Monad (MON)

What Monad is

Monad is an EVM-compatible layer-1 blockchain built for high throughput, and MON is its native asset. MON pays gas and is the token validators and delegators stake. Monad's documentation states the network maintains "full EVM bytecode compatibility" and "Ethereum RPC API compatibility," which means contracts and tooling written for ethereum run without modification (source: Monad documentation, read September 2026).

The performance figures the documentation publishes are "10,000 tps of throughput," a "300ms block frequency" and "600ms finality." Those are the project's own stated targets for the network, not measurements taken by RampAtlas, and should be read as such.

For where to buy Monad from your country or state, see the availability tables on this page and the venues listed at Exchanges.

How it works

Monad's design separates consensus from execution and runs them out of step with each other. The documentation describes the approach as asynchronous execution that pipelines "consensus and execution," so nodes agree on transaction ordering before they finish computing the results. Consensus itself runs on what the documentation calls "MonadBFT, a frontier BFT consensus mechanism," designed to address the tail-forking problem, where a block that has been voted on can still be orphaned by the next proposer.

Execution is where the second idea lives. The documentation lists "Parallel Execution" and "JIT Compilation for efficient transaction execution." parallel execution means transactions that touch disjoint state can run at the same time rather than one after another, with conflicts resolved rather than pre-declared, and just-in-time compilation means EVM bytecode is compiled to native code rather than interpreted opcode by opcode.

Gas works differently from Ethereum in one way that matters to anyone estimating costs. The documentation states that "The gas charged for a transaction is the gas limit" rather than the gas actually consumed, which is a direct consequence of asynchronous execution: the network has to charge before it knows the result. Setting a loose gas limit therefore costs real money on Monad in a way it does not on Ethereum.

The base fee follows "a dynamic controller, similar to the EIP-1559 controller but with slower increases and faster decreases," with a floor the documentation gives as "100 MON-gwei (100 * 10^-9 MON)." A priority fee is specified separately through priority_price_per_gas on EIP-1559 transactions. The documentation gives a block gas limit of 200 million gas and a per-transaction limit of 30 million gas.

Staking is a precompile rather than a contract deployment. The documentation gives the active set as "the top ACTIVE_VALSET_SIZE (200) validators by stake weight," with two thresholds to qualify: self-delegation of "at least MIN_AUTH_ADDRESS_STAKE (100,000 MON)" and total stake of "at least ACTIVE_VALIDATOR_STAKE (10,000,000 MON)."

Delegators call delegate with a validator id and earn "proportional to your stake relative to the validator's total stake." The minimum is small: msg.value must clear a DUST_THRESHOLD of 1 gwei. Validators set a commission between 0% and 100%, and the documentation flags an asymmetry worth reading twice: commission applies to inflationary rewards but "commission is not deducted from external rewards."

Timing runs on boundary blocks rather than wall-clock epochs. Every 50,000 blocks, roughly 4 hours and 12 minutes, a boundary block commits pending staking changes, followed by a 5,000-round EPOCH_DELAY_ROUNDS delay "to allow all nodes to update their epoch information." Undelegating requires waiting a WITHDRAWAL_DELAY of one epoch before withdrawing.

Supply and tokenomics

Block rewards are a fixed quantity rather than a rate. The documentation gives "a fixed REWARD of 18 MON per block" as the inflationary component, paid alongside priority fees collected in that block.

The wrapped form of MON, WMON, is deployed at 0x3bd359C1119dA7Da1D913D1C4D2B7c461115433A on Monad. The documentation also lists WMON representations on Solana and Ethereum, the Ethereum one bridged through a 2-of-2 NTT bridge.

The documentation pages read for this page do not publish a MON total supply or a percentage inflation rate. With a fixed 18 MON per block reward, the effective rate depends on how many blocks are produced and on the supply the reward is measured against, neither of which is stated on those pages. Take supply from the data on this page rather than from a secondary source.

History

Monad's technical claims all descend from one architectural bet: that the bottleneck in an EVM chain is not the virtual machine's semantics but the fact that a standard client executes transactions serially and interprets them one opcode at a time. Everything the documentation describes follows from attacking that directly rather than changing the developer-facing interface.

Keeping full bytecode and RPC compatibility was the constraint that shaped the rest. It means a Solidity contract deploys unchanged and existing tooling connects unchanged, and it also means Monad inherits the EVM's data model and its known sharp edges, including mev extraction patterns that depend on transaction ordering.

The staking design is comparatively conventional: a capped active set ranked by stake, delegation with commission, epoch-boundary activation, and a withdrawal delay. One deliberate gap sits inside it. The documentation states that "Automated in-protocol slashing is not currently implemented," while noting that "robust logging provides accountability for malicious, slashable offenses."

Risks and what to watch

Charging the gas limit rather than gas used is the practical trap for anyone porting a workflow from Ethereum. A wallet or script that pads the limit generously will pay for the padding on every transaction.

Validator concentration is worth watching on a 200-slot active set ranked by stake. A capped set makes the top of the distribution the whole security story, and the 10,000,000 MON floor sets a high bar for entry.

Client diversity is the standing question for any young network. A chain running a single production client shares that client's bugs, and the throughput figures above are the project's own targets rather than independently measured values under production load.

Bridged assets carry the risk of the bridge they crossed. The documentation describes WMON on Ethereum as travelling over a 2-of-2 NTT bridge, and a wrapped representation is a claim on that bridge, not on the native token.

Frequently asked questions

Is Monad compatible with Ethereum contracts?

Yes. Monad's documentation states it maintains full EVM bytecode compatibility and Ethereum RPC API compatibility, so Solidity contracts and standard tooling work without modification.

Why is my Monad transaction charged more gas than it used?

Because it is charged the gas limit. The documentation states, "The gas charged for a transaction is the gas limit," which follows from Monad executing transactions asynchronously after consensus. Set limits tightly.

What does it take to run a Monad validator?

The active set is the top 200 validators by stake weight. The documentation requires at least 100,000 MON self-delegated and at least 10,000,000 MON in total stake to qualify.

Can Monad slash a validator?

Not automatically. The documentation states that automated in-protocol slashing is not currently implemented, and describes logging as the accountability mechanism for slashable offences.

Where can you buy Monad?

Availability depends on your country or US state. See where to buy Monad for the exchanges serving your jurisdiction, and Exchanges to compare fees, kyc requirements and supported payment methods.