The origin story of Monads
Monad has been in development for about two years and was founded by Keone Hon, James Hunsaker, and Eunice Giarta. Keone and James are the two technical co-founders who worked together at Jump Trading for eight years. Sitting on the same high-frequency trading desk, competing against 20 other teams within Jump, Keone and James were able to come out on top for many years in a row, facilitating over $10 trillion in notional volume per year and performing thousands of trades per second. At this level of volume, Keone and James experienced firsthand the difference microseconds can make in execution. After entering the crypto space, Keone worked on Solana DeFi while James built Pyth. They began building Monad in 2022 after realizing that it was possible to implement a series of fundamental optimizations to the EVM that have become standard in high-performance computer science over the past 20 years, but have not yet been applied to the EVM. By introducing these components, a higher-performing EVM can be created that solves many of the current scaling bottlenecks.
“They are the first ones pushing parallel EVM. They understand it better than anyone in crypto right now. I think there is no doubt that Monad had the parallel EVM that other chains claim to have now a year and a half ago. With all-out engineering efforts, Monad is very close to having the first product. I dare say within a month, we will have the first internal private testnet up and running.”
Monad's Technology Stack
It turns out that parallelization is much more than a buzzword/narrative, it enables scalable and efficient execution. It’s not just the parallel execution engine that makes Monad scalable and capable of handling over 10,000 transactions per second.
I think a lot of people think that parallelism is something that plugs in and it works, i.e.: "if you can add parallelism to the EVM, then suddenly it's going to be much more performant". But that's not actually the case. Parallelism alone doesn't actually do much to create a more performant EVM. Monads are what actually enable parallelism, and combined with a few other optimizations, unlock a lot of the performance of parallelism. Let's break them down:
Parallel execution
Refers to the ability to perform multiple tasks simultaneously, rather than one after another (sequentially). While parallel processing may be more complex, it can significantly reduce processing time and increase efficiency by distributing the workload across multiple processors:
Monad takes advantage of parallel execution, allowing multiple transactions to be processed simultaneously. It is worth noting that Monad blocks are still linearly ordered collections of transactions like Ethereum.
Monad uses optimistic, which means that the chain will start executing transactions before earlier transactions in the block are completed. To avoid errors and incorrect execution, the status of transactions is merged sequentially in the block to ensure correctness.
MonadDb
Without a state database that allows parallel reads and writes to disk, a parallel execution engine will do little to improve blockchain performance. Let's look at this with an example:
Sequential Execution (Ethereum): Imagine a single lane highway with a single toll booth allowing one car at a time to pay the toll and pass through.
Parallel execution: Now there are 20 lanes and 20 toll booths on the highway, but still only one car can go through at a time. So if a car is going through toll booth 1, then the car at toll booth 2 or 3 will have to wait.
Parallel execution and parallel database: All 20 toll booths can be used at the same time, and 20 vehicles in different lanes can pass through at the same time.
Monad DB is the key to unlocking parallel processing and fast chain finality/high TPS.
Asynchronous Execution and Consensus
Currently in Ethereum blocks, execution happens in about 1/10 of a second, and then the next 11.9 seconds are spent doing consensus. What Monad does is split that up so that instead of having 12 seconds for blocks and 1/10 of a second for execution, now you have two separate swimlanes so you can spend the entire budget of the block on execution. Imagine if Ethereum had 12 seconds of execution per block instead of 1/10 of a second. That’s a 100x increase. This is a very standard thing that a lot of people have been implementing in computer science for a long time, but it doesn’t currently exist in the EVM. So that’s another big unlock.”
“All of that combined together is what really gets the performance. To make it actually work and get to 10,000 transactions per second throughput.”
All of this, coupled with full EVM compatibility, makes Monad stand out from the competition. Any EVM protocol can be easily deployed on Monad and take advantage of the efficient execution environment.
What applications can be built on Monad?
Now that the tech stack is covered, let’s explore the upcoming Monad ecosystem. Generally speaking, all protocols benefit from improved execution, i.e. faster finality and more TPS. However, there are specific applications that can be unlocked by fast chains like Monad to achieve breakthrough progress.
One of the most obvious use cases is in trading protocols. In particular, for on-chain order book DEXs (spot and futures), building on Monad will be attractive. Order book exchanges have historically been centralized (Bybit, Binance, Coinbase, etc.), and while they offer deep liquidity, they come with relatively high fees and risks associated with a lack of self-custody. The AMM model, widely adopted by GMX, Gains, Synthetix, etc., allows for on-chain self-custody, but liquidity can be limited, leading to poor execution and slippage for traders. On-chain decentralized order book exchanges are therefore considered by many to offer the best of both worlds. However, rather than having to spin up a custom application chain for efficient execution, order book DEXs can be seamlessly deployed on Monad, which is EVM-compatible across the entire stack.
One of the early builders on Monad is the Elixir protocol, a delegated proof-of-stake network that provides liquidity for various order book exchanges. With Elixir, users can deposit liquidity into various vaults that act as market makers for order book exchanges. Elixir is currently active on Vertex and RabbitX, with plans to launch on Injective, dYdX, Bluefin, Monad, and more.
Additionally, native Monad content platform The Pipeline recently did a podcast interview with Pike Finance, who expressed early excitement about launching on Monad later this year. Pike Finance is a full-chain money market powered by Wormhole, Circle, and Pyth, which launched their beta on various EVM chains a few days ago.
Monad appears to already be in discussions with game studios about building and enabling truly high-throughput games on-chain.
route map
Monad is expected to launch on mainnet at some point later this year, likely Q3. So while it’s still early days for the chain, an internal testnet (an internal testnet) is about to go live.
The reasons why Monad is highly anticipated are mainly reflected in the following aspects:
1. Highly scalable performance: Monad is designed as a highly scalable single large L1 blockchain capable of processing more than 10,000 transactions per second with a block time of 1 second. This scalability is achieved through technologies such as parallel execution and Monad DB, which enables Monad to greatly improve efficiency when processing transactions, providing higher performance and throughput for applications.
2. Large community culture: Although it has not yet been launched, Monad has accumulated a large community with highly active community members and has formed a unique culture. The existence of this community provides a solid foundation for the development of Monad and also provides support for the construction of the ecosystem.
3. Background and experience of the founding team: Monad's founding team is composed of technical personnel with extensive experience in high-frequency trading and a deep understanding of high-performance computer science. This team adopted a series of fundamental optimizations when building Monad, enabling Monad to be at the forefront of technology.
4. EVM compatibility: Monad is not only compatible with EVM, but also has a series of fundamental optimizations to solve some of the expansion bottlenecks in the current Ethereum network. This allows any application protocol that has been deployed on Ethereum to be easily deployed on Monad and take advantage of its efficient execution environment.
5. Partnership and ecosystem building: Monad has established relationships with partners such as Layerzero, which helps provide more support and resources for the construction of the ecosystem. In addition, Monad has also attracted interest from existing EVM protocols, who hope to cooperate with Monad and deploy applications on it.
In summary, Monad is an upcoming high-performance L1 blockchain with excellent technical background, huge community support and rich partner resources, so it is highly anticipated. With the launch of Monad and the construction of the ecosystem, we can expect to see it play an important role in the blockchain field and bring better experience and services to users and developers.
