Latest / CRYPTO 101 / Ep. 720 How Monad Could Change Crypto Layer 1 Infrastructure

Transcript

Ep. 720 How Monad Could Change Crypto Layer 1 Infrastructure · CRYPTO 101

• 0:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: All right, everyone, welcome back to the Crypto 101 podcast.
• 0:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: We hope everyone's having a good morning or evening because no matter where you're coming in from, you're certainly in the right place here today.
• 0:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's gonna be another killer episode.
• 0:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hope everyone is having a good time.
• 0:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: At the time of recording this, we're coming in right after Easter.
• 0:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: CryptoMarket's still pretty choppy, but as we always like to say, it's not a bear market, it's a builder's market.
• 0:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if you've been listening to some of the recent episodes, you would really know this.
• 0:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we've had guests from all different industries, all different verticals of all different sizes.
• 0:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the one theme that we keep hearing about the spite, whatever's going on with price action, is that the crypto market is building.
• 0:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's so much adoption happening.
• 0:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: You can hear that in the rundowns.
• 0:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: But here on today's episode, we're really, really stoked.
• 0:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: because we have Eunice Giarta.
• 1:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: She is the co-founder, or one of the co-founders over at the Monad Foundation.
• 1:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Monad is a leading new age layer one, their EVM compatible, we're excited to talk to them here today.
• 1:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Eunice, welcome, it's good to have you.
• 1:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Glad to be here, definitely excited, and thanks so much for having me on the show, Brandon.
• 1:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely, you know, we were talking a little bit before the podcast started and I was just telling you, we have someone over on our team, shout out to Rohit, awesome analyst, but he focuses on two different areas, projects that are either very new and in the early stages or projects that are very small.
• 1:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: and he was the one who pointed you all out to us like a while back and I know he's been keeping track of this he's excited for this episode but we love to keep tabs on what's happening I mean it's funny because one of the the best things about the podcast is that we truly do get to have a sense of what's going on from leaders in all different sectors.
• 1:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we just talked to the Solana Foundation about a week ago, and now here we are talking to you.
• 2:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so we love to hear what's going on in different areas.
• 2:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: We like to hear how the overall health of the crypto sector is doing.
• 2:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we're not just focused on like one area of blockchain tech.
• 2:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: So let's kick it off out there.
• 2:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, for the listeners who are coming in, they're not sure what monad is and who you're, you know, what you're working towards.
• 2:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Give us a high level overview to kind of get everyone accustomed to monad.
• 2:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, absolutely.
• 2:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: So Monite Foundation is an organization that I am with, and the team here is focused on supporting the growth and adoption of the Monite blockchain.
• 2:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Monite blockchain, aka Monite, is, as you mentioned earlier, a hyperformance, EVM layer one,
• 2:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's EVM compatible.
• 2:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's also new.
• 2:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: It just launched about a little over four months ago in November of 2025.
• 2:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we are super excited to get started.
• 2:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's focused on performance.
• 2:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's focused on actual use cases across finance, DFI.
• 3:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: institutional adoption and tokenization and then some what's really cool is that the focus on performance means that there is opportunities for new use cases to come about regardless of the the type or style of on chain activity.
• 3:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: So Monad is its own layer one, and for the listeners out there, when we say layer one, think Ethereum, Salana, stuff like that, it's infrastructure in which you can build on top of, as opposed to other layer two's or other projects, which are saying, hey, we're going to build on top of a layer one, right?
• 3:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: chain link is built on top of Ethereum, or you have, you know, radium, which is built on top of Solana, and the list goes on.
• 3:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: But Monad is its own layer one while it's EVM compatible, meaning that it is compatible here with the Ethereum virtual machine, so there can be a kind of seamless operation when needed or if needed.
• 3:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, for the listeners out there, again, what would you say are some of the mean differences that make moan ads stand out because there's a lot of different layer ones on top of that there's a lot of layer twos.
