Remember when everyone swore Solana would never recover from its outages, then it suddenly 100x’d anyway? Yeah, me too. Right now the crypto timeline is having the exact same fever dream about a brand-new layer-1 called Monad. Over the weekend it closed the biggest community token sale of the year – $269 million committed, 1.43× oversubscribed, 85,000+ buyers – and tomorrow the mainnet flips on. The MON token starts trading the same day. Feels like we’ve seen this movie before, but the ending is never guaranteed.
Why Monad Has Everyone Talking (For Good Reason)
Let’s get the hype out of the way first, because there’s actually substance behind it this time.
Monad isn’t just another “Ethereum but faster” pitch. The team rebuilt the entire execution stack from scratch with something called parallel execution. In English: instead of processing transactions one-by-one like Ethereum (or even Solana in some cases), Monad can run thousands at the exact same time without breaking compatibility with the EVM. They’re quoting 10,000+ TPS on mainnet day one, with sub-second finality and fees that make Arbitrum blush.
That sounds like marketing fluff until you realize the testnet already hit those numbers for months without crashing. In crypto, shipping working software before you raise nine figures is practically unheard of these days.
“We basically took the Ethereum client, threw away everything that made it slow, and rebuilt the parts everyone actually uses.”
– Paraphrased from a Monad dev on Discord (they love saying this)
Add in the fact that they already have integrations with Chainlink, Pyth, LayerZero, and basically every major DeFi name you can think of, and you start to understand why Paradigm, Electric Capital, and a dozen other top-tier funds piled in early.
The Fundraising Numbers Are Insane
- $269 million committed in the community round alone
- 85,820 unique buyers
- 1.43× oversubscribed – meaning demand was almost 50 % higher than supply
- Done on Coinbase’s platform, giving it instant mainstream credibility
- Early investors (Paradigm, etc.) are sitting on tokens from $0.05–$0.10 range
When was the last time you saw a layer-1 raise a quarter-billion dollars from retail before the chain even launched? Exactly. This kind of FOMO usually only happens after something is already pumping.
What Happens Tomorrow – The Timeline
Monday, November 24, 2025 – mark it. Mainnet genesis block drops, over 200 validators come online, and MON listings go live on Bybit, Coinbase Exchange, Gate, MEXC and probably a few more. That’s also the moment every single person who bought in the community sale can finally move their tokens.
And that’s where things get spicy.
Why New L1 Tokens Usually Face-Plant on Day One
I’ve watched this play out more times than I’d like to admit. The pattern is almost comically predictable:
- Months of insane hype
- Oversubscribed raise
- Everyone and their dog apes the ICO
- Token finally lists… and the first 48 hours are just a slow-motion car crash
Recent victims? Wormhole, LayerZero, ZKsync, Blast – all of them bled 30-70 % from listing price in the opening week despite perfect narratives. Even Solana itself dropped 40 % the week it hit Binance back in 2020 before the real run started.
Why does this keep happening?
- ICO buyers are finally free to take profit (or just break even)
- Early investors who got 10-50× cheaper allocation start distributing
- People who missed the sale front-run the listing and dump into retail FOMO
- Merciless mercenary liquidity providers on day-one trading pairs
Monad’s Tokenomics – The Elephant in the Room
Here’s the part nobody wants to screenshot. Out of the total MON supply:
- Team + early contributors: ~30 %
- Investors (Paradigm, etc.): ~20-25 %
- Ecosystem / treasury / future raises: another big chunk
- Community sale: less than 8 %
That means over half the supply is controlled by insiders who paid pennies. Even if only 5-10 % of that hits the market in the first month, that’s still hundreds of millions of dollars looking for an exit at $5B+ FDV.
Yes, there are vesting schedules – supposedly. But we’ve all seen how “locked” tokens mysteriously appear on exchanges when price is juicy.
So… Buy the Hype or Fade the Launch?
Here’s my honest take after watching a dozen of these launches: the tech is legitimately impressive. Monad could absolutely become a top-5 chain in 2026 if they keep shipping. But launch week is almost never the time to swing for the fences.
The smart move is usually:
- Let the first wave of profit-taking happen
- Watch how the team handles the inevitable drama
- Wait for the first real DeFi apps to migrate and generate fees
- Then start building a position when the crowd has moved on to the next shiny thing
That’s exactly how people made life-changing money on Solana at $15-20, Arbitrum at $0.80, and Sui under $0.50. The blood in the streets phase is painful, but it’s where the real opportunities hide.
Final Thoughts Before the Fireworks
Tomorrow will be chaotic. Twitter will be flooded with “told you so” posts in both directions. Some people will wake up 5× richer on paper. Others will watch their bags evaporate before breakfast.
Monad has the tech, the war chest, and the partnerships to be something special. But crypto has a brutal way of reminding us that narrative only carries you so far when real money is free to move.
I’m keeping my powder dry for now. If we see a nasty shakeout in the first weeks and the core team keeps building anyway? That’s when I’ll get very interested.
Either way, buckle up. The next 72 hours are going to be one hell of a show.
