Monad: An L1 scaling solution that breaks through the EVM compatibility ceiling

The current cryptocurrency market exhibits an interesting polarization: Solana attracts users with its ultra-high speed of over 100,000 TPS, Ethereum continues to evolve through its Layer 2 ecosystem, while Move-based chains like Sui and Aptos aim to reshape the developer experience with entirely new languages. Amid this competition, a unique player, Monad, is attempting a path less traveled—building upon Ethereum’s full suite of development tools while fundamentally transforming L1 transaction execution efficiency through parallel processing technology.

This isn’t simply about “faster”—it’s a deep overhaul of the EVM architecture itself. How does Monad balance compatibility with Ethereum’s ecosystem and high L1 performance? What does its underlying technological innovation imply?

Monad’s Core Positioning: A High-Performance EVM-Compatible L1

From a technical standpoint, Monad fills a market gap. Solana, while fast, abandoned EVM entirely, making seamless migration for Ethereum developers impossible; Sui and Aptos introduced Move, but with a steep learning curve. Monad chooses a third way: retaining the EVM instruction set and Solidity ecosystem, while achieving 10,000 transactions per second and one-second block times through a new execution engine.

Founded in 2022, Monad Labs’ team hails from Jump Trading—a high-frequency trading firm known for millisecond-latency trading systems. This background is crucial, as it shapes Monad’s understanding of “performance” beyond throughput—encompassing predictable transaction confirmation and system stability. The project has secured over $200 million in funding from top-tier VCs like Paradigm and GSR Ventures, indicating strong market confidence in its direction.

Parallel Processing: Breaking the Sequential Execution Bottleneck

Understanding Monad’s innovation requires grasping why traditional blockchains are slow. Conventional models process a transaction’s entire lifecycle serially: ordering → validation → execution → state update. Even if individual transactions are fast, queuing thousands creates a system bottleneck.

Monad’s innovation is separating “consensus” from “execution.” The process is: a primary validator proposes a block containing unexecuted transactions; other validators only verify the correctness of the order (not each transaction’s result). Once consensus is reached, transactions enter a parallel execution phase. The benefit is clear—consensus is no longer slowed by execution complexity, and validators only perform relatively inexpensive validation operations.

However, this raises a challenge: how to ensure that multiple transactions executing simultaneously do not interfere with each other? For example, if two transactions both modify the same account balance, execution order matters. Monad addresses this with “optimistic execution” combined with “conflict detection”—assuming all transactions can execute in parallel, recording their preconditions, then checking for conflicts afterward. If conflicts are found, only the affected transactions are re-executed. In most cases—where transactions do not interfere—performance can be exponentially improved.

The Three Pillars of the Underlying Tech Stack

MonadBFT: The “Fast Lane” for Consensus

Monad employs an improved Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) consensus algorithm. Traditional BFT algorithms suffer performance drops under high concurrency due to communication complexity. MonadBFT mitigates this with an optimistic response mechanism—under normal network conditions, consensus is achieved in just two rounds of communication, with fallback to more complex linear communication only during validator timeouts. This design ensures security while significantly reducing latency during normal operation.

MonadDB: Built for Parallelism

Unlike traditional blockchains that store the entire transaction history on-chain, MonadDB only maintains the current state—such as account balances and contract code. This design offers two advantages: faster read/write speeds (no need to scan historical data) and native support for optimistic execution—creating temporary state snapshots for parallel transactions that do not interfere with each other. After optimistic execution, MonadDB updates the state selectively based on conflict detection results.

EVM Compatibility Layer: Developer-Friendly Bridge

Monad’s built-in EVM supports not only Solidity contracts but also replicates Ethereum’s instruction set and storage model. This means DeFi protocols, wallets, and development tools from Ethereum can be directly ported to Monad, reducing migration costs and lowering the barrier for Ethereum developers.

Three Pathways for Ecosystem Participation

Social Reputation System: Incentivizing Early Contributors

Monad has designed a “social reputation” participation mechanism, earning points through activities such as:

Discord Experience Points: Answering questions, participating in AMAs, winning poker tournaments, etc., earning XP, with rankings visible on the Monad XP leaderboard.

Community Roles: From long-term supporters (NadOG) to artists (Monartist), different contributions earn different roles, which may be linked to future airdrops.

POAPs and NFTs: Attending online or offline events grants digital badges, with hints that these NFTs could have real value.

NAD List: Active community members may be added to special attention lists on platforms like X (Twitter), gaining more exposure.

While no official airdrop has been announced, this social scoring system clearly lays the groundwork for future token distribution.

Monad vs Mainstream L1 Solutions: Differentiated Competition

Against Ethereum: L1 Scaling vs. L2 Ecosystem

Ethereum’s recent Dencun upgrade with EIP-4844 (Proto-Danksharding) reduces L2 transaction costs, but this is only the initial phase of sharding plans. The ultimate goal is full data sharding, which will take years. During this period, users still need to switch between Ethereum mainnet and L2s like Arbitrum and Optimism, leading to a fragmented experience.

Monad’s approach is a “single L1”—all operations occur on the mainnet, providing stronger finality and a more seamless user experience. The trade-off is that Monad requires more complex technical development.

Against Solana: Centralization Risks vs. Compatibility Trade-offs

Solana’s Proof of History (PoH) mechanism is innovative but tends toward centralization—timestamps are generated by a small set of validators, raising censorship concerns. Solana is working to diversify validators.

Monad uses standard BFT consensus, offering greater transparency. However, it sacrifices Solana’s elegant “global clock” system, resulting in increased system complexity.

Against Sui/Aptos: Ecosystem Launch Speed vs. Optimization

Sui V2 and Aptos use Move and their own execution environments, allowing for deep optimization. But for Ethereum developers, the learning curve is significant. Monad’s EVM compatibility enables rapid onboarding of existing Ethereum applications and developers, easing ecosystem growth.

Challenges to Address

Technical Complexity: Parallel execution and conflict detection are promising but require handling edge cases—complex transaction dependencies, validator heterogeneity—that could impact performance.

Centralization Risks: Large funding rounds accelerate development but raise concerns about VC influence. If core decisions are dominated by investors, Monad’s “decentralized” attributes could be compromised.

Ecosystem Building: High performance alone doesn’t guarantee adoption. Monad needs to attract real applications and users. Without killer apps launching after mainnet, its performance advantage may remain underutilized.

Monad’s Development Timeline and Market Expectations

The mainnet is scheduled to launch by the end of 2024. The key focus now is testing the system under real transaction loads—can 10,000 TPS be maintained stably? Will user experience truly surpass L2 solutions? Will the ecosystem attract active developers?

In the next 6–12 months, the market will observe:

• Deployment of initial DeFi applications (exchanges, lending protocols)
• Actual transaction costs and confirmation times
• Developer engagement and ecosystem growth

Overall Assessment

Monad represents a path long overlooked—fundamentally improving L1 performance while maintaining compatibility. Compared to “radical innovation” (like Solana) and “incremental upgrades” (like Ethereum L2s), this “compatibility-driven innovation” may be more readily accepted by the market.

Whether it becomes the next mainstream L1 depends on three factors: validation of technical stability, emergence of a real ecosystem, and maintaining differentiation from other L1s. Currently, Monad has all the necessary conditions, but the outcome remains to be seen by the market and time.