Author: Thogard
Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow
I recently spoke with many VCs and found that their conversations often begin with some form of the same question:
"Why Monad?"
Many seem genuinely surprised to find that I am building on a blockchain famous for its blue animal mascot and radical airdrop players. These VCs might know me through my work related to MEV (Maximum Extractable Value) on other chains, research on application-specific sorting, academic articles, podcasts, or conference talks. Or perhaps they remember me for my outspoken analytical style on Twitter/X...
Precisely because they know me, they wonder why I have not directed the same straightforward criticism at this project that many see as 'just another new L1.' And the fact that I have chosen to build on Monad seems to short-circuit the part of their brains responsible for pattern matching.
After all, they know I am more likely to mock airdrop players rather than be one of them; they know that, based on the structure of my company's equity, I should be more inclined to support Solana rather than oppose Monad; they also know that our application-specific sorter has recently found a product-market fit (PMF) and is experiencing exponential momentum and revenue growth. They understand that I am not in a desperate situation and have no direct financial incentive to invest so much time and resources into an L1 that is still in the testnet stage.
So... why Monad?
After all, the Monad blockchain does not achieve any single tenfold improvement over existing technology:
Solana offers higher throughput.
L2 gives applications more control and enhances user experience (UX).
Cosmos chains provide single-slot finality (Monad is dual-slot finality, and the practical differences between the two in interoperability and composability are immense).
Ethereum has a more mature ecosystem (and my reputation in the Ethereum community has more market value).
Berachain has better incentive mechanisms and stronger community support.
Hyperliquid is the gathering place for all new activities and users.
And these ecosystems are already online and operational.
Meanwhile, the Monad application testnet has technically not even utilized the MonadBFT consensus protocol yet. Nevertheless, it has raised substantial funds and more than a year has passed since the initially set mainnet launch date.
The VCs I have interacted with understand these matters, and they know me. To them, it simply does not make sense.
They have done their homework — they know I did not have any close friends working at Monad Labs previously. I did have a brief encounter with Keone when I was still running my own MEV bot, but I wouldn’t say we were close. They also know I did not invest in Monad as an angel investor — I have no financial ties to this blockchain or its team.
These VCs know I am married and have a child. While I am not struggling financially, I am still renting and have not bought a house — and I certainly am not at a stage in life where I can recklessly take on risks and burn money. They also know that neither I nor anyone at FastLane has sold any equity through over-the-counter (OTC) transactions, and our goal is long-term development (so why chase short-term airdrops?). Moreover, I am betting not only my future on Monad but also the future of all FastLane members. This is a tremendous responsibility… and to many outsiders, this wager makes no sense.
More importantly, the VCs know that the Monad ecosystem team has not publicly promoted my company (or any LST), nor have they shared our content or provided any token incentives. There is no co-marketing. I haven’t even participated in any podcasts organized by Monad. Sometimes, the Monad ecosystem team even politely declined to join the Telegram group chats I created for them to meet with applications or validators that requested my introduction. This situation has burned quite a few bridges for me. It has severed many of my relationships.
VCs know that many ecosystems have 'pursued' me… except Monad. No one on the Monad team asked us to build here. I am quite sure many of them consider my willingness to speak openly about what others dare not say to be a risk. So far, this tweet has confirmed their concerns. It is time to address this.
"Why Monad?"
It really is simple; there is no other way.
Monad is a project with serious flaws. But it is the only project in all of DeFi built with wisdom, foresight, and self-awareness, acknowledging that a perfect Layer 1 ecosystem is impossible to create and instead building in a way that makes flaws an intentional trade-off while considering efficiency.
This is the essence of the Monad blockchain, its community, and its developers.
Every other project in the crypto space thinks it can achieve perfection, but because of this arrogance, they inevitably encounter bottlenecks. They realize too late that they cannot have it all… so they accept inefficiencies, destructive flaws, and unforeseen defects, coping with a grotesque 'temporary solution.' Their communities also revel in it because 'the solution is coming soon!'
"We will decentralize the sorter later!"
"Runtime 2.0 will support partial rollbacks!"
"The atomic composability between application chains is enough to build a harmonious ecosystem!"
"Reducing proof time will solve scalability issues!"
"Incentives controlled by governance will not stifle ecosystem growth once the whitelist is removed!"
"Soon we will only need to wait 2 seconds to transfer funds from perpetual exchanges to L1 through insecure bridging!"
These statements are all results of self-comforting. They stem from the lack of foresight in these ecosystems, failing to understand the trade-offs that must be made and the flaws that will be inherent in the design.
Do you know what the common response in the Monad community is?
No.
Many of Monad's flaws are intentional, all stemming from thoughtful trade-offs. These flaws will not disappear in the short term because removing them would create even bigger problems.
"But Alex, isn't it just another EVM L1? How can it be so different?"
Monad is the only trusted blockchain not because the team conjured some magical engineering solution out of thin air. It has no single feature that makes it stand out.
Monad is the only trusted blockchain because it has undergone such comprehensive design and careful planning that there are no fatal flaws. For example:
L2 cannot survive under regulatory pressure. Even if it survives, using the abundant block space on a fast L1 for application-specific sequencing can build a faster, less centralized, and better user experience.
A Layer 1 like Monad. Frankly, if you still think L2 offers anything novel beyond latency finality, you may not fully understand the powerful capabilities of application-specific sequences.
When it comes to application-controlled execution, partial rollbacks cannot be achieved on Solana (i.e., on-chain call error capture/handling). This directly undermines the potential for atomic composability between adversarial opponents, which is the primary new use case of DeFi compared to traditional finance (TradFi). Of course, you can handle matching using off-chain infrastructure and hope that validators respect the order you send, artificially recreating some of the same functionalities, but adding another layer of infrastructure between the blockchain and users only slows down the chain.
