Monad Testnet Rollout

The highly-anticipated Ethereum-compatible Layer 1 Monad has begun rolling out its testnet as part of a phased release, a source told The Block.

> "I made a tx, it was fast," well-known crypto trader Jordan Fish, also known as Cobie, wrote on X. Cobie subsequently confirmed his post was in reference to the Monad testnet.

This news follows the launch of Monad’s devnet in March, where it achieved 10,000 transactions per second during internal testing. "This is an important milestone for our team," said Keone Hon, CEO and co-founder of Monad developer Monad Labs.

Performance Enhancement

Monad claims to have optimized Ethereum's functionality to enhance throughput, aiming for up to 10,000 TPS with a one-second block time. However, node operators may face challenges as hardware requirements are approximately twice those of the main Ethereum blockchain.

Rather than simply cloning the Ethereum codebase, Monad is constructing a new EVM from scratch, utilizing a pipelined architecture. This staggered approach enables more efficient processing and immediate block finality, while also being EVM bytecode compatible, allowing Ethereum developers to easily migrate their decentralized applications to Monad.

Token Usage

The network's token will be used to pay for transactions to be included in blocks, known as a carriage cost, and for executing transactions, according to Monad's technical documents released in September 2023. The token was initially named "mon," but Monad later removed this designation from their documents for unspecified reasons.

Funding Round

Paradigm-led $225 Million Funding Round

Monad Labs was co-founded by former Jump Trading developers. In April, the blockchain developer confirmed the completion of a $225 million funding round led by investment firm Paradigm.

Other investors included Electric Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Castle Island Ventures, GSR Ventures, and Greenoaks, among others. Angel investors included notable figures such as Inversebrah, Ansem, Hsaka, punk6529, Eric Wall, Rune Christensen, Bryan Pellegrino, Luca Netz, and Mert Mumtaz.

Monad Labs had previously raised $19 million, led by Dragonfly Capital, following a $9 million pre-seed round in May 2022 and a $10 million seed round in December 2022.

The Block reached out to Monad for comment.