Users who focus on infrastructure, Layer1, and scalability are likely already familiar with Monad. Over the past two years, Monad has attracted a large following thanks to its significant funding and the deep experience of its founding team. According to public information, Monad has raised a total of $244 million, with participation from top-tier institutions such as Paradigm and Coinbase Ventures.
Monad is centered around the concept of "Parallel EVM," which accelerates Ethereum transactions through pipelined execution, supporting up to 10,000 transactions per second. The founders, Keone Hon and James Hunsaker, previously worked at Jump Trading for eight years. During their time at Jump, Keone managed a high-frequency trading (HFT) team, while James built an ultra-low-latency trading system that handled billions of dollars in daily trading volume across major futures markets. This strong background is a key reason why Monad has been able to secure such high levels of funding and attract attention from top-tier investors.
Jump Trading has recently slowed down its activities in the crypto industry, and starting in late July, it began selling large amounts of ETH, signaling a possible gradual withdrawal from the crypto space. Despite being a project founded by former Jump employees, Monad appears to have no direct ties to Jump Trading on the surface. However, the fact that the Monad community once received an airdrop from Wormhole raises some questions. Nonetheless, Monad's development has not been impacted by Jump Trading.
Many blockchain platforms boast strong backing from investors, but the applications on them often fail to make a significant impact. Monad, on the other hand, not only has strong backing but also hosts several projects that have attracted investments from well-known institutions, such as Kintsu, Kuru, Monad Pad, and aPriori. Due to Monad has yet to conduct a TGE (Token Generation Event), early participation in projects built on Monad raises the anticipation of potentially receiving multiple airdrops.
Monad Ecosystem Overview
According to Rootdata, the Monad ecosystem currently comprises 22 projects. We will introduce six early-stage projects below.
aPriori: MEV Infrastructure and Liquid Staking Platform
aPriori is an MEV infrastructure and liquid staking platform within the Monad ecosystem. Its founder, Ray, has previous experience at Jump Crypto and high-frequency trading firm Flow Traders, and is also a core contributor to Pyth Network. The CTO, Olivia, comes from Coinbase.
On July 25, aPriori announced the completion of an $8 million seed round led by Pantera Capital, adding to the $2.7 million pre-seed round announced in January this year, bringing aPriori's disclosed total funding to $10.7 million. Additionally, on July 30, Binance Labs announced its investment in the aPriori project.
Currently, aPriori's product is not yet public, with the website only offering links to Twitter, Discord, and the official blog. Users can participate in community activities on Discord to earn special roles.
Kintsu: Liquid Staking Protocol
Kintsu is a liquid staking protocol built on the ZK-privacy blockchain Aleph Zero and Monad, aiming to create an innovative LST product as a foundational component of DeFi on Monad. The project was founded by Stephen Novenstern, former strategic lead at Avalanche ecosystem's renowned DEX, Pangolin.
On the same day aPriori announced its funding, Kintsu also revealed that it had secured $4 million in funding led by Castle Island Ventures, with participation from CMT Digital, Spartan Group, Breed VC, CMS Holdings, Animoca Ventures, as well as Marin Tvrdic, Head of Relationships at Lido, and Robinson Burkey, co-founder of Wormhole. Kintsu plans to launch the sMONAD liquid staking token within the first week of Monad's mainnet release.
Kintsu has already launched the sTZERO liquid staking product on the Aleph Zero testnet, allowing users to stake Aleph Zero network tokens (TZERO) to receive liquid staking certificates (sTZERO).
Additionally, users can earn OG roles by participating in Kintsu's ambassador program or reaching level 35 in Discord.
Kuru: Decentralized Order Book Trading
Kuru is a decentralized central limit order book (CLOB) exchange within the Monad ecosystem. On July 25, Kuru announced a $2 million seed round led by Electric Capital, with participation from CMS Holdings, Breed VC, and Monad CEO Keone Hon.
The day Kuru's funding was announced was also the first time Kuru made a public statement. Currently, Kuru is in a very early stage, with the product yet to be revealed. The official website only provides links to Discord and Twitter, and the blog only contains the funding announcement.
The Discord community has closed new user entry, but according to official information, it will reopen to users this week.
Monad Pad: IDO Platform
Monad Pad is a token and NFT launch platform built on Monad, supporting project teams or developers in early-stage fundraising through presales or public sales of tokens or NFTs. On July 5, Monad Pad announced the completion of a $945,000 seed round with participation from CMS, Sneaky Ventures, and others.
Monad Pad has also issued its own original NFT series, Purple Frens, a collection of 3,333 purple frog PFP NFTs, each initially priced at $500. Additionally, 20% of Monad Pad's platform revenue will be distributed to holders of this NFT series.
MPAD is the native token of the Monad Pad platform, with a total supply of 100 million tokens, 10% (10 million tokens) of which will be distributed to Purple Frens NFT holders through staking.
As of August 12, the Purple Frens NFT series issued by Monad Pad has not yet been publicly sold, and the MPAD token has not been listed. To participate in the public sale, users need a whitelist. There are two ways to obtain it: participating in the NFT mint whitelist raffle organized by Monad Pad and Purple Frens on Twitter or being active in the Discord community to earn roles and gain whitelist access.
Castora: Decentralized Prediction Market
Castora is a decentralized peer-to-peer prediction market built on Monad, similar to the recently popular Polymarket. Castora currently offers an Ethereum price prediction pool, with a $10 USDC fee per bet. If the price reaches the predicted level within the specified time, the bettor will win all the funds in the pool.
Magma: Liquid Staking Protocol
Magma is a liquid staking protocol developed on Monad by Hydrogen Labs.
Hydrogen Labs is a Web3 infrastructure incubation platform that has developed the stablecoin protocol Fluid Protocol on the modular blockchain Fuel, the EigenLayer AVS-optimized server Anzen, and the Bitcoin liquid staking protocol Rover, among others.
Users interested in Magma can join the Discord community to become early participants.