Why Monad?
Author: Forrest
It’s strange that there aren’t many discussions about Monad in the Chinese community, but the Monad ecosystem has been making significant progress in English and other language communities recently. During the toughest times in the market, I want to share some of my understanding about the last hope of the village — @monad_xyz.
@QwQiao from AllianceDAO has always emphasized that the choice of consumer projects on Ethereum and Solana is the most important decision for projects. It’s like deciding in which country you want to establish and operate your business, what political views, operating environment, and strategies you want to follow; how you want to build a national culture and community ecosystem with the leaders, producers, and entrepreneurs of that country, etc. Moreover, on a more practical level, what kind of relationship will you, your project, and your community establish with that country, and how will your relationships balance and coexist?
From the perspective of business and economic principles, the governance of public chains is essentially like the constitutional design of a digital city-state. Operating a chain is akin to running a country, where the government and early builders act as institutional entrepreneurs providing infrastructure, and in the future, they will complete the continuous supply of public goods through a token tax system, taxing the new immigrants who are operators and producers (i.e., those who use this infrastructure). Additionally, the founder of a chain is like the spiritual leader of this country, and the worldview and will of the leader will permeate every detail of this country from top to bottom. Creating a long-term, community-driven chain is not an easy task for founders; it tests the experiences, cognition, vision, courage of the founding team, and their understanding of the world.
We can see that very successful public chains, akin to great nations, exhibit a clear output of the personal will and worldview of their founders, such as Ethereum, Solana, BNB, Base, etc. Similarly, some controversial chains are also heavily influenced by the founders' worldviews, such as Starknet, Scroll, and certain chains in this cycle that gained attention through price manipulation rather than building ecosystems; they resemble politicians, VCs, and businessmen who have banded together to buy an offshore island, engaging in “expectation-based” businesses like passport trading to exploit others. Therefore, I hope to share my partial understanding with builders to better choose leaders they admire and suitable operating environments for their bets.
As two of the most notable high-performance chains in this cycle, @monadxyz & @megaethlabs, both lead with high-performance narratives and have launched testnets in very close timeframes. Many builders are curious about how to view @monadxyz & @megaethlabs, so I want to continue sharing my feelings and thoughts for reference. My feelings are partly based on objective facts and partly on subjective thoughts, and they also depend on the incomplete information and feedback I’ve received from my interactions with the founders or communities of these two chains, which may not be suitable for all audiences.
First, let me introduce the backgrounds of the two co-founders. Interestingly, both founders were educated in Boston. The founder of Monad, @keoneHD, completed both his undergraduate and master's degrees at MIT, achieving a double major in CS and Mathematics for his undergraduate degree and a double major in CS and Finance for his graduate degree within four years—definitely a learning prodigy and a master of attention and time management. After graduation, he went directly to Quant and Jump to start his trading career. In my interactions with Keone, I found him to be a relatively calm and focused person, very dedicated to maximizing the value of each experience. As a founder who has transitioned from ENTJ to INTP, I seem to understand him a bit. For example, while we were playing a game of throwing a ball into a hole in Denver, he suddenly said, “How can we make the game crazier? Let’s redesign the gameplay,” and we transformed the simple and somewhat boring scoring game into a team-based relay race, making it more intense and fun. Keone reminds me of the super smart kids around me who graduated from non-business Ivy League schools—somewhat nerdy, a bit humorous, and very focused on the process of experience, self-actualization, and social realization, rather than just financial success or a specific worldly outcome (e.g., TGE). This aligns well with the personality traits that match his educational background.
The co-founder of MegaETH, @hotpot_dao, studied Psychology & Economics at Smith College, went to the University of Copenhagen for an exchange program, and later completed an MBA at HBS. I haven’t chatted much with him, but our brief interactions made me feel that he is a very typical HBS graduate (a certain professor from Princeton jokingly said that if you are in front of a Harvard alumnus, you will know immediately that he is from Harvard 😂, which is quite vivid). The conversations are direct, efficient, aggressive, willing to express confident and sharp ideas, giving off a strong professional service (banking & consulting) vibe, and he is a very goal-driven individual.