• 4:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Everyone's kind of saying, hey, here's why we should get your attention.
• 4:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: What is moan ads?
• 4:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Totally.
• 4:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 4:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so, Monad is a complete redesign of the Ethereum Virtual Machine.
• 4:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: So beyond compatibility, it actually is EVM itself.
• 4:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: So there's a new execution client, there's a new contents of client with Monad BFT.
• 4:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what makes it unique is that there are some introductions of several fundamental changes with parallelized processes.
• 4:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: For example, optimistic execution, which is one of the things that Monad is most well known for, but also for pipeline and asynchronous execution, which means that blocks aren't bottlenecked by consensus and the time of consensus.
• 4:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Consensus mechanism itself is called on at BFT.
• 4:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's super optimized for communication, efficiency, and finality, and it also has raptor cast, which is a novel way of propagating block information across the entire globe.
• 5:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's fast, it's super fast.
• 5:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's 500 milliseconds, block times, 800 milliseconds, finality.
• 5:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: So less than a second to finalized transactions.
• 5:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's super-performant, handles load quite well, and can handle load of 10K TPS, not just bursts, but consistent load, supporting about 500, not about supporting 500 million gas per second.
• 5:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's massive considering the current
• 5:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: gas limits that Ethereum has, which is about five million gas per second.
• 5:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: But finally, the biggest piece is that it is a decentralized L1.
• 5:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's truly decentralized, where many all TVM chains L2s forego this very core principle of being decentralized technology, Monat does not.
• 6:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I think the exciting piece here is that we get performance, we get speed,
• 6:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think I'm glad that you brought that up because that's something I wanted to talk about.
• 6:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Again, we just had the Solana Foundation on where huge fans of Solana over here, but that has been a cause for some investors concern is to say, well, if you look at other blockchains, other layer one, some of them sacrifice decentralization.
• 6:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: for speed and for efficiency and for scalability and a couple of these other things.
• 6:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think for investors who really like blockchain at its core and they believe in those original principles.
• 6:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Some people are saying, hey, that's fine.
• 6:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's okay.
• 6:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Other people are saying, no, you know, we want to keep this.
• 6:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: What you all have been able to do here is
• 6:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: not make investors necessarily have to choose, right?
• 6:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're able to say, hey, you can get scalability, you can get efficiency, but you can keep decentralization.
• 6:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's one of the big standouts.
• 6:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is that correct?
• 7:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, certainly.
• 7:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's not just for investors to choose, but it's also for developers, for institutions who are looking for the right kind of blockchain that doesn't sacrifice on elements of performance or on decentralization to have all of that within one.
• 7:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it was a hard problem to solve.
• 7:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not particularly solved yet, either.
• 7:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think there's many improvements that can be made in the future.
• 7:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the category lapse team has dedicated researchers to making the existing level of decentralization of monad, even more.
• 7:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: improved going forward.
• 7:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's just we're just at the beginning and we want to make sure that the future of monad is something that doesn't sacrifice on either performance or on decentralization.
• 7:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, one of the questions I always like to ask people who are coming in as part of a foundation is what role does the foundation play in relation to the underlying project or the token itself?
• 8:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: It probably depends on foundation to foundation, so I can speak on behalf of Monai Foundation in particular.
• 8:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the way in which our team functions is when that helps define certain elements of the Monad roadmap or help onboard and educate developers who are looking to deploy their applications on Monad or new users who are looking
• 8:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Play around on monadency what apps are made are available to helping facilitate new entrance to the validator set and other network participants.
• 8:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it really is kind of like a guide or a shepherd in some ways.
• 8:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, acting as like, hey, this is kind of where we see the
• 8:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: The future of monad going, but ultimately, because decentralized, it's dependent on the network participants to actually see a lot of the things come to fruition, and it's also permissionless.
• 9:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: So anyone can deploy their application on the monad network.
• 9:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: got it.
• 9:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you find that Monat has attracted or it's trying to focus in on a specific area, right?
