Toasting beneath the Empire State Building, the pulse of Monad's mainnet has already begun this night

Author: Ivy

This summer, under New York's night sky, Monad has become a buzzword in the crypto space. Whether at ETH Global NYC or on starlit rooftop bars, the name Monad consistently sparks enthusiastic discussions among builders. With mainnet launch approaching, project teams and investors are generating unprecedented excitement for this "rising star of high-performance blockchains."

At the recently concluded ETH Global NYC, Monad reached new heights in visibility and engagement: earlier activities related to payments in collaboration with Predicate and Inco, followed by a major event co-hosted by Monad’s core ecosystem project FastLane and leading market maker and investment firm GSR, alongside multiple ecosystem builders.

The event lineup was nothing short of impressive:

• FastLane, a leading LST builder and DeFi infrastructure company on Monad focused on ecosystem-wide collaboration and capital efficiency

• RedStone, which recently launched OEV innovation, serves 170+ clients, and secures over $10 billion in TVL

• Kuru, the native decentralized exchange hailed as the "trading engine" of the Monad ecosystem

• TownSquare, a native lending platform backed by a Monad co-founder

• HaHa Wallet, a native wallet that attracted over 100 million transactions and 30,000+ daily active trading users during testnet

• RareBetSports, a popular sports betting application in Europe and the US markets

• Modus, a native on-chain asset management platform incubated and funded by Yzi Labs

• GSR, which provides liquidity support for over 200 clients across 25+ trading venues, facilitating billions of dollars in weekly trade volume

• Figment Capital, which since 2021 has led investments in major projects including EigenLayer, Celestia, Wormhole, StarkWare, and Initia

All signs indicate that Monad's builder community is eager and ready for mainnet launch.

As a high-performance mainnet, Monad emphasizes parallel execution and extreme optimization—key factors behind expectations for its breakthrough in the public blockchain landscape. For the capital markets, the focus lies in whether Monad can represent the "next generation of high-performance blockchains" and lead adoption in DeFi, Trading, Payment use cases. For community builders, Monad offers a low-latency, high-throughput execution environment, enabling products previously unfeasible under EVM to finally come to life. Investors and builders alike see in Monad the narrative of "the next wave of L1 innovation."

Unlike projects relying on one-time incentives, Monad appears to be exploring a path toward sustainable growth: driving real application deployment and fostering continuous community participation to gradually increase TVL. This "activity-driven, value-driven" model could help accumulate more durable, long-term value for the ecosystem.

In the midst of this momentum, FastLane has emerged as a focal point. A project with a solid Western background, FastLane only recently accelerated its entry into Asian markets but has quickly demonstrated strong influence. Not only did FastLane launch the first yield-generating LST on the Monad testnet—shMonad—but it also leveraged its full-stack Western technical team to build a suite of DeFi infrastructure tailored to Monad’s asynchronous execution system. It has also spearheaded research on the Timing Game for Monad validators and actively leads a research community comprising numerous Solana validators and nearly all active Monad testnet validators.

During the testnet phase, FastLane achieved collaboration with nearly 100% of validators. Its RPC nodes serving dApps have been integrated by over 25 projects, and prominent decentralized exchanges such as Ambient Finance, Kuru, Clober have adopted its MEV protection infrastructure Atlas, helping reduce user transaction losses while increasing project revenue, FastLane’s income, and returns for shMonad.

Unlike traditional LSTs, FastLane transforms Monad’s high-speed performance into shared value. Through the liquid staking token shMON and a range of infrastructure products, it successfully connects applications and validators, creating win-win outcomes for all parties. This not only significantly enhances user yield experience but also provides critical foundational support for DeFi projects within the ecosystem, further optimizing overall ecosystem performance.

No wonder FastLane has quickly attracted so many partners rallying around Monad.

At this gathering led by FastLane and GSR, passionate builders gathered at a rooftop bar beneath the Empire State Building. Laughter, conversation, and clinking glasses reflected the vitality and confidence of the Monad community.

With Monad mainnet launch imminent, what do these top ecosystem projects think?

FastLane

FastLane will officially launch its LST token—shMonad (shMON)—in the first week of testnet. By leveraging shMON, FastLane translates Monad’s high-speed capabilities into shared value, laying a solid foundation of liquidity and infrastructure ahead of mainnet launch.

