From: thepipeline_xyz
The public testnet for Monad is officially going live, showcasing years of technological development and marking a new phase for its ecosystem and community [00:00:00] [00:00:02] [00:01:14] [00:01:17]. This launch is not seen as a finish line, but rather a starting line for continuous innovation and growth [00:00:25] [00:00:26] [00:48:43] [00:48:45].
Monad’s “Build from Scratch” Approach
Monad adopted a unique approach, building its protocol entirely from scratch to gain greater technical control over the product [00:01:46] [00:01:48] [00:02:04] [00:02:06]. While forking an open-source project allows leveraging existing work, Monad’s developers felt they would have modified so many aspects that it wouldn’t make sense for ongoing maintenance or new feature development [00:02:11] [00:02:16] [00:02:17] [00:02:19] [00:02:37]. This approach enables precise control over implementation details, such as memory allocation and disk interaction, to achieve optimal performance [00:02:41] [00:02:44] [00:02:46] [00:02:47].
The decision to build from scratch for high performance was driven by Ethereum’s inherent rate limiting, which focuses on low node requirements rather than raw execution performance [00:04:04] [00:04:07] [00:04:10] [00:04:13]. Monad was envisioned as a high-performance EVM chain from the outset, with the primary restriction being 100% EVM Ethereum compatibility [00:04:21] [00:04:24] [00:04:26] [00:04:28] [00:04:31] [00:04:35]. This ambitious undertaking required specialized low-level systems engineers, who are difficult to find, typically working in big tech, silicon manufacturing, or high-frequency trading firms [00:05:12] [00:05:15] [00:05:17] [00:05:21] [00:05:23] [00:05:26] [00:05:28] [00:05:30] [00:05:33].
Technical Innovations
The main challenge for Monad was achieving concurrent execution to leverage multiple CPU cores, as most existing blockchain clients are single-core [00:06:17] [00:06:20] [00:06:22] [00:06:25]. Transactions within a block have dependencies, making pipelining difficult [00:06:36] [00:06:38] [00:06:39] [00:06:42]. Monad’s key innovations revolve around how to execute transactions and keep the machine constantly busy [00:07:53] [00:07:55] [00:07:57] [00:08:00]. A major focus was optimizing database access, as waiting for disk access (which takes 30 microseconds or more) can quickly add up across many transactions, leaving the CPU idle [00:07:10] [00:07:12] [00:07:16] [00:07:19] [00:07:21] [00:07:23] [00:07:25] [00:07:26] [00:07:28] [00:07:30] [00:07:33] [00:07:37] [00:07:39]. This led to the development of Monad’s custom database [00:08:10] [00:08:12].
This concept is often referred to by the community as the “washing machine analogy”: just as you can wash, dry, and fold different loads of laundry concurrently to maximize efficiency, Monad pipelines transactions to keep the CPU busy and achieve higher throughput [00:08:13] [00:08:15] [00:08:17] [00:08:19] [00:08:21] [00:08:23] [00:08:24] [00:08:26] [00:08:30] [00:08:32] [00:08:34] [00:08:36].
Monad’s Impact on Applications and User and Developer Acquisition
Monad aims to provide a highly performant shared global state, enabling anyone to build applications that can reach millions or hundreds of millions of users who already have on-chain assets, digital identities, and historical application usage [00:13:06] [00:13:09] [00:13:12] [00:13:15] [00:13:18] [00:13:20] [00:13:22] [00:13:25] [00:13:27] [00:13:30] [00:13:32] [00:13:34].
Monad is specifically enabling two key verticals:
- High-Fidelity DeFi: Enabling personal finance to scale to hundreds of millions of users with extremely cheap transaction fees and low slippage due to efficient liquidity provision [00:13:45] [00:13:49] [00:13:52] [00:13:54] [00:13:58] [00:13:59] [00:14:02] [00:14:05].
- Consumer Space: Supporting applications that need to scale to hundreds of millions of users with over a billion transactions per day, requiring the scale that Monad provides [00:14:17] [00:14:19] [00:14:22] [00:14:26] [00:14:29] [00:14:31] [00:14:33] [00:14:35].
The ability for application developers to sponsor gas fees, made feasible by Monad’s low transaction costs, significantly lowers the barrier to entry for users and unlocks new business models [00:37:06] [00:37:09] [00:37:11] [00:37:14] [00:37:18] [00:37:20] [00:37:22] [00:37:24] [00:37:30] [00:37:33] [00:37:36] [00:37:39]. This is particularly relevant for decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN), where large potential usage often comes with high price sensitivity [00:38:18] [00:38:22] [00:38:25] [00:38:28].
Devnet vs. Public Testnet and Benchmarking
The Devnet served as an early feedback loop for testers and infrastructure providers, helping Monad identify and fix issues, and add unanticipated features [00:17:22] [00:17:24] [00:17:28] [00:17:30] [00:17:33] [00:17:35]. One team on Devnet generated 3 trillion gas in a few hours, equivalent to about 30 days of Ethereum throughput [00:17:53] [00:17:56] [00:17:59] [00:18:04] [00:18:07] [00:18:11] [00:18:14] [00:18:17] [00:18:19] [00:18:22] [00:18:25].