• 9:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because there's a lot of layer ones out there who just say, you know, we wanted to do do everything real world assets, financials, cross-border payments, you know, decentralized storage, whatever it may be, right?
• 9:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a million of them.
• 9:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Monat trying to focus in on one of those
• 9:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: all encompassing.
• 9:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, what I see Monad being is an ecosystem of opportunity, essentially, a chain of opportunity, if you will.
• 9:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: So a platform for the next generation of small business to thrive, but also a place where app developers who have already maybe found a place on an existing chain have
• 10:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: reach certain performance limits and are looking for a place where they don't have to architect around a change limitations.
• 10:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: But also a blockchain that provides a layer of scalability for high-fidelity, institutional grade, financial activity.
• 10:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I realize this is a little bit about a cop at downstairs to say that like, hey, we want to do everything.
• 10:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I truly believe that the
• 10:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: provide that level of necessity for this type of on-chain facilitation.
• 10:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: If we think about like operating assistance, for example, I like going back to this analysis.
• 10:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: It helps me when I was first thinking about crypto, but it's also very illustrative.
• 10:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Back when Windows 95 came to light, I think that was a pretty game-changing operating system.
• 11:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was certainly a kid at the time, but I remember playing around with the computer that was at home, and I'm sure you did too, Brendan, and so Windows 95 had this extreme hold on.
• 11:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: in the professional workspace for a long time.
• 11:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then Windows XP came along, and suddenly the game was changed, and games were changed literally.
• 11:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like Windows 95 had mine sweeper, and I remember the screen saver of like that maze, you know, which is super cool.
• 11:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: But,
• 11:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Then with XP, the games that shipped with XP were like the pinball machine, it's like holy crap, like it looks so realistic and like, you know, the graphics were unreal.
• 11:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's kind of like that, where Monad is increasing the design space for, for DAP filters and allowing for, worlds of possibility that wasn't possible before on previous chains.
• 11:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, which is super important.
• 12:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: You just talking about the games that brought me back to my childhood.
• 12:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: I got me thinking how far we have come.
• 12:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: I remember when I was young, I would go and I would try to play a game on the computer.
• 12:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't just like you loaded up like you do today, or whatever.
• 12:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: I remember I had this physical disc.
• 12:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: I need to have this disc that you would insert into there and you'd barely get any frames and it was the most basic of games and I was young and was trying to play all these things.
• 12:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's crazy that we've gone from that and like you said like mine sweeper or solitaire or something so basic or Tetris that we've gone from that to now having the kind of decentralized
• 12:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: that we have the day and even today, like, I think we get so people will be getting impatient or maybe just they don't get satisfied quite as much as they should.
• 12:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because people want overnight instant gratification instant success and it's like, look at what we have built even if it's just in the last 20 to 30 years and it's crazy how far we've come.
• 13:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's just generally speaking and then you look at crypto, I would say in the last
• 13:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: six or so years since around the time of COVID to where we're at today, huge leaves and bounds.
• 13:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this is coming from someone who reported on this stuff like way early on before most of these, before almost, you know, any awkward projects existed.
• 13:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's fascinating.
• 13:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And again, that's something I've noticed is that especially in bear mark, if people like to take what we've built for granted.
• 13:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: And
• 13:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, it kind of just goes past the everyday eye, but you know, there's a lot of applications out there, especially on monad.
• 13:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to ask you to do something hard here, which is I was going to ask you to maybe pick a couple of your favorite ones that are building out there, but I won't make you pick favorites, maybe just someone that you like or that you want to generally highlight because of what they've been doing in building towards.
• 13:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: without getting you in trouble.
• 13:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know I'm basically asking you to pick a favorite child here, but I like to ask it to a lot of the infrastructures.
• 14:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Definitely hard to pick a favorite child.
• 14:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: So honestly, I think it really depends on what you're looking for on-chain.
• 14:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Monad has over 100 applications to play at this point.
