Monad
About
Monad is a high-performance Layer-1 blockchain that is fully EVM-compatible at the bytecode level, delivering 10,000 TPS throughput with sub-second finality (400ms block times, 800ms finality) and low fees. Built for developers and users who want to deploy Solidity contracts, use existing Ethereum wallets and tooling, and scale applications without the throughput constraints of earlier chains. Its codebase is open-source (C++ and Rust), with novel architectures including MonadBFT consensus, parallel execution, JIT compilation, and the MonadDb storage engine.
Where Does Yield Come From?
Monad is a proof-of-stake blockchain where you can earn yield by staking its native token, MON. Here's how the system works.
Who runs the network. Validators are the participants who propose and confirm blocks. To become one, a validator must put up at least 100,000 MON of their own stake and gather 10,000,000 MON in total stake from themselves and others. Only the top 200 validators by stake are active at any time.
Where the yield comes from. When a validator proposes a block, they earn two things:
- A fixed reward — 25 newly minted MON per block (this is inflation, so the supply grows).
- Priority fees — extra tips that transaction senders pay to get their transactions processed faster.
How rewards are split. Each validator sets a commission rate (anywhere from 0% to 100%) on the inflationary reward. They keep that cut for themselves and distribute the rest proportionally to everyone who delegated MON to them, based on how much each person staked. Priority fees currently go entirely to the validator, not to delegators — though validators can choose to share them voluntarily using a special call (and in that case, no commission is taken on those shared fees).
What you can do as a delegator. If you delegate MON to a validator, you can claim your earned rewards at any time. You can also compound them — meaning you re-stake those rewards back into your delegation, and the compounded amount starts earning in the next epoch.
If you want to unstake. Undelegating is a two-step process. First you signal that you want to withdraw (called "undelegate"), then you wait one epoch (about 5.5 hours). After that wait, you can complete the withdrawal and get your MON back.
How staking works under the hood. All staking actions go through a special system address called a precompile (at 0x1000), not through a regular smart contract. This means the usual way Ethereum developers test contracts might not work here — staking interactions need special handling.
About penalties. The protocol does not automatically slash (take away) staked funds for misbehavior right now. If validators break the rules, the system relies on detailed logging to hold them accountable.
Persons
James Hunsaker
Co-Founder
LinkedInKeone Hon
Co-Founder
Audits
| Audit / Date | Findings | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
Zellic07-07-2025 - 05-09-2025 |
| The Monad compiler audit found only a single informational issue with no vulnerabilities rated medium or higher, indicating a strong security baseline for the scoped code. The informational finding was acknowledged and remediated by the team. |
Zellic07-07-2025 - 05-09-2025 |
| The audit found no critical or high-severity issues; four medium findings were acknowledged and mostly remediated, indicating the Monad RPC component has a reasonable security posture for its current development stage. Residual risks center on DoS resilience and fee-cap validation, which remain areas for operator configuration and ongoing hardening. |
Spearbit11-11-2025 |
| The audit revealed one critical and many high-severity vulnerabilities, nearly all of which were fixed and verified before the report's publication, indicating a strong security response; however, residual design risks remain in the networking layer (reputation system, Raptorcast redundancy) and several informational items are still tracked for future resolution. |
Code4rena15-09-2025 - 12-10-2025 |
| The audit uncovered 4 high-severity consensus-level vulnerabilities that could allow chain halting and free DoS, alongside 7 medium-severity issues affecting liveness, data integrity, and node stability; as a competitive audit, no fix verification or remediation review is documented, so the Monad team must independently confirm all findings are addressed before relying on the protocol's safety. |
Zellic07-07-2025 - 05-09-2025 |
| The audit revealed five critical vulnerabilities in Monad's consensus layer, all of which were acknowledged and remediated during the engagement; the findings demonstrate that the protocol's liveness and safety assumptions were at significant risk from single-validator DoS and stake-amplification attacks prior to fixes. |
Zellic08-09-2025 |
| The Zellic database audit yielded only three informational findings, all of which were acknowledged and remediated by the Monad team, indicating a strong security posture for this component with no exploitable vulnerabilities identified. |
Zellic07-07-2025 - 05-09-2025 |
| The audit revealed no critical vulnerabilities; the single High-severity OOB write and the three Medium-severity issues were all acknowledged and remediated by Category Labs, indicating that the scoped components were brought to a reasonable security baseline before deployment. |
Zellic07-07-2025 - 05-09-2025 |
| The audit uncovered 4 critical and 2 high-severity vulnerabilities in Monad's networking stack, all of which were remediated in subsequent commits, demonstrating a responsive security posture. The residual medium and low findings were also addressed or acknowledged, clearing the networking layer for deployment with meaningful hardening against DoS, resource-exhaustion, and message-replay attacks. |
Runtime Verification10-11-2025 - 12-03-2026 |
| The audit identified four medium-severity and two low-severity findings, all of which were addressed or acknowledged by the client, and no critical or high-severity vulnerabilities were found, indicating a solid security posture for Monad's execution and consensus–execution interactions in preparation for mainnet launch. Residual risks are primarily in operational RPC hardening and ensuring alignment between the Coq model and the consensus-side implementation of the Reserve Balance mechanism. |
Backers
Monad Labs raised $225 million in a funding round announced on April 9, 2024. The round was led by Paradigm. Other institutional investors included Electric Capital, Castle Island Ventures, Greenoaks, eGirl Capital, Rebirth Ventures, Amber Group, Animoca Ventures, Archetype, Bankless Ventures, Big Brain Holdings, Bodhi Ventures, Breed, Caladan, CMS Holdings, Coinbase Ventures, CoinFund, DBA, Edessa Capital, Figment Capital, Flow Traders, Galaxy, GSR Ventures, Hailstone Labs, Hermeneutic Investments, HTX Ventures, IOSG Ventures, Lightspeed Faction, Makers Fund, Manifold Trading, Merit Circle, Mirana Ventures, Nascent, Presto Labs, Robot Ventures, SevenX Ventures, Shoe on Ventures, Superscrypt, Tess Ventures, and Wintermute Ventures. Angel investors included Inversebrah, Ansem, Hsaka, punk6529, Saquon Barkley, Eric Wall, Rune Christensen, Bryan Pellegrino, Robinson Burkey, Luca Netz, Mert Mumtaz, and Shoku, among others. The announcement was made by Monad Labs (the development company behind the Monad protocol) prior to the formation of the Monad Foundation.
Legal
Legal form
Foundation
Registration jurisdiction
Cayman Islands
Status and notes
The operating entity is Monad Foundation, as stated in the Terms of Service (Section 1) and Privacy Policy. The Terms of Service are governed by the laws of the Cayman Islands, with the seat of arbitration and proper venue located in the Cayman Islands. The Privacy Policy explicitly references the Cayman Islands Data Protection Act 2021 and states that personal information may be transferred to, processed, stored, and used in the Cayman Islands. Both the Privacy Policy (last updated February 25, 2026) and Terms of Service (last updated February 10, 2026) are publicly available at monad.xyz/privacy-policy and monad.xyz/terms-of-service respectively. The footer on monad.xyz reads "© 2026 Monad Foundation. All rights reserved."