Monad's Keone Hon on Raising $225 Million to Beat Solana & Scale Ethereum

If crypto has had one consistent narrative in 2024, it's that infrastructure projects are attracting a lot of cash in the race to either dethrone Solana or improve Ethereum.

At the front of the pack is Monad, which has quickly emerged as one of the most promising layer-one blockchains to get things right, attracting $225 million from a mix of the top venture firms, including Paradigm and others.

Co-founded by Keone Hon, Monad is generating buzz for its innovative approach to scaling the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) despite a slate of competing projects who are looking to do the same. As Coinage has also covered, Movement Labs also raised tens of millions of dollars this year to improve how Ethereum scales. Both Aptos and Sui are also seeking to leverage the Move programing language to do the same on their respective blockchains as well.

But Hon, who comes from a decade-long career in high-frequency trading, explained in a recent Coinage interview that Monad is uniquely positioning itself to revolutionize blockchain technology by blending Ethereum’s robust foundation with cutting-edge performance enhancements. His background has been instrumental in shaping Monad’s vision.

"The EVM is incredibly powerful," he tells Coinage, "but it still has areas for improvement."

Monad’s goal is to retain the compatibility and structure of Ethereum while delivering a 1000x increase in throughput — from Ethereum’s 15 to 50 transactions per second to Monad’s projected 10,000. This performance leap, Hon explained, is achieved by incorporating four major technical innovations, including MonadDB, a highly optimized database, and a parallel execution model that leverages the full power of modern multi-core processors.

While Solana has gained attention for its speed, Monad aims to deliver a more balanced solution by maintaining Ethereum's decentralization and compatibility. Hon emphasized that Monad doesn't aim to replace Ethereum, but rather serve as a "vanguard environment" to test and implement improvements that can be fed back into the Ethereum ecosystem.

In the increasingly fragmented Ethereum space, where layer-two solutions proliferate, Hon says the team is focused on technological differentiation.

"Our team’s focus has always been on technology," Hon said, critiquing the trend of launching numerous layer-twos with little technological uniqueness. Monad’s distinct architectural improvements aim to solve fundamental scaling issues, not just replicate existing solutions.

Beyond the technical aspects, Hon stressed the importance of community in driving crypto adoption. He flexed that Monad's community has organically formed around shared values and creativity, with various subgroups like the Quantico Group and Monad Run Club adding to the ecosystem’s cultural richness. For Hon, building a strong community is not just a marketing strategy but essential to the decentralized nature of blockchain projects.

Looking ahead, Monad’s public testnet is expected to launch soon, and the project continues to work with builders to develop apps that could cross into mainstream adoption. As Hon put it, "There’s no excuse not to produce an incredible product and help push the space forward substantially."

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