In the past few months, I have frequently asked investors, project parties, and communities in Asia and North America about their thoughts on these two ecosystems (due to limited capacity, there may be information blind spots). The results are quite interesting; let’s start with the conclusion: Investors generally have a slight preference for MegaETH, while project parties and communities are more interested in Monad. Stance determines preference, and stance is influenced by position and interests. First, let’s discuss the investors’ stance. At this moment, most investors, especially Asian investors, show a relatively clear preference for MegaETH. Most of the Chinese investors I know have told me that they feel MegaETH has more exposure in the community than Monad. I think there are three main reasons:
Brother Bing comes from Consensys, so he naturally gained a lot of attention and support from the “Ethereum core circle” and Asian background investors (like @ABCDELabs). Additionally, the changes in Chinese background and the translation of English tweets into Chinese have made it easier for more Chinese investors and influencers to gain positive feedback in their interactions with Brother Bing. Coupled with the traffic mechanism of X, this has created a relatively positive impact in the “elite” circle. Correspondingly, Monad has a slightly higher proportion of North American investors, as the founders are from non-Chinese backgrounds, the Asian growth team was established later, and they mainly focus on ecosystem and community building, resulting in a relatively weaker voice and understanding in the investor circle on X, especially among Asian investors.
Furthermore, in terms of the contribution and friendliness of ecosystems for investors’ bets, MegaETH clearly aligns better with investors’ preferences. MegaETH has nurtured MegaMafia, which I think is also a reason that attracts some investors (even those who haven’t invested in MegaETH but have invested in Monad). For investors, they are betting on information asymmetry and certainty. The emergence of MegaMafia (which selects suitable projects for deep incubation, support, or acceleration in a more internally driven manner) precisely helps investors solve these two problems. In contrast, with Monad, investors may only refer to MonadMadness (which is a public competition in the form of pitch competition, somewhat like Solana’s hackathon), and then fish for opportunities in the vast community. Capital parties, as a 'privileged group', pursue the selective incentives brought by MegaETH’s targeted support, while Monad’s 'potential group' characteristics are presented by the developer community and the ecosystem. Monad forms a spontaneous order through the non-exclusivity design of public goods supply mechanisms, combined with the accumulation of reputational capital.
The last point relates to the investors’ stakes. Monad was founded in 2022, while MegaETH was established in 2023. From a capital style perspective, MegaETH’s testnet launch was much quicker, aligning better with the expectations of Asian funds, while Monad’s 36-month ecosystem building period is more suitable for endowment-type long-term capital.
Now let’s discuss the ecosystem and community aspects that everyone is concerned about. The perspectives of Monad Madness and Mega Mafia can largely help us understand the operational strategies of the two ecosystems, which seem to be significantly related to the differences in the founders’ backgrounds and worldviews.
Project selection and expansion strategies:
Monad’s ecosystem focuses on building fairness. In my communications with the team, I sensed that Monad’s strategy is to treat every project fairly because they believe that subjectively selecting and nurturing specific projects will negatively impact the entry of other projects in the same track. Creating a fair infrastructure and rules for all project parties is a better choice. Monad does not provide any subjective differentiated assistance to any project; it feels like Keone has built a very sound personnel system and framework similar to a protocol, helping any project integrate into the Monad community without discrimination, which is very friendly for early-stage projects. In contrast, Mega Mafia focuses on providing deep support to a small number of very young and promising founders, aiming to create core projects within the ecosystem and offering specific assistance in areas like idea generation, PMF, visibility, and even funding. This is a very targeted approach to ecosystem support, but it also carries significant risks, as founders tend to believe their ideas will succeed 😂.
This reminds me of the intense discussions over the past few years regarding the business environments in China and the U.S. Governance led by people and governance led by the market can produce very different effects and results at different times. I believe we will witness this once again in the social experiment of crypto. Among these two high-performance chains, who will be EVM + Solana, and who will be Scroll? Let’s wait and see.
GTM Strategy:
Recently, both Monad and MegaETH have launched their testnets. It’s not surprising that MegaETH will not provide airdrop rewards for interactions on the testnet. In a recent conversation with Brother Bing, he mentioned that a community without a product is an empty community and will only become a source of selling pressure in the future. I don’t fully agree with this logic; realistically, in the countless chains built in the past, public chains that did not establish a large ecosystem before launching their mainnet have found it very difficult to create a flourishing ecosystem later on, such as several chains that start with the letter S 😂. The nature of this industry is to bet on expectations; when expectations disappear, the logic for project parties and communities in choosing chains becomes quite vague. Of course, recently MegaETH completed a financing of 4,964 ETH through NFTs, which to some extent indicates community recognition of MegaETH. However, it is somewhat confusing that, based on the community activity of MegaETH, it is unclear where the buying interest for the NFTs is coming from.
