What is the current status of the Monad ecosystem, which has received the largest financing since 2024 and is about to launch its testing?

Author: Nicky, Foresight News

In April this year, Layer1 blockchain Monad Labs announced the completion of a financing round of up to $225 million, marking the largest cryptocurrency project financing of 2024 so far. This round was led by investment firm Paradigm and attracted participation from investment institutions including IOSG Ventures, SevenX Ventures, Electric Capital, and Greenoaks.

Monad Labs aims to enhance the performance of the Ethereum Virtual Machine by introducing parallel execution and superscalar pipeline technology through its parallel EVM Layer1 project, Monad, addressing the low throughput issues of existing EVM-compatible blockchains. Currently, the Monad network is in the Devnet phase, and the joint testnet is still being prepared.

This article will comprehensively outline the development status of the Monad ecosystem across various sectors, including DeFi, NFTs, and cross-chain interoperability protocols. It should also be noted that many native projects within the Monad ecosystem are still in very early development stages, and investors and participants should remain vigilant and fully recognize the risks involved.

As of August 1, 2024, an overview of Monad ecosystem projects. (Image source: Drops Tab)

DeFi Protocols

DEX / AMM Protocols

Ambient Finance

Ambient Finance is a decentralized trading protocol that allows for the combination of concentrated and constant product liquidity on any pair of blockchain assets through a bilateral AMM. In July last year, Ambient Finance announced the completion of a $6.5 million seed round, led by BlockTower Capital, with participation from Jane Street, Circle, Tensai Capital, and several individual investors.

Backpack

Backpack is a fully regulated global cryptocurrency trading platform that integrates centralized exchanges, on-chain wallets, and NFTs, aiming to provide users with a seamless and innovative crypto experience, with plans to expand into a broader blockchain ecosystem. Its exchange has obtained a VASP license issued by the Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority and will support the network on the first day of the Monad public testnet launch.

Balancer

Balancer is a DeFi AMM protocol that allows anyone to create asset pools with predefined weights in the pool. Balancer is striving to become a platform for DAOs and other protocol building tools, providing liquidity for users and products. As of now, the trading volume of Liquid Staked Tokens on Balancer has exceeded $25 billion.

Catalyst

Catalyst is an open-source protocol that provides liquidity between modular blockchains. With Catalyst, any new modular blockchain can automatically connect liquidity and trade with any chain— including liquidity hubs like Ethereum and Cosmos. In May this year, Catalyst announced the launch of its mainnet, allowing Layer 2 networks built using OP Stack, such as Optimism and Base, to share liquidity between their rollups.

Dyson Finance

Dyson Finance is a retail user-friendly DEX aimed at democratizing the on-chain liquidity paradigm. With its dual investment, innovative dynamic AMM, and exclusive referral program, anyone can easily provide liquidity and earn high yields like a professional.

Kuru

Kuru is a fully on-chain order book DEX built on Monad, providing users with a single platform to discover, research, and trade on-chain spot assets. In July this year, Kuru announced the completion of a $2 million seed round, led by Electric Capital, with participation from Brevan Howard Digital, CMS Holdings, and angel investors like Keone Hon.

Swaap Finance

Swaap Finance is a market-neutral automated market maker (AMM). It combines oracles and dynamic spreads to provide sustainable returns for liquidity providers and cheaper prices for traders.

Timeswap

Timeswap is a decentralized money market protocol based on AMM that does not use oracles or liquidators. Unlike Uniswap, which allows real-time asset swaps, borrowing on Timeswap requires token exchanges until repayment is completed.

Wombat Exchange

Wombat Exchange is a multi-chain stablecoin trading DEX, featuring open liquidity pools, low slippage, and single-sided staking services.

Lending Protocols

Curvance

Curvance is a decentralized stablecoin lending protocol initially focused on LPs from the Curve, Convex, Aura, and Frax ecosystems. Curvance aims to optimize user yields while maximizing capital efficiency through peer-to-peer lending. In December last year, Curvance announced the completion of a $3.6 million seed round, with participation from Arbitrum developer Offchain Labs, Wormhole, and angel investors including Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal. In April this year, Curvance launched a testnet for early supporters.

Pike Finance

Pike Finance is a native cross-chain lending market that enables direct and secure interactions between different blockchains. Pike is built on Wormhole's cross-chain data messaging protocol and Circle's native USDC minting protocol CCTP. In March this year, Pike Finance announced its tokenomics, aiming to promote the development of cross-chain DApps through its governance token P.

