Monad ICO Explained – Risks, Rewards, and What to Know

[00:02] which means people who have been farming for the airdrop for literally years are about to get a payoff for their hard-invested time and effort. However, they also just announced a public raise. So, in today's video, we're going to

[00:15] take a look at what Monad is. We're going to dive into the tokenomics, talk raise, and whether or not I think it's worth doing. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another Crypto Gorilla video. As usual, I am not

[00:28] a financial advisor. If you appreciate these videos, hit the subscribe button, but also leave me feedback. What do you think about these chain analysis videos? And what chain or product would you like to see me look at next? And without any

[00:40] further ado, let's jump right into today's video. Starting off with what is Monad? Monad is a high-performance layer-one blockchain focused on speed and scalability. However, most people probably look at it and just think, "Oh,

[00:53] another L1." So, I think to better understand the problem that Monad is trying to solve, we need to first understand what Ethereum does and where are the downsides to ETH. Now, Ethereum is by far the most popular blockchain in

[01:07] terms of developers, in terms of apps, as well as their TVL. Their TVL is over as well as their TVL. Their TVL is over seven times any other blockchain on the market. However, ETH is very slow and expensive, especially as more and more

[01:22] thinking, "Isn't this what L2s solve, like Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base?" And while they definitely help, they are still limited by Ethereum. So, up until now, the most popular answer to this has been Solana, which is incredibly fast,

[01:38] cheap, and scalable. However, Solana is built entirely outside of the Ethereum ecosystem in its own coding language. So, if you have an app on ETH and you rewrite it from scratch. This is where Monad comes in, because they've rebuilt

[01:53] the Ethereum stack from the ground up using the same language, tools, and apps, meaning you can easily run Ethereum smart contracts on it while taking advantage of their incredibly fast speeds and low fees. Now, they've

[02:07] innovations. The first of which is called parallel execution. Now, on ETH, transactions happen one at a time. Think of it as a highway where every car has to wait its turn. On Monad, they relieve that traffic by opening up more lanes

[02:23] and then checking which transactions don't depend on each other and running them all at the same time. The second innovation is asynchronous execution. Ethereum processes steps in a strict order one after another. This is a

[02:37] massive waste of time. On Monad, they process steps whenever they are ready with no specific order. You could think of it as if you are cooking a meal, and while the meal is in the oven, you go and do some dishes, which reduces the

[02:51] overall time of the entire process. The third innovation is Monad BFT, which is a brand new consensus algorithm. Now, a consensus algorithm is basically how a

[03:03] blockchain agrees on what transactions are real. So, Monad has taken a different approach, which allowed them to achieve speeds equal to Solana, but decentralization. And the fourth innovation is Monad DB, a

[03:18] custom database. On Ethereum, the system can only fetch one piece of information at a time. Monad is built to handle massive parallel reads and writes, which keeps the network fast and responsive even under heavy loads. Now, all these

[03:32] innovations sound amazing. However, the downside here is up until today, Monad has still been on the testnet. So, we haven't actually seen the level of transactions that they claim. We haven't seen Monad DB under real-world heavy

[03:47] loads. And in terms of decentralization, it's still run mostly by the core team and partners, which brings us to Monad mainnet. This is actually a massive milestone for Monad, but also a moment where they have to prove all of the

[04:01] hype, claims, and design choices if they actually work in the real world. Now, launching Monad mainnet also means the launch of their token, MON, which people have been waiting literally years for. The Discord originally opened in

[04:15] November of 2022. So, we're basically at the three-year anniversary. Now, as for the airdrop, which we have covered in multiple videos, they did a campaign where you were able to go claim over a three-day period these different boxes,

[04:30] and then eventually you got a Monad ticket. Now, if you haven't done this up until today, unfortunately, this is already closed. The deadline was November 3rd. However, there still is an opportunity to get in with the public

[04:44] sale, which you can see here in their tokenomics. They are selling 7.5%. Now, we also see the airdrop in their tokenomics. It's going to be 3.3%. around the airdrop. They say they didn't give enough to the community. They gave

[04:59] some to KOLs, they gave some to NFT holders and other people a lot of the users feel don't deserve it, which we're not going to debate that in this video. The other thing that I see a lot of people talking about their tokenomics is

[05:13] that between the team and the investors, you can see this massive chunk. They you can see this massive chunk. They hold nearly 50% of the token. So, a lot of people are calling this a VC coin, especially since investors already gave

[05:25] them $220 million, which is a massive amount of money. Now, in terms of unlock, both the team as well as investors are locked for

[05:37] to be able to dump their tokens into the straight out the gate are going to be the airdrop as well as the participants in the public sale. So, here they say the circulating supply is close to 10.8%

[05:54] However, it's up to 50% when you consider all of the ecosystem rewards for developers and all that. Now, if you aren't a VC early investor and you completely missed the airdrop, like I said, you do still have an opportunity

[06:07] through the public sale, because Coinbase just launched their own token launchpad, and the first token that they're doing a raise for is going to be Monad, which makes a lot of people bullish on Monad, because they see no