I think Jito's BAM (Block Auction Market) is a fantastic attempt, and I fully support it — that team is excellent. But BAM is an optional infrastructure layer for validators, so it can never achieve 100% uptime, which undermines the demand for ACE (Application Control Execution) / ASS (Application-Specific Sequence) in most high-value use cases.
This is not Jito's fault — Solana was designed for high TPS (transactions per second). Just like a driver who, in pursuit of speed, removes the airbags from the car and then subconsciously drives slower due to increased risks, Solana removed the ability for transactions to self-repair midway through execution and thus has to send more transactions. The result is that it does not support the functionality that FastLane uses at all.
Therefore, no matter how outstanding the Jito team is, their TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) infrastructure layer can never be as fast or have the same uptime as the application-specific sequences on the Monad native chain… because our latency is zero and uptime is 100%. Smart contracts, long live!
I really like the Cosmos team and genuinely believe their composability solutions are years ahead of their time... but perhaps they should first focus on creating a willing cooperative ecosystem. If isolated applications can seamlessly interoperate but have no incentive to cooperate, what is the point?
Ecosystem management is an extremely complex topic, and I am certainly not an expert in this area, but the Monad team has been very pragmatic in their strategies. There is a trade-off spectrum in creating an ecosystem: one end is a completely free competitive system where any application can win based on its merits; the other end is where certain applications gain enough support that they do not have to worry about local users and can almost focus entirely on bringing in new users to the ecosystem.
Like other aspects of Monad, their ecosystem team is not biased towards one end but strives to manage the ecosystem in the most efficient way possible. For applications, this ecosystem is both fair (though not a completely equal competitive environment) and supportive (but not a 'kingmaker' ecosystem like megaeth or berachain — this kind of ecosystem is more attractive for developers like me who prefer to win through market distribution and showcase the best technology, as success does not rely on the support of a single angel investor).
Hyperliquid's block size is only 2 million gas. This perpetual contract exchange is not even directly integrated into L1… you can bridge funds from Ethereum to Arbitrum through Across faster than you can transfer from HypeEVM to Hypercore.
I really cannot understand why all the validators run on AWS Tokyo data centers, yet the block size is only 2 million. Ethereum has now reached 45 million. Sometimes, I genuinely feel like the entire Hyperliquid ecosystem is a meticulously designed joke, and everyone is just playing with me.
Ethereum's claims about ZK proof scalability paths may be correct... but at this point, that blockchain is drowning in entrenched intermediaries and third parties. These mechanisms look great in theory, but every intermediary that appears between the user and the blockchain adds latency and has an incentive to extract rent.
The bigger problem is that removing these intermediaries will be very difficult, especially with political resistance... However, I also know that if anyone can do it, it must be Tomasz. He is definitely legendary — choosing him as a leader is a radical yet extremely smart decision; I never even thought Ethereum would make such a choice.
But perhaps they will succeed? I would not bet that they can — even if they solve the problems, they still have a long way to go to reach the level of modern L1s — but I still cheer for them.
I have no negative comments about SUI; it's just that its virtual machine has much less support compared to EVM or SVM. If it could have launched some tools sooner, allowing its development toolchain to establish itself before all the new AI agent coding tools start learning EVM and SVM and taking over a lot of work, then perhaps I would have chosen to develop on SUI.
Of course, if Monad did not exist, SUI might be my ultimate choice. But the fact is, Monad does exist.
I am a developer, and I like to plan products before I start building. I am also acutely aware of how painful it can be when the foundation changes midway through the development cycle.
"Why choose Monad?"
In my view, it is evident that only one blockchain is designed based on real-world trade-offs rather than naive ideals or principles.
In my view, it is evident that only one blockchain has a sufficiently solid foundation that does not require massive disruptive changes to remain relevant.
In my view, it is evident that only one blockchain is built to support the actual use cases of end-users, rather than catering to the engineering slogans or mechanism designs of the founding team.
In my view, it is evident that only one blockchain ecosystem strategy acknowledges its own strengths while understanding that fair use reduces overall impact and strives to seek balance within that. While no founder would celebrate every decision made in the Monad ecosystem — after all, we are all selfish beings — we all respect the rationale behind those decisions.
In my view, it is evident that only one blockchain does not force application developers to sacrifice their core principles. We all entered DeFi for a reason; let’s not deceive ourselves into forgetting our original intentions.
Monad is not the most decentralized L1. Monad does not have single-slot finality. Monad also does not have the highest throughput. But Monad is decentralized, Monad does have fast finality, and Monad's throughput is high. Every so-called 'flaw' is acceptable. None are fatal, and none would force me to compromise my values.
In my view, Monad took a long time to launch their Layer-1... but they were very thorough. This is also why it possesses all these amazing features, and why all the trade-offs are so well-considered. The developers do not have a magic bullet. Monad is the best blockchain because of the team's hard work, rich experience, and meticulous analysis.
It is these subtleties that converge into truly extraordinary results. Having read the code of the consensus engine, you would tell me it is not impressive.
In my view, there is only one blockchain for serious developers to choose from.
"Why Monad?"
Because, in my view, there is no other choice.
I also know that soon, everything I say will become evident to you as well.
If you are lucky, maybe those odd purple animals will start to make sense to you too. By the way, they are called 'Monanimals.'
Unfortunately, when VCs or others interested ask me, "Why Monad?" I usually do not have twenty minutes to explain it to them. I have spent a lot of time thinking about this question, but I have always struggled to express it more concisely. Thank you for taking the time to read these lengthy thoughts — even if you disagree or are not persuaded by my views, your consideration of my perspective means a lot to me.
See you on-chain!