to Monad, the network are incredibly long term oriented. So we definitely think about what does Monad look like on like a 5 to 10 year time span. So major milestones first definitely would be growing the number of validators and making Monad further decentralized. I think launching with 200 plus validators on day one of main net has actually been a huge achievement and is really just the beginning of what decentralization looks like.

Of course, we will be having continuous improvements to the EVM as well through the contributions of Category Labs, the entity that's building Monad, the blockchain. And on the ecosystem side, there are immediately in the future. Actually, next week we have a showcase of applications in the gaming and consumer segment that are live on Monad starting next week, which is really exciting that we will showcase on app.monad.xyz. And we are continuing to roll out a lot of initiatives focused on application builders and developers on Monad, the blockchain.

One of them which has already gone live is called Monad Momentum. What this means is if a founder who is building a really strong app also has an incredibly strong go to market and user acquisition strategy, then we will double down on those user acquisition incentives. So let's say that they want to reward early users with XYZ amount, we will essentially double down on that and match that up to 1 to 1. And that is really us as a foundation supporting some of the founders who are building great applications. So wave one of that is live wave 2 is coming next year.

We will also have a continuation and actually a growth of some of the initiatives that we do for founders. So Monad as an ecosystem has been incredibly founder focused. We see the Monad ecosystem as a lot of ecosystem and a founder community there have been over I think 100 applications now that have deployed on Monad day one, which has been a huge feat. So this is just applications not even including the infrastructure providers.

And one of the surprising things that we've said, we've said and people get really shocked by is that for all the applications that have built on Monad, over $160 million has been raised in seed funding from venture capital and from angels in the industry. And this is really unheard of. So we have a really strong startup ecosystem and we're going to continue growing that through accelerator programs, residency programs, demo days. And I'm really excited to see what the next generation of founders looks like in the blockchain industry.

Thanks, Tina. So you mentioned cycles and stuff. So obviously crypto goes through long and sometimes challenging market cycles, which we've all lived through. We're still living through. So from your perspective, what contributes to a blockchain ecosystem's durability, especially during a bear market?

Yeah, I love this question particularly because I think back to my own experience of being a founder where I was essentially only building through the bear market. And I would say arguably now we are definitely in the bear market. I think the cycles in crypto have really changed as what they were, the peaks and troughs are not as volatile as they were five years ago, right. But I think what really contributes to block chains ecosystem durability would be how fundamentally driven a lot of the founders are within that sort of ecosystem.

So if I look back to Solana, for example, in the depths of the bear market when price action was really doing horrendously, what you actually saw behind the scenes was there was a core community of founders and developers that never left and continue to build on Solana. So what that actually means for the Monad ecosystem is a kind of look at what does that core community look like for us and how do we make sure we really, really bring them together and have unity and also continue to support them through any cycle, whether it's great, because I would say arguably in a bull market, things are going great, but things are also incredibly distracting.

So I would actually arguably say that a bear market is the best time to test products, get user feedback because if an application and a startup can succeed in this market, that'll definitely be able to thrive in a different cycle as well. So a part of the initiatives that we will be bringing out will be really focused on in person connection. We actually and where I am now is what we call the studio in New York City. We have a space of 70 desks where startup founders everyday come in New York City. They build together, they work together. We have regular programming as well.

We use this as a base for any of the initiatives or residencies that we do. So I'm really excited to bring people together to build great startups together regardless of the cycle.

Thanks, Tina. That was great. Now to finish things off, we'll have a little fun with a quick lightning round. So just three rapid fire questions. So these are one sentence answers. OK, So what is in one sentence? What is monad?

I really thought I was going to prepare better for these ones. What I would say the future of the EVM, but today, love it.

Second question one, what one feature that users should watch first

Raptor cast

You love that word, don't you?

Yes, it's a great word.

And then just one word to describe Monad's future.

Monad's future, definitely inevitable.

There you go. So thank you so much, Tina, for joining us today and sharing such valuable insights. It's been great. So today's session was all about understanding Monad. It's technology, it's road map, the long term vision behind the platform. I think we covered all those points. So we hope this conversation helped everyone see the bigger picture of where blockchain infrastructure is going and Monad's place within that ecosystem. So that memo, our goal is to help users navigate emerging technologies with clarity and confidence through transparent education, high quality content, and regulated access to global markets.

So if you'd like to continue learning, feel free to follow Monad's official channels. You've got the docs.monad. Docs.monad. Dot XYZ, did I get that correct?

Yes, you did. The simple one would also just be monad on Twitter. You'll find all the links there. That's probably the easiest one to find. But that was great memory, Neil, I commend you.

There you go. Thank you. And also stay connected with us on moomoo for more sessions like this. So thanks everyone for joining us today. We'll see you next time. Thank you, thank you, Neil.

Thanks, Tina.

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