đIs Monad here to stay?
weekly valuable insights
Avantis is building the most capital-efficient perps DEX in DeFi. Start trading with zero fees on Avantis.
GM friends. Hereâs what Iâll cover today:
đMy thoughts on Monad. And a short overview of it
đ Crypto chart of the week
đď¸ The latest DeFi news
đMy thoughts on Monad
After years of development, Monad, one of the most anticipated L1 blockchains, finally went live and it launched its token MON.
Monad is currently trending, and it has even surpassed BTC in 24h mindshare.
The question is, though, whatâs next for it? Because short-term hype doesnât matter much in the long run.
In this issue, Iâll share my thoughts on Monad, what makes it unique, and a few case studies of other recent L1 launches.
What makes Monad stand out?
Letâs start with the basics.
Monad is described as a high-performance L1 blockchain.
Yes, itâs true that we already have 100+ projects building the same thing.
But the Monad team claims their blockchain stands out as it combines Solanaâs speed with EVM compatibility, which allows Ethereum-based dApps to expand to Monad.
According to their docs, the blockchain can process 10,000 TPS with a 0.8s transaction finality and 100% EVM compatibility.
Another thing that makes it different from other L1s that were recently launched is that it has a massive ecosystem of apps available on the mainnet on day one.
Uniswap, Gearbox, Curve, Morpho, Folks Finance, and Euler are just a few examples.
There are also a few dApps built exclusively on Monad, but their number seems to be pretty small for now, to be honest.
You can explore the ecosystem on app.monad.xyz.
Besides this, itâs worth mentioning that Monad has an insanely good marketing team. I think I heard of the project for the first time in 2023.
Since then, itâs been over 2 years, yet Monad has somehow managed to always stay in the spotlight and create a strong community despite not even having a product live.
Crypto is an attention game. So, Monad having a tier-1 marketing team is definitely a major advantage for them.
Is Monad here to stay? (+ an analysis of the recent L1 launches)
Now, letâs address the elephant in the room.
To answer this question, letâs take a look at what went wrong with other L1 projects and what the most successful blockchains have in common.
If we think about the most hyped recent blockchain launches, at the top of the list is definitely Plasma - a L1 blockchain built for stablecoin payments.
Its token XPL initially launched at $0.7 (equivalent to a $7 billion FDV), and in just a few days, it surged to $1.69. Plasma TVL also reached $14.3 billion FDV within days.
A lot of people on CT were shilling XPL like it was the future of France.
Yet today, only two months after its launch, XPL is down 87% from its ATH, its TVL is going down, and the sentiment around Plasma has turned negative.
Berachain experienced something very similar earlier this year.
In both cases, I believe the same thing went wrong:
Both Plasma and Berachain provided high token incentives at first, which attracted a lot of users and TVL. But they didnât really have any unique dApps built on them that got significant traction.
So once the token incentives started decreasing, users simply bridged their funds to another place as they didnât have any reason to stay.
In contrast, the most successful L1 & L2s today all have at least one killer dApp:
Ethereum has AAVE, Uniswap, Pendle, and many others
Solana has Jupiter and Pump Fun
Base has Virtuals, Avantis, and Footbaldotfun
As harsh as this sounds, I think Monadâs tech, its speed, and its incentive programs are irrelevant to whether it will thrive in the long run. We already have many high-performance chains.
However, I believe Monad can succeed if it will have at least a killer dApp built exclusively on it that grows a very loyal community.
This is the only way I believe it can stay relevant in the long run.
That being said, one thing is clear: The competition in the L1 sector is insanely high.
Personally, I am not interested in investing in alt-L1 tokens right now. You can make a lot of money by trading them if youâre a good narrative trader, but I donât see most of them as good long-term investments.
That being said, I am rooting for Monad, as I think it has a great team.
But building a successful new L1 in 2025 is certainly not an easy task.
Together with Avantis
Stop paying 20x more trading on order-books due to high spread
Most traders donât realize how quickly execution costs add up when trading RWAs like Gold on order-book perpetual DEXs.
To make this clear, we at Avantis ran a simple comparison:
What does it actually cost to open and close a $1,000,000 Gold long?
The results are straightforward:
Total cost for a $1M Gold position:
⢠Avantis: $600
⢠Lighter: $14,200
⢠Hyperliquid: $9,805
This means traders pay:
⢠23.7x more on Lighter
⢠16.3x more on Hyperliquid
The main reason is wider spreads and slippage. Order-books rely on market makers, and on-chain RWA liquidity is still shallow. AMM perps can reference the global price directly, so spreads collapse close to zero.
We also compared leverage and capital efficiency.
Max leverage:
⢠Avantis: 100Ă
⢠Lighter: 15Ă
⢠Hyperliquid: 10Ă
Capital needed for a $1M Gold long:
⢠Avantis: $10,000
⢠Lighter: $66,666
⢠Hyperliquid: $100,000
Avantis is therefore:
⢠6.7x more capital efficient than Lighter
⢠10x more efficient than Hyperliquid
And this week, we expanded zero-spread trading to Gold, QQQ, and SPY, with the ability to take up to $10M in a single order at zero slippage.
The takeaway is simple: wide spreads + low leverage make RWA trades far more expensive on order-books.
With zero-slippage execution and high leverage, Avantis makes trading RWAs cheaper, simpler, and scalable.
Just Use Avantis.
Use my link for a high discount: avantisfi.com/referral?code=defii
Chart of the week
MegaETH is already a top 5 blockchain by revenue
This is because MegaETH developed its own native stablecoin called USDm instead of relying on USDC and USDT.
Most of the yield from its stablecoin backing (which is in the form of US Treasury bills and generates ~4% APR) is collected by MegaETH as a source of revenue.
Crypto Memeđ
The latest developments in DeFi
Fluid DEX V2 went live on mainnet
AAVE launched the testnet of Aave V4
Lighter launched the testnet for spot trading and equities perp trading
Pendle has been added to the Bloomberg Galaxy DEFI Index
Monad launched its mainnet and token MON
DeFi Saver released a new Aave V3 strategy that lets you automatically switch collateral at a target price
Texas became the first US State to buy BTC for its Strategic Reserve
Uniswapâs proposal to activate the fee switch passed
Solv Protocol went live on Solana, enabling to earn up to 13% APR on BTC
Fogo, a L1 blockchain built for trading, launched its mainnet
Huma Finance released its S2 Airdrop Claiming Portal
Kalshi raised $1 billion at a $11 billion valuation
Vooi introduced its token VOOI and announced a 7.5% airdrop allocation
Polymarket has been approved by the CFTC to operate in the US
Jupiter burned 130M $JUP tokens
Polygon was chosen by Mastercard to launch username-based transfers
Cosmos considers redesigning ATOM tokenomics
Thatâs all for this week!
Until next time,
The DeFi Investor
Want to sponsor this newsletter?
Please send me a DM on Twitter (X). I have a sponsorship deck that I can send you.
Really apreciate the Plasma/Berachain comparison here. That killer dApp point resonates with me becuase we've seen so many L1s fade after incentives dry up. The fact that Monad already has Uniswap and Curve on day one is intresting, but you're right that they need something exclusive that people actually want to use. Do you think thier marketing edge could buy them enough time to develop that sticky ecosystem?