Monad (MON) is the native token of Monad, an independent, Ethereum-compatible Layer-1 blockchain. Public mainnet launched on November 24, 2025. MON is used to pay gas fees and to stake or delegate to validators securing the network.
As of 2026-08-31, MON traded near $0.02657, with a market capitalization of approximately $314.8 million and more than 107,000 holder addresses on the network.
Monad differentiates itself through a parallel-execution EVM designed to process transactions concurrently rather than sequentially, aiming for higher throughput while retaining full compatibility with Ethereum's virtual machine and developer tooling.
Chain-level activity has trended positive, with total value locked growing at a rate placing Monad among the higher-growth midcap chains, and the network has been cited among the top 10 real-world-asset blockchains as of mid-2026. MON captures this activity as the network's required fee and staking asset.
MON is primarily a utility and staking token rather than a confirmed governance token. Holders use MON to pay gas fees for transactions and smart-contract execution on the Monad blockchain.
MON holders can also delegate tokens to validators under Monad's delegated Proof-of-Stake system, earning a share of staking rewards minus validator commission.
Monad's public mainnet launched on November 24, 2025, more than three years after Monad Labs was founded in 2022, with MON beginning to circulate that day.
Ahead of launch, 7.5% of initial supply (7.5 billion MON) was sold on Coinbase's Token Sales platform starting November 17, 2025 at $0.025 per token, and 3.3% of supply (3.3 billion MON) was airdropped to roughly 225,000 Sybil-verified users. The project earlier raised $19 million in a seed round (closed December 2022, led by Dragonfly Capital) and $225 million in a Series A (announced April 2024, led by Paradigm).
Monad is its own independent, Ethereum-compatible Layer-1 blockchain; MON is not a token deployed on another chain.
The network uses a delegated Proof-of-Stake (dPoS) consensus mechanism, in which validators propose and finalize blocks with influence weighted by staked MON. MON holders can delegate their stake to validators and receive a share of rewards minus a validator commission.
Monad was co-founded in 2022 by Keone Hon, James Hunsaker, and Eunice Giarta. Keone Hon serves as CEO; he spent eight years at Jump Trading building low-latency futures trading systems before leading blockchain-research and DeFi-infrastructure engineering at Jump Crypto from 2021.
James Hunsaker is CTO and heads Category Labs, the entity now dedicated to protocol engineering. Eunice Giarta is COO, overseeing business development.
Monad is developed and maintained by two related entities: Category Labs and the Monad Foundation. Category Labs, evolved from the original Monad Labs, is the engineering entity responsible for the protocol's client software, MonadDb, and consensus and networking implementation.
The Monad Foundation, established in late 2024, holds a large share of team-allocated MON and runs the network's Validator Delegation Program, which delegated an initial pool of MON to independent validators with plans to expand it over its first year. The Foundation also conducted a 2025 buyback offer to early investors.
Monad's governance currently centers on its validator-led delegated Proof-of-Stake system rather than a formalized on-chain voting process for MON holders. Validators propose and finalize blocks, and the Monad Foundation has described an intent to encourage community-driven improvement proposals over time.
A community proposal to decouple wallet addresses from authentication keys, partly framed as quantum-threat preparation, illustrates an emerging but informal channel for community input, alongside a Foundation-managed treasury.
Monad's most recent concrete development is a community-proposed wallet upgrade that decouples wallet addresses from authentication keys, reported around August 2026. The upgrade would allow key replacement without changing addresses or moving assets, partly framed as preparation against future quantum threats.
The network underwent at least two upgrades in 2026 that required exchanges to pause MON transfers: a general network upgrade around July 23, 2026, and a hard fork around August 25, 2026, both prompting Upbit to temporarily suspend MON deposits and withdrawals.
Monad's core client has undergone security review from multiple firms, including a Code4rena-run audit contest and an engagement by Zellic with Asymmetric Research. The Code4rena contest ran September 15 to October 12, 2025, with a $500,000 USDC prize pool, covering the parallel-execution EVM implementation; Code4rena was acquired by Zellic in 2024.
Zellic has separately stated it is conducting a comprehensive security review of Monad's networking stack, consensus, EVM execution, and MonadDb together with Asymmetric Research.