Author: Ivy
This summer, under the night sky of New York, Monad has become a buzzword in the crypto community. Whether at the ETH Global NYC venue or on a starlit rooftop bar, the name Monad always sparks heated discussions among builders. As the mainnet launch approaches, project teams and investors are building momentum for this “high-performance public chain rising star” with unprecedented enthusiasm.
At the recently concluded ETH Global NYC, Monad’s exposure and activity reached new heights: there were payment-related events in collaboration with Predicate and Inco, followed by a major gathering hosted by Monad ecosystem core project FastLane together with top market maker and investment institution GSR, and several other ecosystem builders.
The lineup for this event was nothing short of impressive:
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Monad’s leading LST builder and DeFi infrastructure company FastLane, dedicated to ecosystem win-win and capital efficiency reshaping
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RedStone, which recently released OEV innovations, serves 170+ clients, and secures over 10 billions USD in TVL
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Kuru, the native decentralized exchange hailed as the “trading engine” of the Monad ecosystem
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TownSquare, a native lending platform invested in by Monad’s co-founder
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HaHa Wallet, the native wallet that attracted over 100 million transactions and 30,000+ daily active users during the testnet phase
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RareBetSports, a popular sports betting app in the European and American markets
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Modus, a Monad-native on-chain asset management platform incubated by Yzi Labs
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GSR, which provides liquidity support for over 200 clients across 25+ trading venues, matching tens of billions of dollars in weekly trading volume.
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Figment Capital, which since its founding in 2021 has led investments in major projects such as EigenLayer, Celestia, Wormhole, StarkWare, and Initia.
All signs indicate that Monad’s builder community is eagerly awaiting the mainnet launch.
As a high-performance mainnet, Monad has always emphasized parallel execution and extreme optimization—key factors that the community expects will help it break through in the public chain landscape. For the capital markets, the focus is on whether Monad can become the representative of the “next-generation high-performance public chain” and take the lead in landing in scenarios such as DeFi, Trading, and Payment. For community builders, Monad provides a low-latency, high-throughput execution environment, giving products that are difficult to realize in EVM a real chance to launch. Both investors and builders are pinning their hopes for the “next wave of L1 innovation” on Monad.
Unlike projects that rely on one-off incentives, Monad seems to be exploring a path of long-term growth: by driving real application adoption and stimulating continuous community participation, TVL can be gradually increased. This “activity-driven, value-driven” model may accumulate more lasting long-term value for the ecosystem.
Amid this wave, FastLane has become the center of attention. As a project with a solid Western background, they only accelerated their entry into the Asian market in recent months, yet have already demonstrated strong influence. FastLane not only launched the first yield-generating LST—shMonad—on Monad’s testnet, but also leveraged its full-stack Western technical team to tailor a series of DeFi infrastructure for Monad’s asynchronous execution system. They also led and promoted Monad validator Timing Game research, and actively lead a research community composed of numerous Solana validators and almost all active Monad testnet validators.
During the testnet phase, FastLane has already achieved cooperation with nearly 100% of validators. Its RPC nodes for dApps have been integrated into over 25 projects, and well-known decentralized exchanges such as Ambient Finance, Kuru, and Clober have adopted its MEV protection infrastructure Atlas, helping users reduce trading losses while increasing project revenue, FastLane’s income, and shMonad’s yield.
Unlike traditional LSTs, FastLane transforms Monad’s high-speed performance into shared value. Through the shMON liquid staking token and multiple infrastructure products, they have successfully connected applications and validators, achieving a win-win for all parties. This not only significantly improves user yield experience, but also provides critical underlying support for DeFi projects within the ecosystem, further optimizing overall ecosystem performance.
No wonder FastLane has managed to attract so many partners in such a short time, jointly building momentum for Monad.
At this gathering led by FastLane and GSR, the rooftop bar beneath the Empire State Building was filled with passionate builders. Laughter, conversations, and clinking glasses intertwined, reflecting the vitality and confidence of the Monad community.
With Monad’s mainnet launch imminent, what do these leading ecosystem projects think?
FastLane
FastLane will officially launch its LST token—shMonad (shMON)—in the first week of the testnet. Through shMON, FastLane transforms Monad’s high-speed performance into shared value, laying a solid foundation of liquidity and infrastructure for the ecosystem even before the mainnet goes live.
