Crypto startup Monad Labs lands $19 million in funding to create the next ‘Ethereum killer’

While tech startups are struggling to raise funds, it appears the crypto space is beginning to bounce back following many months of crypto winter and the global economic slowdown. Just last month, DappRadar revealed that the crypto market continues to grow with its market cap back at over $1 trillion. Another clear indication of a rebound in the space is the influx of millions of dollars into crypto-related startups.

The latest is Monad Labs, a crypto startup that is “building a platform to optimize both consensus and execution […] which ultimately results in a system that can process a billion transactions per day and 10,000 transactions per second.”

Today, Monad Labs said it has raised $19 million in seed funding led by Dragonfly Capital, with participation from 70 investors, including Placeholder Capital, Lemniscap, Shima Capital, Finality Capital, as well as notable angel investors in the space such as Naval Ravikant, Cobie, and Hasu, the crypto startup announced in a news release.

Monad Labs will use the fresh capital infusion to further its commitment to building the next level of Layer1 smart contract platforms with Monad Blockchain

Founded in 2022 by Jump Trading alums CEO Keone Hon and CTO James Hunsaker, the Monad team is solving challenging problems in distributed systems engineering and low-latency optimization, an authoring novel open-source code to implement a new, high-performance decentralized system.

Monad Labs is an early-stage, venture-backed tech startup, whose team brings with them over seven years of experience in building low-latency, high-frequency-trading systems at Jump Trading. The co-founders of Monad Labs have roots in Jump Trading, where they worked together for seven years building low-latency high-frequency-trading (HFT) systems, and later contributing to R&D at Jump Crypto in 2021. This was the genesis of Monad — synthesizing learnings from HFT, as well as some new ideas, to build the most performant and robust smart-contract blockchain possible.

Ethereum Killer

What problem is Monad Labs really trying to solve? Over the years, the growth of decentralized finance (DeFi) on Ethereum-compatible platforms is hampered by the inefficiency of existing Layer1 protocols, which offer limited throughput at a high cost. These factors limit the functionality of decentralized applications (Dapps) and make it difficult for them to scale for mass adoption. This is where Monad Labs comes in.

Monad Labs addresses all these issues through its Monad blockchain, an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible Layer1 smart contract platform designed to provide many multiples of the throughput offered by Ethereum.

“Monad Labs is building the smart contract platform with the performance needed to truly unlock the transformative power of decentralized computation,” said Keone Hon, Co-Founder & CEO of Monad Labs. “The Monad blockchain will set the industry standards for the speed, transparency, security and scalability that all Layer1 protocols should have, and its true impact will be felt across both the Web2 and Web3 ecosystems. This successful seed round demonstrates the need for Monad in the marketplace and the shared commitment from all to advance the industry. We are excited to work alongside our investors to bring Monad to market, build out its capabilities and show the world exactly what blockchains can do.”

Through this investment, Monad Labs will be able to further its commitment to building the next level of Layer1 smart contract platforms with Monad. The Monad blockchain operates on a Proof of Stake consensus protocol and, by design, is set to process a total of 10,000 transactions per second. Monad achieves this by making several key improvements to the EVM standard including parallel and asynchronous execution of transactions.

James Hunsaker, Co-Founder & CTO of Monad Labs, added, “The capabilities of any Dapp are in part determined by the power of the blockchain on which it is built. The high cost of computation on existing blockchains significantly limits what can be built on-chain, and forces developers to choose between security and computation efficiency, ultimately leading to security issues. At Monad Labs we are creating a blockchain that addresses these issues, creating the potential for rapid innovation in the decentralized landscape.”

Monad offers a high-performance environment that empowers developers to build the next level of highly complex and scalable Dapps. Monad is compatible with all other EVM-based smart contracts and will be going live on a testnet in the coming months with the mainnet launch occurring later this year.

“We’re excited to lead Monad’s seed round. Monad is a truly unique and exciting project that will have the level of throughput needed for wide-scale adoption of decentralized finance. Keone and James have the subject matter expertise and technical skills needed to deliver on a high-throughput Layer1 blockchain that will set new standards for how blockchains will operate moving forward,” Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly Capital said.