Understand Monad in 60 seconds
Reconstructed EVM
Redesigning EVM from scratch
Monad has redesigned Ethereum's consensus and execution systems in C++, achieving high performance while maintaining full compatibility with EVM bytecode and Ethereum RPC APIs.
How is Monad achieved?
To address bottlenecks in EVM execution and enhance blockchain scalability, Monad introduces a fully customizable tech stack focused on parallel processing and efficient state management.
The following four key architectural innovations aim to address the limitations of existing Ethereum-compatible blockchains:
Optimistic parallel execution: Monad executes multiple transactions simultaneously, assuming the initial state remains consistent, thus increasing throughput. Ultimately, conflicts in inputs are resolved by re-executing the transactions to ensure consistency.
MonadBFT consensus mechanism: A Byzantine Fault Tolerance consensus mechanism based on HotStuff, reducing the communication phase from three rounds to two rounds, advancing rounds based on actual network latency to enhance performance. This consensus mechanism requires only moderate hardware, allowing anyone to run a node easily.
Asynchronous execution (delayed 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 boosting the network's computational bandwidth.
MonadDB: A custom state database optimized for EVM storage patterns. Unlike traditional databases, MonadDB directly stores Merkle Patricia Trie structures on disk, reducing overhead and achieving efficient parallel state access.
What is Monad?
The highest-performing EVM L1 blockchain
Monad offers a critical combination of performance, portability, and decentralization.
High performance: Achieving 10,000 transactions per second (TPS), 1-second block times, and single-slot finality.
Portability: Monad is 100% EVM compatible.
Decentralization: Monad nodes have low hardware requirements to ensure the network remains decentralized.
Seamless onboarding, excellent scalability
Monad is 100% compatible with EVM, and gas fees are nearly zero. You can use the same tools, applications, libraries, and address space while enjoying revolutionary performance improvements and cost reductions!
Why Choose Monad?
Why Develop on Monad
Achieving 1000 times the performance of Ethereum in under 5 minutes: Monad is fully EVM compatible and can quickly integrate existing architectures
The power of community support: We firmly believe that the community is the most powerful growth engine. Deploying on Monad allows your leap from 0 to 1 to happen in an instant.
Decentralization and censorship resistance: Security and decentralization are crucial. We never compromise these core values while ensuring high scalability.
Born for large-scale applications: Gas fees below one cent and high throughput mean that as user growth accelerates, Monad can still comfortably meet your traffic demands.
The 'why' behind Monad's design
Why Monad positions itself as an EVM public chain
Monad chooses a Layer-1 blockchain architecture with the goal of optimizing various aspects of the entire tech stack to achieve decentralization, high performance, and low cost as its three core objectives.
As a Layer-1 blockchain, a Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) consensus mechanism is needed to maintain synchronization of globally distributed nodes, even when some nodes behave maliciously. The consensus mechanism allows nodes to check each other and collectively validate new blocks. While building Layer-2 is simpler in many ways, it has significant implications for the decentralization and censorship resistance of the blockchain.
As a Layer-1 blockchain, Monad can optimize and coordinate various aspects of the stack. The consensus and execution mechanisms (as well as the interaction logic between the two) are built from the ground up.
For in-depth discussions on this topic, see: Monad vs. Rollups
Why EVM Compatibility Matters
Monad embraces EVM compatibility because the Ethereum ecosystem has strong network effects. EVM is the mainstream smart contract standard, with the majority of existing dApps, developer tools, and research centered in this environment, holding over 90% of on-chain capital. The EVM developer community boasts the most powerful and active talent in the blockchain field.
Monad enables developers to avoid choosing between performance and portability. Developers can build applications for Monad, enjoying the advantages of high performance and low fees while ensuring broad compatibility of their code across most major ecosystems.
Why Monad is the best choice for large-scale applications
Monad focuses architecturally on native decentralization and scalability, ensuring it can unlock new possibilities for blockchain development. Monad's mission is to support large-scale decentralized applications with minimal hardware requirements while maintaining full compatibility with Ethereum. This dual focus—providing high performance and decentralization—will create new opportunities for dApp developers and set new standards for blockchain infrastructure.
Monad's L1 design aims to address the core limitations of blockchain scalability while maintaining alignment with the Ethereum developer community and future research without sacrificing decentralization. This architecture provides a different path from Rollups, demonstrating that fundamental improvements at the L1 layer are equally critical for scaling decentralized networks.
Community and Large-Scale Applications
Community is a superpower
The community is a catalyst for large-scale applications
The core of decentralization is to return power to ordinary people, and the community is the superpower in the crypto space.
This is particularly evident within the Monad ecosystem. The Monad community is passionate, creative, and vibrant:
Monad Community Overview
Monad Meme Library
Monad Media Engine
Monad Discord
Community members act as advocates and early adopters, providing critical feedback and moral support to developers. The Monad community serves as a powerful growth engine, helping developers achieve the leap from 0 to 1.
Further reading: Community Marketing for Monad Native Applications
Community as a Growth Catalyst
Monad's strategy is simple and effective: the size and engagement of the community directly drive the dissemination of information. Unlike traditional blockchain projects that treat marketing and community separately, Monad tightly integrates both, ensuring that every marketing activity builds and nurtures the Monad community.
The advantages of Monad's community-centered model
Providing developers with an instant user base
Teams building on Monad can tap into a large and active user community eager to adopt new applications. This reduces the need for extensive external marketing, allowing developers to focus on creating impactful products.
Direct interaction without intermediaries
Monad enables application teams to interact directly with users, fostering genuine relationships and enhancing user loyalty. This direct access simplifies the feedback process and accelerates product improvement.
Avoiding superficial cooperation
Traditional joint marketing often involves superficial cooperation aimed at completing tasks rather than genuine participation. Monad shifts its focus to meaningful community interaction, ensuring that collaborations deliver real value rather than just symbolic gestures.
Why Monad's success is inevitable
Breaking the Blockchain Trilemma
One of the main challenges faced by the blockchain field is achieving scalability without sacrificing security or decentralization. Current EVM-compatible blockchains (including Ethereum) have limitations in transaction throughput and state access, failing to meet the needs of future large-scale global applications.
Focusing on the convenience of access for developing talent
Monad's commitment to EVM compatibility is a strategic advantage that cannot be ignored. The vast majority of blockchain developers are already familiar with Solidity and the EVM ecosystem. By ensuring seamless onboarding, Monad lowers the barriers for developers while cultivating a strong, talented, and active developer community. This compatibility accelerates the migration of existing dApps to Monad, enhancing the network's usability and adoption.
Learning from historical experiences to forge new paths
In early blockchain projects, Solana chose to completely rebuild its underlying architecture in pursuit of high performance. Monad Labs, drawing on these experiences, has taken a different path: innovating while ensuring compatibility with existing standards. It is this balance that allows Monad to enhance performance while fully retaining the benefits of the EVM-based ecosystem, providing a more pragmatic and scalable solution for the large-scale application of blockchain technology.
Documentation and Technical Discussions
While the Monad Wiki section provides a quick overview of Monad, we strongly encourage all developers to consult and explore the technical documentation and discussions to deepen their understanding and knowledge.
Monad Docs Chinese Version
Learn more:
Monad Wiki Chinese Version
Monad Official Website
Monad Twitter