User and developer acquisition in the blockchain ecosystem

From: thepipeline_xyz

Monad’s Mission

Monad Labs aims to enhance the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) by focusing on the execution stack to make EVM execution more performant [02:01:00]. This includes introducing optimizations like parallel execution and a high-performance state database [02:09:00]. The ultimate goal is to enable new use cases and scale existing applications that are currently limited by the EVM’s performance and high gas costs [03:06:00], [05:01:00].

Building the Monad Team

Keone, CEO of Monad Labs, describes the team as a focused group of about 25 people [06:10:00]. This size allows the team to remain “incredibly laser focused” on the problems needing solutions [06:30:00]. The team is expected to grow to support the scale of adoption and the significant effort required to support developers [06:40:00]. Most of the engineering team members have extensive experience in building high-performance, low-latency systems, drawing parallels to designing performant databases like MySQL or PostgreSQL [07:16:00].

Value Propositions for Developers

Monad offers several key advantages for builders and developers:

• Enhanced Composability [09:24:00]: Monad aims for near-infinite composition, far exceeding limitations seen in other blockchains like Solana’s three-deep Cross-Program Invocation (CPI) depth [10:09:00]. This allows complex features like account abstraction without prohibitive gas costs [10:24:00].
• Flexible EVM Environment [11:09:00]: As an L1, Monad has the flexibility to introduce new opcodes, such as BLS pre-compiles, to unlock capabilities like privacy on the base layer or private smart contracts, without necessarily breaking backward compatibility [11:09:00].
• Unlocking the EVM’s Potential [11:36:00]: The original vision of Ethereum was for apps to compose on top of each other, but this was limited by gas costs [12:12:00]. Monad seeks to accelerate this concept, enabling developers to build anything without the existing constraints of the past decade [13:18:00], [13:59:00].
• Tapping Untapped Design Space [14:57:00]: Monad enables the practical implementation of advanced token standards (e.g., for NFTs with in-protocol royalty enforcement or loyalty programs) that were previously cost-prohibitive on the EVM [15:53:00]. This extends to real-world applications like event ticketing with NFTs [17:55:00].
• Scaling Existing Business Models [19:12:00]: By significantly reducing gas costs, Monad makes many existing business models viable for mass adoption, enabling crypto applications to scale to many more users [19:12:00].
• Developer-Friendly Platform [25:55:00]: Monad positions itself as a developer platform, aiming to solve pressing problems for developers, including enabling them to build apps that could reach the top of app stores [26:56:00].

Desired Applications and Products

Monad is particularly excited to see applications in two main areas:

1. Decentralized Finance (DeFi) [21:14:00]: Money markets, decentralized exchanges, derivatives, and high-fidelity, high-scale oracles that can serve normal people managing their personal finances [21:18:00]. The aim is to create financial products that can replace existing incumbents by driving down costs through open markets [22:04:00].
2. Consumer-Facing Applications [22:59:00]: This includes on-chain sports betting, casinos, and social applications—essentially anything that makes sense as a phone app [23:01:00].

A key driver for Kevin G in the blockchain space is the idea of data sovereignty [23:31:00]. He envisions a system where users have all their data in their wallet, allowing for context-aware internet experiences similar to Web2 but with cryptographic security [23:43:00]. This requires a chain with high throughput and low fees to track large amounts of data [24:49:00].

Challenges and Opportunities in EVM Development

Challenges

• Funding for Builders: It remains challenging for builders to attract funding, particularly for international teams [33:03:03].
• [[User security in cryptocurrency | Security]]: Building decentralized applications is inherently more challenging due to the constant threat of black-hat hackers probing for vulnerabilities [33:38:00]. Monad aims to address this by reducing gas costs, which would allow developers to include more defensive assertions in their code without prohibitive expense, a tradeoff they currently make to save gas [34:03:00].
• Web2 Developer Perception: Many Web2 developers still hold an outdated view of blockchain capabilities from 2017-2018 [35:50:00]. Presenting real-world use cases with similar UX/UI to Web2 can help shift this perception [36:00:00].
• Developer Retention: As an EVM-compatible chain, developers can easily move their applications [36:30:00]. Monad’s goal is to enable experiences that are only possible on Monad due to its unique capabilities (e.g., gas costs, future EVM enhancements) [36:40:00].

Opportunities

• [[Building community within blockchain ecosystems | Strong Crypto Community]]: The crypto community’s strength is a significant advantage over traditional tech startups, providing eager early adopters and support [34:57:00].
• Leveraging EVM Mind Share: The EVM ecosystem has a rich body of knowledge, existing code, and proven products [14:47:00]. Monad’s EVM compatibility allows it to build upon this existing foundation and benefit from the extensive research community, especially in areas like ZK research, without needing to rebuild developer tooling [31:35:00].
• Future Growth: When the bull market returns, there will be no shortage of people wanting to build [38:04:00]. The challenge is ensuring the right pieces are in place to support committed builders in creating scalable, decentralized applications [38:26:00].

Focus on New User Acquisition

Monad’s primary objective is to bring new users into crypto, not merely to transfer existing users from Ethereum [43:00:00].

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for Monad’s team revolve around attracting new users to decentralized applications and technology [42:59:00]. This involves:

• Delivering compelling use cases with killer apps [43:37:00].
• Overcoming existing onboarding hurdles, such as learning to use browser wallets, moving funds, and securing private keys [43:47:00].
• Collaborating with teams working on better wallets, user experiences, and fiat on-ramps to solve onboarding challenges [44:07:00].

Monad aims to expand the design space of crypto rather than competing with or splitting up existing ecosystems like Ethereum. The goal is to grow the overall “pie” of blockchain adoption [45:50:00].

The Role of Performance and TPS

While Monad’s current unique edge is its execution performance through a rebuilt, parallelized EVM [40:32:00], it acknowledges that in 10 years, performance might not be a unique differentiator as other blockchains improve [39:01:00]. Monad’s long-term distinction will come from its community, killer applications, research community, and a continued commitment to pushing technological limits while maintaining high decentralization [40:06:00].

The discussion around Transactions Per Second (TPS) can be confusing [48:50:00]. Monad believes TPS should only count “real” transactions, such as smart contract interactions and transfers, excluding validator votes [48:21:00]. The problem is exacerbated by non-uniform measurement methods across different chains (e.g., counting instructions as transactions) [49:07:00].

Additionally, actual observed TPS often reflects current demand rather than maximum capacity [49:39:00]. A more accurate comparison between blockchain technologies requires reproducible benchmarks with public procedures to allow verification [50:49:00]. A better metric for raw throughput might be “bytes per second” to abstract away the varying sizes and complexities of transactions across different systems [52:36:00]. Monad’s benchmark will use historical Ethereum transaction history as a proxy for real-life activity [52:53:00].