In contrast, Monad has a completely different approach to community building. From the current levels of FOMO in Discord, X, and various language communities, it’s not an exaggeration to say that the highly cohesive community culture resembles a cult. Before the testnet launch, Monad initiated early user engagement through community NFT activities in the form of MACH 2 (NFT accelerator), which had the lowest barriers to understanding and participation. Shortly before the testnet went live, they locked all social media to temporarily prevent newcomers from joining, only distributing tokens to existing high-quality users (those with historical transactions, deposits, social contributions, etc.) as a strategy for emotional marketing, igniting a very enthusiastic community sentiment. Even when the testnet just launched, there were several protocols for buying and selling tokens, and the team manually distributed tokens in the comments section on X (very down-to-earth). After the initial distribution stabilized, they continuously introduced support from various new and established top-tier projects, all of which had very high community engagement. Monad can be described as a marketing genius, with excellent control over the rhythm; almost every week after the testnet launch, there has been a corresponding theme: NFT week, Break Monad, etc. I must say that the Monad team understands human nature very well, forming an addiction mechanism through the accumulation of emotional capital, creating a positive feedback loop of network effects that mirrors Arthur's increasing returns theory.
Additionally, from a marketing perspective, whether for community users or builders, it should be easy to see that the Monad team has a terrifyingly detailed and solid strategy and execution in marketing and growth. From the early manual screening/kicking out of inactive users on Discord to maintain community activity and quality, to their understanding and use of X traffic, and the design of various dashboards, it deeply feels like a group of relentless individuals who don’t sleep.
The following section will mainly discuss Monad, as I have chosen to engage directly and thus have more practical experiences. I do not have a suitable angle to discuss MegaETH due to a lack of deeper collaboration.
First Principles and Minimalism: In fact, many investors have mentioned to me that they are unclear about what Monad is doing, that the strategy is unclear, and that support is insufficient, etc. However, in my view, Monad actually has a very clear strategic direction. First, Monad publicly disclosed two rounds of financing totaling $244 million, which can be considered a financing giant in the crypto industry. But builders deeply involved in the Monad ecosystem know that Monad approaches ecosystem building very much like a professional CFO, spending money only where it counts: Monad Madness, Founders Lounge, etc., are all events centered around project growth. They almost never hold large parties, focusing only on effective work and refusing to waste time and capital on inefficient matters. Again, I think this is closely related to the founders' personalities and team backgrounds. After all, who would go build, create, or buy tokens just because they attended a party that was out of this world and got red-faced from drinking?
From an experiential perspective, almost all the needs for community collaboration/growth/development mentioned by project teams, even the growth needs of founders, have been met in a very systematic, clear, and efficient manner by Monad:
System Effectiveness: When there are business demands, the North American and Asian teams at Monad almost all directly provide very standardized guidance documents. Even some very detailed GTM requirements have standardized, logical, clear, and extremely detailed guidance, which surprised me. These systems and documents were not tailored for our project but were shared in minutes after we raised questions. I believe this is the result of Monad’s ecosystem helping many project parties onboard over time and systematically organizing this information, which could almost be compiled into a "Monad Eco CMO's Secret Manual" 😂.
Team Effectiveness: The Monad team, including Keone himself, or team members like @shreya, @harvey, @michael, many have backgrounds in banking/consulting/mm and other professional services, which somewhat ensures their work efficiency and solidity. Treating project parties fairly, not bluffing, not ghosting (yes, a basic need that is so difficult for most ecosystems), and providing quick feedback and support may seem like low demands, but they are hard to achieve in most ecosystems.
Infrastructure Effectiveness: On the first day of the testnet launch, the Monad ecosystem already had a wealth of infrastructure and functionalities, such as monadexplorer, nadradar, etc., with a significant portion initiated by the community, which is already on par with a mature leading public chain.
In this industry and era where attention is extremely fleeting and diluted, we hear many people rushing in without thought every day 😂. However, when I truly delve into the progress of the Monad team and ecosystem building, I am genuinely impressed. According to @nikil's tweet, Monad's testnet has now become one of the top three chains most used by developers (including testnets and mainnets). In this relatively challenging market moment, it is undoubtedly the last hope of the village. The original intention of writing this article is to sincerely hope that the industry can work together to create something meaningful, so that our efforts are not in vain.
Finally, I hope that builders involved in the Monad ecosystem will communicate more in the future. The initial core product of @opinionlabsxyz will launch on the Monad testnet next week. I hope everyone will provide suggestions and welcome collaboration.
If Solana and Ethereum had a baby, that would be Monad. LFG.
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