Monad Labs CEO is most excited for DeFi and consumer-facing apps

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Monad is ready for take off

Monad, a layer-1 blockchain focused on scaling the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), hasn’t even launched on mainnet yet, but the chain has gained traction from its budding community, builders and investors.

“The goal is [to build] a very decentralized ecosystem with an incredible number of participants that can use this neutral technology,” Keone Hon, co-founder and CEO of Monad Labs, said on Talking Tokens. (Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or YouTube.)

Monad is a layer-1 smart contract platform that does about 10,000 TPS and has 1 second finality. It is focused on improving and scaling Ethereum through parallel execution. In April it raised $225 million in funding from firms like Paradigm, Electric Capital, Dragonfly and others.

“It’s really just a story about how as the ecosystem grows, it creates a lot of new opportunities for folks to take on leadership roles if they want to, or start new projects,” Hon said.

Pre-mainnet launch, there’s already a number of NFT projects in its ecosystem that spun out from art and has helped them build our brands.

“We’ve seen tremendous growth for a lot of great artists,” Hon said. But it’s still early for Monad to see activity across a number of sectors as there’s a “ton of growth” and activity happening pre-mainnet, he added.

In the future, Hon thinks Monad will continue to operate in a “generalist environment,” meaning it won’t be tied to one area or another within the web3 industry.

Currently, Hon is most excited about two different verticals being built on Monad: “high fidelity” DeFi and consumer facing applications.

For the first point, it’s ultimately about providing end users “better prices and more efficient execution of anything they’re doing with respect to personal finance,” Hon said. “Coming from the fact that it’s really cheap for market makers to update quotes and maintain a very tight spread on an order book for example.”

On the other hand, consumer facing apps can bring in massive amounts of transactions. For example, if Monad had 1 million daily active users that did 10 transactions per day that translates to 10 million transactions per day which translates to 100 million transactions per second (TPS), Hon said. “That is more than the throughput of any L2 right now.”

“That kind of scale is what is needed to support any application that is consumer facing and crosses the chasm and achieves mainstream adoption,” Hon added.

While it’s hard to predict which web3 consumer app will have true global adoption first, Hon noted that having users’ attention is an “incredibly valuable resource,” so whichever app can gather that, could be the winner.

Check out the next section for more details and the full episode.

The latest Talking Tokens podcast 🎙️

For this week’s Tuesday episode, I sat down with Keone Hon, co-founder and CEO of Monad Labs. 

Jacquelyn and Keone talk about why he co-founded Monad, how to compete in a competitive L1 landscape, why it’s focused on scaling the EVM, the importance of community and more.

Talking Tokens episodes are released on Spotify and Apple Podcasts at 6AM EST or YouTube at 10AM EST every Tuesday and Thursday. Listen in!

Make sure to subscribe to keep up with the latest episodes. Feel free to leave a review and tell us your thoughts.

Monitoring blockchains

Looking at some of the biggest developments onchain.

• Justin Sun, the founder of Tron, has announced plans to launch a stablecoin that can be transferred without gas fees on Tron Blockchain by Q4 and Ethereum and other EVM-compatible chains later on

• Celo launches its layer-2 blockchain testnet in a move to join the Ethereum and Optimism’s Superchain ecosystem

• The ZKM interoperability protocol shared plans to launch a Bitcoin-focused layer-2 chain called GOAT Network in Q3 in an effort to become the first decentralized Bitcoin L2

Taking on the tokens 

The total crypto market cap increased about 0.5% in the past 24-hours to $2.12 trillion. It is down 8.23% over a 7-day period.

As for the largest cryptocurrencies by market cap…

These metrics were taken at prior to publication on Tuesday morning EST.

Other numbers we’re eyeing…

• $143M — that’s the amount of inflows bitcoin spot ETFs saw from investors on Friday as the cryptocurrency fell to about $54,000, according to Farside Investors data 

• And CoinShares noted $441M in crypto investment inflows last week, following three weeks of net outflows

Money and people moves

Latest updates on crypto startups that secured funding and industry players who are starting something new.

1. Coinbase Ventures invests $1M in funding for Ampleforth, a digital asset that tracks Consumer Price Index (CPI)

2. Bitfarms promotes its Chief Mining Officer Ben Gagnon to CEO after Riot’s attempt to buy the company in April

3. Digital Asset Trader Auros to invest $50M in crypto startups via its new VC arm

Talking points for the road 

Here’s some headlines and topics that you can talk about at your next dinner party, crypto event or on a first date to look smart (results may vary.) 

It has been a long past few days for bitcoin.

All eyes are on the market movement for the grandfather of cryptocurrencies as Mt. Gox and the German government are moving and selling their coins. Details below:

1. Mt Gox moves nearly 47,229 BTC ahead of $9 billion payout (The Block)

2. Over $170 billion wiped off cryptocurrencies as market tanks on Mt. Gox bitcoin payout fears (CNBC)

3. German MP slams government’s bitcoin sell-offs, urges holding as a strategic reserve (The Block)

4. Bitcoin’s Lingering Mt. Gox Overhang Leaves Market in a State of Suspense (Bloomberg)

5. Will Bitcoin bounce back? Here’s where five experts see the price heading next (DL News)

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Please note that this content is for informational and entertainment purposes only. Any views shared should not be considered financial advice, nor should it be used to make investment decisions. Cryptocurrencies are high risk and you should consult a financial professional before making any financial decisions. Make sure you do your own research. We may have a direct or indirect financial interest in content mentioned in this newsletter.