Monad emphasizes using replayed Ethereum history for benchmarking on its Devnet and Testnet [00:19:28] [00:19:31]. This approach simulates real-world usage patterns, unlike simple token transfers or ERC20 operations, which are less taxing on the system [00:19:33] [00:19:35] [00:19:37] [00:19:51] [00:19:52] [00:20:26] [00:20:27] [00:20:47] [00:20:49] [00:21:11] [00:21:12] [00:21:15]. Real Ethereum usage includes complex AMMs, lending protocols, and computationally expensive ZK proofs [00:21:28] [00:21:32] [00:21:34] [00:21:35] [00:21:38] [00:21:40] [00:21:42]. Monad aims to handle such real-world, high-gas usage scenarios [00:22:34] [00:22:35] [00:22:38].
“The difference between building a system that works and a system that’s really optimized… it’s like going from one to 100 whereas building the plane is going from zero to one.” [00:09:23] [00:09:26] [00:09:29] [00:09:32] [00:10:47] [00:10:50] [00:10:52] “Monad is really about building the performance engineering layer… so that we can get much more performance and much cheaper transactions for everyone.” [00:11:56] [00:11:59] [00:12:02] [00:12:04] [00:12:06]
Goals of the Public Testnet
The public testnet serves several key goals:
- Technical Exercise: To exercise the technology, gather more feedback on the client, and identify areas needing further optimization [00:32:47] [00:32:48] [00:32:51] [00:32:54] [00:32:56] [00:32:58].
- Technology Showcase: To showcase the power of the underlying technology and the applications built on top of Monad that leverage its performance [00:33:38] [00:33:41] [00:33:45] [00:33:48] [00:33:50].
- Community Engagement: To generate excitement within the crypto space, allowing the community to interact with and explore what Monad’s performance enables [00:33:52] [00:33:56] [00:33:59] [00:34:01] [00:34:04] [00:34:07] [00:34:10].
- Builder Feedback: To enable teams to deploy their applications publicly, gather user feedback, and identify how their products perform under real-world conditions [00:35:01] [00:35:03] [00:35:05] [00:35:08] [00:35:10] [00:35:12].
The Role of Community and Future Growth
One of the key misunderstandings about Monad, and many blockchain projects, is that a mainnet or testnet launch is the “finish line” [00:48:18] [00:48:21] [00:48:24]. For Monad, it’s merely the starting line for years of continued innovation, optimization, and the addition of new features like improved usability, privacy, and further decentralization [00:48:51] [00:48:54] [00:48:55] [00:48:59] [00:49:03] [00:49:06] [00:49:09] [00:49:12] [00:49:16] [00:49:18] [00:49:20] [00:49:22].
The Monad community has been incredibly supportive and engaged, primarily through off-chain activities like Discord, Telegram, Twitter, memes, and IRL meetups [00:45:12] [00:45:15] [00:45:20] [00:45:31] [00:45:34] [00:45:38] [00:45:41] [00:45:43] [00:45:46] [00:45:49] [00:45:51] [00:45:55] [00:45:58]. The testnet now provides the first on-chain opportunity for community members to directly interact with Monad, appealing to users who are “terminally on chain” and whose engagement centers around trading and using new applications [00:46:00] [00:46:04] [00:46:08] [00:46:45] [00:46:47] [00:46:51] [00:46:55] [00:46:58] [00:47:01] [00:47:04] [00:47:06].
The testnet is expected to attract more builders who were waiting for Monad’s public launch, fostering significant ecosystem growth as teams receive feedback and refine their products [00:35:31] [00:35:33] [00:35:35] [00:35:37] [00:35:39] [00:35:41] [00:35:44].
Monad represents a bet on application builders leveraging high-performance infrastructure [00:14:58] [00:15:01] [00:15:03]. The adoption of crypto applications and wallets is seen as consistently increasing, providing a foundation for future growth [00:15:07] [00:15:10] [00:15:12] [00:15:15] [00:15:18] [00:15:21] [00:15:23] [00:15:27] [00:15:29] [00:15:31] [00:15:35] [00:15:37]. While some applications (like more efficient DeFi or consumer apps) are predictable outcomes of increased speed and lower costs, the most exciting opportunities are the unpredictable new applications that will emerge, similar to how video streaming (YouTube) and photo sharing (Instagram) became massive after significant bandwidth improvements in the internet [00:43:00] [00:43:02] [00:43:05] [00:43:08] [00:43:10] [00:43:13] [00:43:15] [00:43:17] [00:43:18] [00:43:20] [00:43:22] [00:43:24] [00:43:26] [00:43:28] [00:43:31] [00:43:33].
This testnet launch signifies a significant step in pushing the decentralization-performance tradeoff curve forward substantially [00:24:40] [00:24:43]. It’s a call to action for the community to explore, build, and contribute to this new “city” of opportunity [00:58:46] [00:58:50] [00:58:53] [00:58:56] [00:58:59] [00:59:03] [00:59:06] [00:59:09] [00:59:11] [00:59:15] [00:59:18] [00:59:21] [00:59:23] [00:59:26] [00:59:29] [00:59:31].