• 14:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the best way of getting started and exploring what an application that you know, when a user might find to be their favorite would be,
• 14:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, actually, we've got a website if you go to app.monad.xmyz, like you'll see a list, and there's, we'll highlight the top ones of the day, the top ones of the hour, and there's also a whole other interface to explore all of them.
• 14:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: So whether you're a DeFi Maxi or whether you're looking for something that's a little bit more gamified, like there's going to be something that
• 14:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
• 14:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: So guys, if you're listening out there and you're just a definitely go make sure that you check it out.
• 14:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because again, there is a lot going on.
• 15:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think, you know, we want to make sure that you all are tied in, but I want to bring us back to a previous point, which is just talking about monad as a solution, right?
• 15:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because I've seen you talk about how you think that crypto needs a global
• 15:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was going to say slowly becoming a reality, it's very quickly becoming a reality.
• 15:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you look at the financial space, they want to be a part of this, they're trying to be a part of this, they're waiting on different regulation and infrastructure and what it complains and all these things, they want in.
• 15:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: And everyone has a different opinion about how that should be or where they should go.
• 15:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: But you've talked about this, right?
• 15:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: This, I believe you've called it the global economic engine and saying we need this for high frequency finance.
• 15:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Why is Monad the solution for that and just talk to that subject as you will because I think it's a super fascinating one.
• 15:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, of course.
• 15:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think fundamentally it comes down to providing frictionless opportunities for on chain finance and also the the other piece being that.
• 16:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: institutional markets require a level of rigor in their solutions and in their infrastructure.
• 16:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: So this means a combination of performance that we talked about, permissionlessness, trustlessness as well.
• 16:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: So with Monat and the performance that it provides, there's
• 16:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is extremely high throughput that can support continuously high volumes of transactions without facing congestion to a point, of course.
• 16:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: But finality that is also fast enough that feels instant and is fast enough for complex strategies to react to market conditions in real time.
• 16:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is also predictable fees, gas fees,
• 16:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: spiking throughout the day is a pretty terrible experience for businesses that maybe rely or may rely on a ton of transactions on chain.
• 17:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you can't extrapolate what you are operating costs are, that could be pretty detrimental to your business as well.
• 17:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's also
• 17:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: bridges and cross-chain protocols allows for easier crushing composability, but also even within protocols deployed on monad itself.
• 17:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: It allows for potentially complex multi-leg, cross-protocol trades to execute seamlessly.
• 17:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then, of course, there's like Oracle infrastructure as well, where we know that having real time information and then being able to react to that is super, super important and hard to do on chain or goals that don't have the high enough frequency of update.
• 17:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I think all of those pieces really make Bonnet a unique solution.
• 17:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: What do you think that it takes for on-chain markets to resemble institutional grade environments?
• 18:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, I guess alongside the things that I had already mentioned, it's probably having the right type of primitives in place as well, and then starting to move from, you know, we've seen over the past couple of years, a lot of proof of concepts, also a lot of proof of concepts that
• 18:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, standalone chains that aren't exactly integrated in an economy setting.
• 18:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: If it's a standalone chain, it's really kind of like the intranet versus the internet.
• 18:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you don't get as much facilitation.
• 18:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're not as ingrained as a part of the economy.
• 18:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that's probably the next piece, along with all of the fundamentals that are needed to build the ecosystem, it's actually participating in being a part of the ecosystem.
• 18:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, how close do you think we are to this, right?
• 19:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've heard a couple of different variations.
• 19:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: How close are to the on-chain market is actually resembling this institutional grade environment and infrastructure that we're so used to?
• 19:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, some people say, hey, it's here right now.
• 19:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Some people say we're close, but maybe it's a little bit longer.
• 19:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: What's your opinion on all of that?
• 19:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: We've never been closer than we are today.
• 19:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's one.
• 19:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, I think it may still take a little bit of time, but more so than ever, I mean, we are seeing a lot of interest amongst institutional counter parties and players.
