Translation: Biteye core contributor Viee
Editor: Crush, core contributor of Biteye
Community: @BiteyeCN
*The full text is about 2,500 words and the estimated reading time is 5 minutes
Amid the rapid development of blockchain technology, Monad and MegaETH, as two emerging projects, are driving the evolution of the Ethereum ecosystem in their own unique ways.
Recently, Keone Hon, founder of Monad, and Lei Yang, co-founder of MegaETH, had an in-depth conversation to discuss their respective technological innovations, architectural design, and community culture.
Monad is a Layer 1 blockchain that aims to break through performance bottlenecks through innovative execution and consensus mechanisms, and achieve the ability to process more than 10,000 transactions per second. Its design emphasizes efficiency and compatibility, allowing developers to seamlessly migrate existing Ethereum applications.
Mega ETH is a Layer 2 solution that focuses on further improving Ethereum's transaction performance, with the goal of achieving more than 100,000 transactions per second. The project aims to provide users with a faster transaction experience by optimizing the existing Ethereum architecture.
This article will summarize the more than one-hour podcast interview, focusing on two blockchain projects with different architectures: Monad and MegaETH, and discuss how they promote the speed and efficiency of the Ethereum ecosystem through different technical paths.
01
Monad: Reshaping the Future of Ethereum
Keone Hon introduced the core concept of Monad in the conversation, emphasizing that it is a re-imagination of Ethereum that aims to achieve a throughput of up to 10,000 transactions per second.
Monad optimizes the storage efficiency of Ethereum Merkle tree data by building a new database - Monad DB. Keone pointed out that the traditional Ethereum execution method is single-threaded, while Monad significantly improves execution performance by introducing optimistic parallel execution and asynchronous execution.
In Keone's view, state access is the biggest bottleneck in the execution process. Each smart contract relies on some residual state associated with the contract, which requires reading data from the disk. Therefore, the biggest bottleneck of execution is actually state access, not just the improvement of computing power.
Monad DB is designed to address this challenge, ensuring that the database can be read efficiently in parallel, thereby releasing more performance potential.
02
MegaETH: A blockchain that pursues extreme performance
Unlike Monad, Lei Yang introduced that the goal of MegaETH is to build a performance-optimized blockchain that is fully compatible with Ethereum, with the vision of being "the first real-time blockchain."
MegaETH, as Ethereum's Layer 2, is committed to achieving a transaction processing capacity of more than 100,000 times per second. Lei emphasized that MegaETH does not rely solely on parallelization, but focuses on improving single-threaded performance. He believes that single-threaded performance is crucial for the practical use of many applications.
In terms of technical implementation, MegaETH uses a single active sorter to process all transactions, and other nodes only need to subscribe to status updates.
This design not only reduces execution redundancy, but also reduces the hardware requirements for full nodes. Lei further explained that MegaETH has developed a new data structure similar to the Merkle Patricia tree, which optimizes the use of hardware to support efficient transaction processing.
03
Decentralization debate from different perspectives
In the discussion on decentralization, Keone and Lei have different focuses. Keone believes that Monad's architecture ensures decentralization, trusted neutrality, and censorship resistance through independent single nodes and complete nodes. He emphasized that decentralization is not only a technical choice, but also a core value of the community.
Lei believes that MegaETH is superior in terms of decentralization because it relies on tens of thousands of Ethereum nodes to ensure finality and correctness. He pointed out that MegaETH's single sequencer can achieve extremely low transaction feedback time, which is impossible in any consensus-based system.
Although the two founders disagree on the definition of decentralization, they both agree that this feature is crucial to the long-term development of blockchain. All Layer 2 solutions can claim to be more decentralized because they rely directly on Ethereum for settlement. Monad improves Ethereum efficiency through new technologies without increasing hardware requirements. This improvement enhances Ethereum performance and supports the optimization of the entire decentralized system.
04
Thinking about technical differences from hardware to software
Keone and Lei also have different views on technology philosophy. Keone emphasized that Monad focuses on getting the maximum performance from the smallest hardware, allowing anyone to run a node with ordinary equipment. He believes that this requires software optimization rather than relying on high-end hardware. Monad's goal is to ensure decentralization while improving Ethereum's performance.
Lei said that MegaETH chose the Layer 2 architecture because it is the best performance solution and can eliminate the redundancy of execution and consensus to the maximum extent. They will not follow the old ways, but will be performance-oriented without hesitation. Lei specifically mentioned that the design of MegaETH allows the feedback time of transactions to be as low as 1 millisecond, which is unprecedented in any consensus-based system.
05
Community culture and brand image
In terms of community building, the two founders also have different focuses. Keone mentioned that Monad encourages everyone to play a role and create a positive environment. He emphasized that Monad's mascot and activities are spontaneously created and promoted by community members, reflecting the spirit of decentralization.
Relatively speaking, Lei introduced MegaETH's "Mega Mafia" brand image to attract developers interested in high-performance blockchain applications. They are particularly interested in founders who are disappointed with the existing infrastructure and hope to realize their dreams through MegaETH.
06
When will the mainnet be launched?
Keone said the Monad team is working hard and couldn't give a firm date.
Lei responded that MegaETH is expected to be open by the end of the year or early next year.
07
Summarize
Both Monad and MegaETH seek to create a high-performance and decentralized EVM-compatible chain. Monad achieves its goal by reconstructing the execution layer and consensus layer, including establishing Monad DB and introducing Optimistic to support parallel and asynchronous transaction processing, and using Monad BFT algorithm to speed up the consensus process. At the same time, the reconstruction of the first two also reduces the hardware requirements of nodes and promotes network decentralization.
MegaETH focuses on improving single-threaded performance. It uses a single sorter to simplify transaction processing, thereby reducing the hardware burden of full nodes, and introduces new data structures to improve overall efficiency, thereby achieving extreme performance. As Ethereum L2, it is mainly responsible for efficient transaction execution, and decentralization is achieved with the help of Ethereum.
Through this conversation, Keone and Lei demonstrated two different blockchain design philosophies. Although there are significant differences in their implementation paths, both have the same goal, which is to promote the development of the Ethereum ecosystem.
This technical debate not only reveals the cutting edge of current blockchain technology, but also provides inspiration for future innovation. Whether it is the deep optimization of Monad or the pursuit of high performance of MegaETH, they are important forces driving the advancement of blockchain technology. I believe that under the leadership of pioneers such as Keone and Lei, the Ethereum ecosystem will usher in a more brilliant tomorrow.