The project focuses on two core directions: First, starting with infrastructure such as Atlas, Gas Abstraction, RPC, OEV, integrating with more ecosystem projects before mainnet launch—to help every team building on Monad move faster, while establishing more sustainable revenue partnerships. This approach ensures that post-launch, LST staking rewards will not solely depend on MEV income but can be enhanced through multiple layers of boost. Second, actively reaching consensus with ecosystem projects to design more participatory activities and yield channels for community members and liquidity providers, enhancing circulation and utility of shMonad and creating richer yield opportunities for token holders.

Modus

Though still in early stages, Modus has already drawn community attention with support from Yzi Labs. The team plans to go live on testnet soon and launch a native lending market and automated LST strategies centered on shMON at mainnet, boosting capital efficiency and bringing Monad its first financial primitives. As an early form of an onchain prime brokerage, Modus aims to attract institutional and quantitative teams to establish a stable funding market on Monad, making its mainnet debut highly anticipated.

Redstone

Decentralized oracle network RedStone announced it will support Monad from day one of mainnet, providing developers with reliable data feeds covering 1,200+ assets. RedStone stated this collaboration reflects its long-term commitment to infrastructure development and aims to lay the groundwork for a thriving high-performance ecosystem, delivering the atomic-level speed and reliability needed for innovative DeFi applications.

Townsquare

As the Monad ecosystem takes shape, TownSquare positions itself as a core lending and yield protocol dedicated to improving users' capital efficiency and returns. On day one of mainnet, the protocol will support all LSTs—including FastLane shMON—native assets, and stablecoins, covering most lending markets. The team will also work closely with Monad to drive ecosystem expansion.

RareBetSports

With Monad mainnet launch approaching, RareBetSports is transitioning from high-frequency testnet demonstrations to a fully launched composable DFS application and on-chain betting infrastructure. This shift is seen as greenlighting a new generation of user-facing games capable of achieving unprecedented speed and scalability on Monad. Meanwhile, the team expressed plans to launch additional prediction markets on RareLink, including popular events like football and MMA, along with new gameplay tokens from various Monad communities.

HaHa Wallet

As a native Monad wallet, HaHa Wallet attracted over 100 million transactions and 30,000+ daily active trading users during testnet. The team aims to deliver a more intuitive and seamless wallet experience on mainnet, catering to both newcomers and advanced users, thereby elevating ecosystem interactions to the next level.

Kuru

As Monad mainnet draws near, Kuru is positioned as a central trading hub in the ecosystem, aiming to integrate asset discovery, trading, and project launches while fully leveraging Monad’s speed and scalability advantages. The team is now fully focused on mainnet preparation, with a redesigned dApp already in implementation. The new Swap and Discover pages have launched first, with other sections soon to follow in a comprehensive visual refresh and UX optimization. As a composable, fully on-chain orderbook protocol with AMM fallback, Kuru aims to break down barriers with intuitive product design, allowing more new users to seamlessly enter DeFi while meeting professional traders’ demands for efficiency and low cost. With mainnet approaching, both the community and industry eagerly anticipate Kuru becoming Monad’s “trading engine.”

Beyond the enthusiasm of ecosystem projects themselves, support from capital partners and market makers is equally crucial. As one of Monad’s first liquidity partners, GSR, with over a decade of global market experience, will provide comprehensive support at mainnet launch, including market making, OTC trading, and venture investment. From project inception to large-scale expansion, GSR will inject deep liquidity into Monad, accelerating ecosystem growth.

It is precisely because of partners like GSR that Monad’s early adoption and long-term development are even more promising.

When asked why they are confident in Monad, GSR’s DeFi lead Toe said: "Monad puts users first, delivering future-ready financial infrastructure through application-controllable execution logic and a purpose-built consensus layer."

The gathering in New York ignited by FastLane, GSR, and ecosystem partners is more than just a party—it's an unstoppable wave. Monad is no longer just potential; it's the inevitable future. When the laughter and lights on the rooftop fade, what remains is the steady heartbeat of the builder community toward what lies ahead. New York is just the beginning—Monand’s true story is about to go global.