The project’s core directions are mainly twofold: First, starting with infrastructure such as Atlas, Gas Abstraction, RPC, and OEV, integrate more ecosystem projects before the mainnet launch, helping all teams building on Monad move faster and creating more sustainable revenue partners for them. This will allow LST staking rewards after the mainnet launch to be enhanced not only by MEV income, but also by multiple layers of boosts. Second, actively reach consensus with ecosystem projects to design more activities and revenue channels for community members and liquidity providers, enhancing the liquidity and utility of shMonad and creating richer yield opportunities for token holders.
Modus
Although Modus is still in its early stages, it has already attracted community attention with the support of Yzi Labs. The team plans to launch on testnet soon and introduce a native lending market and LST auto-loop strategies represented by shMON on the mainnet, improving capital efficiency and bringing Monad its first batch of financial primitives. As a prototype of onchain prime brokerage, Modus aims to attract institutions and quant teams to settle in, building a stable capital market for Monad, so the industry is full of expectations for its mainnet performance.
Redstone
The decentralized oracle network RedStone announced that it will support Monad from day one of the mainnet, providing developers with reliable data feeds covering 1,200+ assets. RedStone stated that this collaboration not only reflects its long-term commitment to infrastructure building, but also aims to lay the foundation for the prosperity of Monad’s high-performance ecosystem, providing atomic-level speed and reliability required by innovative DeFi applications.
Townsquare
As Monad’s ecosystem gradually takes shape, TownSquare positions itself as a core lending and yield protocol, dedicated to improving users’ capital efficiency and returns. On the first day of the mainnet launch, the protocol will support all LSTs including FastLane shMON, native assets, and stablecoins, covering most lending markets. The team will also work closely with Monad to drive ecosystem expansion.
Rare Bet Sport
With Monad’s mainnet launch imminent, RareBetSports is moving from high-frequency testnet demonstrations to the full launch of composable DFS applications and on-chain betting infrastructure. This transition is seen as a green light for a new generation of user-facing games, enabling unprecedented speed and scalability on Monad. Meanwhile, the team also looks forward to launching more prediction markets on RareLink, including popular events such as football and MMA, as well as new gameplay tokens from major Monad communities.
HaHa Wallet
As Monad’s native wallet, HaHa Wallet attracted over 100 million transactions and 30,000+ daily active users during the testnet phase. The team hopes to provide users with a more intuitive and seamless wallet experience on the mainnet, serving both beginners and advanced users, and helping to fully upgrade ecosystem interactions.
Kuru
As Monad’s mainnet launch approaches, Kuru is seen as the core trading hub of the ecosystem, aiming to integrate asset discovery, trading, and project launch functions, and fully leverage Monad’s speed and scalability advantages. The team is currently working hard on mainnet preparations, with a brand-new design for its dApp already in the implementation stage. The new Swap and Discover pages have gone live first, and the rest of the sections will soon undergo a complete visual and interaction upgrade. As a composable, fully on-chain order book protocol with an AMM backstop mechanism, Kuru hopes to break down barriers through an intuitive product experience, allowing more new users to seamlessly enter DeFi while meeting the needs of professional traders for efficiency and low cost. As the mainnet approaches, both the community and the industry are full of expectations for Kuru to become the “trading engine” on Monad.
In addition to the enthusiasm of ecosystem projects themselves, the support of capital and market makers behind the scenes is equally crucial. As Monad’s first batch of liquidity partners, GSR, with over a decade of global market experience, will provide comprehensive support covering market making, OTC trading, and venture capital in the early stages of the mainnet launch. From project initiation to large-scale expansion, GSR will inject deep liquidity into Monad and help the ecosystem grow.
It is precisely because of the participation of partners like GSR that Monad’s early adoption and long-term development are even more anticipated.
When asked why he is so confident in Monad, GSR DeFi head Toe said: “Monad always puts users first, providing future-oriented financial infrastructure through controllable execution logic and a purpose-built consensus layer.”
FastLane, GSR, and ecosystem partners have ignited more than just a gathering in New York—they have sparked an irreversible wave. Monad is no longer just potential, but an inevitable future. When the laughter and lights fade from the rooftop, what remains is the steadfast heartbeat of the builder community for the future. New York is just the beginning; the real story of Monad will go from here to the world.