• 19:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, and just thinking back up to the past couple of conferences that I've been to, I just got back from ECC.
• 19:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's certainly a little bit of like bear market vibes, but, and there was also a desk in New York about two weeks ago.
• 19:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was very pleasantly surprised by the amount of attention and questions that were being asked by people who are currently at banks who are currently at other types of like asset allocators that are genuinely curious about crypto now more than ever.
• 20:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Despite, you know, potentially the more difficult market conditions that we're seeing, there is keen interest in moving in that direction.
• 20:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I don't know if it's going to be within, it's probably not going to be by the end of 2020, but it's for sure.
• 20:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: But there is an accelerant to adoption.
• 20:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, we might start seeing more of that like hockey stick curve.
• 20:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I'm also really bad at predicting the future.
• 20:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I would not take my word as a law.
• 20:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a hard thing, and no one has a crystal ball, not even us, sometimes we really wish we did, but there's no shame in that.
• 20:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: To your point though, I've heard you talk about why you think, I believe in the structure, not applications, may define the next phase of growth.
• 21:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm curious, what does that mean for retail investors?
• 21:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And who's more affected by that?
• 21:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is it retailer institutional?
• 21:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Honestly, probably a bit of both, but if we think beyond just investment, we should think about it retails being like everyday people, you and me included, and trying to understand what opportunities are on chain.
• 21:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the way that
• 21:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: that user interacts with being on chain is through applications.
• 21:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: So as much as infrastructure can lead the efforts, ultimately it is an ecosystem and also comes down to the applications that are deployed on it.
• 21:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Solutions are only as good as the fundamentals that it's given.
• 21:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: So if we think about new apps that are running on outdated technology, we can go back to the Windows 95 example versus Windows XP.
• 22:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: New apps are going to be constrained on outdated technology.
• 22:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And institutions also depend on reliable up-to-date performance solutions.
• 22:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can't run a multi-billion dollar business on Windows 95 anymore.
• 22:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: You probably don't want to be running a multi-billion dollar business on one centralized machine.
• 22:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, there's duplicative efforts.
• 22:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's a distribution-distributed decentralized data centers that, you know, these companies.
• 22:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: seek and build their business upon.
• 22:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: So all of these are all in aggregate, a part of the on-chain future and how users will regardless of institutional users or retail users will interface with a chain like Monat.
• 22:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: for sure.
• 22:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, there's a lot that's just going on here in general, right?
• 23:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: We talked about some of the more specifics in this podcast, but I think the average listener out there is just like guys, there's a lot that's going on this year, and I think a lot of them probably feel a bit whiplash about which way they should look, what they should pay attention to.
• 23:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of opinions about people coming to them, you know, on different YouTube videos or social media
• 23:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, what do you think or what are some of the most important things that you want to pay attention to and that you're looking out for?
• 23:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: And some of the things that you're most excited about as we work our way into, you know, almost at this point, you know, the second half of the year, we're not quite there yet, but
• 23:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 23:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 23:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Good question.
• 23:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: A new product, the Nitro program that you were talking to me about yesterday.
• 23:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yes.
• 23:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 23:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: I can definitely talk about that too.
• 23:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, yeah.
• 23:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's actually one easy thing to pay attention to in the near term.
• 23:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the Monat Foundation is supporting a new initiative called the Nitro Accelerator.
• 24:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's a cross chain accelerator program.
• 24:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's essentially kind of.
• 24:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: adopting the YC model for crypto, and so in later this month actually the first cohort is going to be kicked off, and then I'll be 15 teams, each of whom will run through a three month intensive accelerator program, and each who will be given $500,000 in funding on day one to get their journey started.
• 24:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's fairly unprecedented in the crypto industry today and the fact that it's also cross-chain means that there's a commitment to building the next gen of applications for the industry, not just for monad, but for the entire industry.
• 24:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: So certainly something to look out for.