Liquidity Network Protocols

aPriori

aPriori is an MEV infrastructure and liquidity staking protocol built natively on Monad, dedicated to creating a transaction-centric infrastructure for Monad to reduce gas fees, optimize network traffic, and provide sustainable incentives for validators, helping Monad improve throughput and user experience. In July this year, aPriori announced the completion of an $8 million seed round, led by Pantera. Previously, aPriori completed a Pre-Seed round co-led by Hashed and Arrington Capital, bringing the total funding to $10 million, with participating institutions including Consensys, OKX Ventures, and Manifold Trading. At the same time, Binance Labs announced an investment in aPriori through its 6th season incubation program. aPriori co-founder and CEO Ray S revealed that this round of financing would result in a fully diluted token valuation reaching "nine figures."

Elixir

Elixir is a modular liquidity network that allows users to provide liquidity directly to trading pairs on order book exchanges and earn market maker rewards similar to AMMs. Its network supports significant liquidity from exchanges like Vertex, Bluefin, and RabbitX, and will integrate with platforms like dYdX and ApeX. In March this year, Elixir announced the completion of an $8 million Series B financing round, with Mysten Labs and Maelstrom participating. Last October, it completed a $7.5 million Series A financing round at a $100 million valuation, led by Hack VC, with participation from NGC Ventures.

Kintsu

Kintsu is an ecological liquidity staking protocol based on the Monad network. In July this year, Kintsu announced the completion of a $4 million seed round, led by Castle Island Ventures, with participation from Brevan Howard Digital, CMT Digital, and Animoca Ventures.

NFT Sector

Monad Nomads NFT

Monad Nomads NFT is the first community-driven NFT proposal on Monad.

Poply

Poply is a community-based native NFT marketplace on Monad.

Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocols

Axelar Network

Axelar is a decentralized cross-chain communication network designed to enhance interoperability in Web3 by connecting heterogeneous blockchains and enabling asset mobility and programmability for builders and end-users in an optimized manner.

Decent

Decent aims to provide chain abstraction services for applications and blockchains, helping users make payments using anything in their wallets.

LayerZero

LayerZero is an interoperability protocol that can be used for messaging, allowing any cross-chain contract call that includes a valid payload.

Wormhole

Wormhole is a universal messaging protocol launched in October 2020, initially incubated and supported by Jump Crypto, designed to enable developers to build native cross-chain applications that span multiple chains. It has evolved from focusing on a bi-directional cross-chain bridge between Ethereum and Solana to a universal messaging protocol supporting multiple chains.

AI

AIT Protocol

AIT Protocol is a Web3 data infrastructure built on blockchain, primarily used for data annotation and AI model training, allowing users to earn rewards while participating in "Train-To-Earn" tasks and contributing to the development and training of AI models. At the end of last year, AIT Protocol announced the completion of a new round of financing, with participation from MorningStar Ventures, Megala Ventures, Contango Digital Assets, and others.

On-Chain Tools

Notifi

Notifi provides flexible support for communications for any Web3 project, featuring advanced functionalities for applications and built-in global infrastructure to support project applications at scale.

Parsec

Parsec is a crypto on-chain data analytics platform. In October last year, Parsec announced the completion of a new round of $4 million financing and launched the DeFi and NFT analytics product "team." This round of financing was led by Galaxy Digital, with participation from Uniswap Labs Ventures, Robot Ventures, CMT Digital, and others.

GameFi

Breath of Estova

Breath of Estova (BoE) is a Play-to-Earn 2D game built on the Monad network. BoE leverages Monad's parallel performance to introduce blockchain integration, allowing users to earn ESTOVA tokens and acquire unique in-game items and pets.

RareBetSports

RareBetSports is a Web3 ecosystem based on the Monad network, designed to capture the experience of combining sports and cryptocurrency, and is an ideal platform tailored for the next generation of fans and future communities.

Oracles

Pyth Network

Pyth Network is a next-generation price oracle solution aimed at providing valuable on-chain financial market data, including cryptocurrencies, stocks, forex, and commodities, to projects, protocols, and the public through blockchain technology.

RedStone

RedStone is a blockchain oracle similar to popular oracles like Chainlink and Pyth Network but based on a modular design. In July this year, RedStone completed a $15 million Series A financing round, led by Arrington Capital, with participation from Kraken Ventures, White Star Capital, Spartan Group, and angel investors including Smokey the Bera and Homme Bera from Berachain, and Mike Silagadze from Ether.Fi.

Switchboard

Switchboard is a fast, permissionless, and customizable multi-chain oracle protocol for general data feeds and verifiable randomness. In May this year, Switchboard announced the completion of a $7.5 million Series A financing round, led by Tribe Capital and RockawayX, with participation from Solana Foundation, Aptos, StarkWare, and several angel investors.