• 24:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: absolutely.
• 24:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I guess what else is there?
• 24:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is there any other big group map changes or updates or upgrades or I guess just anything in general whether it's with Monad or or something different?
• 25:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: What else are you trying to pay attention to as we work our way into the rest of 2026?
• 25:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm super excited for 2026, at least for Monad and the roadmap that we have at Monad Foundation.
• 25:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the tech stack for the Monad blockchain will continue to improve.
• 25:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's honestly one of the most exciting pieces is that as perform it as decentralized and as
• 25:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Enabling as the blockchain is right now, it's still like VZR, I would still in its infancy.
• 25:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: So a ton of MIPs which are moned improvement proposals are in flight and will probably see them being adopted in the future.
• 25:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: The category Labs team has a team of researchers that in engineers that are focused on finding the next areas of optimizations.
• 25:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, you're talking about this earlier, Brendan, with like the continuous improvement over time and like seeing massive changes from years ago to now.
• 25:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like we can also see those improvements through consistent 10% improvement that compounds over time.
• 26:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: On the monotoundation side of things, we've got a team of engineers and our double team who are also committed to bringing improvements to tooling, to make development and deployment for apps and developers much easier, and there's also other projects that we have in the work to help with onboarding of users and developers.
• 26:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: What else?
• 26:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: The validator set will continue to grow and expand.
• 26:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: This will also be coupled with improvements to the consensus mechanism over time.
• 26:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the ecosystem itself continues to grow.
• 26:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was just taking a peek at Dufailama earlier and the TVL metrics for Define and stablecoin market cap and overall TVL continue to grow.
• 26:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think right now hovering just around the 700 million in TVL on chain right now.
• 26:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: There are also 10 of on-chain primitives, stable coins that are deployed natively like USD, AUSD, USD T0, tokenized assets, commodities, on-chain effects, like all of those things are continuing to grow.
• 27:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting something, but regardless, like very excited for
• 27:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you know, hopefully we're looking at the whole market here and we're looking at a bit of an upturn because again, despite the fundamental's really progressing, I know just about everything, right?
• 27:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: People, I don't think we can, I don't think it's fair to just look at the crypto markets.
• 27:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, well, let's hurt this year, really everything has been hurting this year, no matter where it is.
• 27:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, looking higher and better as we work our way into the next
• 27:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: stages of 2026, but you know, we appreciate your time.
• 27:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: If people are listening out there, they want to get more involved.
• 27:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: They want to track not only what you're doing, but what Monetta's doing, where can they find you at?
• 27:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there's a couple of different areas to get up to date for those listeners who are on Twitter.
• 28:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: I highly recommend following the Monad mean account.
• 28:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's at Monad, just M-O-N-A-D. And there's also a ton of other accounts to follow as well with those that are excited and interested about getting updates to the accelerator.
• 28:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's at nitro.ac, literally N-I-T-R-O-D-O-T-A-C.
• 28:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And there's a weekly news letter that folks on our team aggregate information from across the interwebs and the happenings at Monat Foundation in Monat ecosystem.
• 28:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: I am failing on what the exact URL is there, but if you go to monat.xbyz, there will be a link to sign up for that newsletter.
• 28:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: So a ton of places to keep up to date.
• 28:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And final pub for the app hub, or like the Monat app hub, I think that's what it's called.
• 28:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: App.Monat.Expoisey again, a great resource to see what's been trending and new apps that are deployed and all of the apps in ecosystem in general.
• 29:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Awesome.
• 29:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, Eunice, thank you for joining.
• 29:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: We appreciate you time.
• 29:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Everyone that's listening out there.
• 29:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you guys are interested in Mona, make sure you check them out.
• 29:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm clearly doing a lot of cool things.
• 29:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we're always excited to talk to fellow builders here in the crypto space.
• 29:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, Eunice, we appreciate you time.
• 29:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for joining us.
• 29:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we'll see all of you at the same time, the same place next week.