[06:20] way that Coinbase could let this fail, which I do agree that it would look really bad if straight out the gate it was worth less than they raised at. money, because they are raising nearly $200 million

[06:34] from the public on top of the $220 million that they have already raised. And people are asking, "Why do they need this money?" Which the answer is because they can, because they could raise it. So, why not? There is currently a lot of

[06:47] FOMO around ICOs, and people are just looking for something to throw their money at. Now, in terms of getting into the sale, you do need to sign up to the Coinbase platform, which does require KYC. So, you are going to have to verify

[07:01] your account by sharing your identity with Coinbase, which I understand doesn't sound like a big deal. However, the downside here is the number of countries that are not eligible to enter in this sale. Typically, it's the US and

[07:14] UK that are always banned from ICOs. In this case, they pulled an Uno reverse this case, they pulled an Uno reverse card, and America, outside of New York, as well as the UK, are able to enter the sale. It's a ton of European countries,

[07:28] India, Canada, that are not able to enter this. So, there's a lot of frustration around this sale, especially with a small detail that we'll cover in sign-up. So, you're going to need to sign up to the platform, then once you

[07:42] verify your identity, you're going to have to deposit some USDC, because USDC is the currency that you're able to enter the sale with. And then the sale is going live on November 17th, and it lasts until November 22nd. The minimum

[07:57] bid that you have to make is $100, and the maximum is $100,000, unless you're a Coinbase One user. I saw that you can get up to a $500,000 allocation. And

[08:09] then in the case of an over-allocation, they're going to try to split it between as many people as possible, which is the exact opposite of what we just saw for Mega ETH. On Mega ETH, they had 53,000 people enter the public sale, but they

[08:24] only let roughly 5,200 get an allocation, which is less than get an allocation, which is less than 90% of the participants. Now, Monad is trying to raise close to $200 million, which personally, I think they are going

[08:37] to be over-allocated, because if we look at Mega ETH, they were trying to raise roughly $50 million, and they got $1.4 billion of deposits. They were 28x over-allocated. So, I expect maybe not

[08:53] similar amounts, but I definitely expect over $200 million in funds allocated trying to get an allocation to Monad. And one of the going to try to get in is because of this small detail they said that if

[09:07] users sell within the first 30 days, it's going to hurt their allocations in the future. But this is causing many people to speculate about future launches, and they want to be one of the holders for 30 days to get a green

[09:21] checkmark in Coinbase's eyes in case they do a raise for the Base token, which we know is coming. So, I think selling early on this could hurt your chance at a Base airdrop, as well as a Base raise, should they do one through

[09:35] this platform. Now, if they do, I really hope that these country restrictions are gone, because I would hate to miss a chance to invest in Base just because of the country that I'm based in. Now, in terms of what I'm doing for the token

[09:50] sale, like I said, I can't enter it because of where I'm based. But let's just pretend I was able to. Personally, and this is not financial advice because we all have different situations. I would personally be entering this sale.

[10:03] where I would enter it. One would be with which for me is a small amount of money, $100. I would enter with a very money, $100. I would enter with a very small amount just to get that check mark

[10:15] in Coinbase's eyes that I am a long-term holder. I would enter with 100 bucks. I'd be willing to see it go to zero and I would not sell within 30 days or I probably just wouldn't sell. I would just hold it for months until they do a

[10:28] raise for their base token. The other scenario is if I were to invest a large amount of money, say 20, 30, 50,000 dollars into Monad, which personally I don't think is the worst play. Obviously I can't guarantee that it's going to pay

[10:42] off, but if we look at the details of the raise, they are raising at 2 and 1/2 the raise, they are raising at 2 and 1/2 cents, which is 2.5 billion dollars FDV, which don't get me wrong, that is incredibly high. We just saw a raise for

[10:54] Mega Eth at 1 billion. So, this is over 2 and 1/2 X the Mega Eth raise. However, I did the Pump Fun raise at 4 billion and it was still profitable. With these types of things, I'm not looking for a 5, 10X return. I am happy with a 1.25 to

[11:11] 5, 10X return. I am happy with a 1.25 to 1.5X return where I size in because I see the downside risk as minimal. Maybe it does open at 2 bill and then I lose 20% of my money, but I also have the opportunity to make 1 and 1/2 X my

[11:25] money. Now, if you look at the current prices on the secondary market because there are OTC markets, there's pre-markets with perps. If we look on Whales Market, they have 1.4 million in volume, which I take this with a grain

[11:38] of salt because if I'm Monad, I am definitely manipulating these markets. They have 220 mil to play with, so I invest 5, 10, even 20 mil pumping these invest 5, 10, even 20 mil pumping these pre-markets to get my 200 mil raise,

[11:52] right? Then you you spend 10 mil on marketing and you raise 200 mil. That is very worth it in my eyes, but it is currently trading at 4.6 billion with over a million dollars in volume. If we look on Binance perps right now, it's

[12:07] look on Binance perps right now, it's trading 4.5 cents. If we look on Hyperliquid, the pre-market perps here, it's trading at same thing, close to 4.7 billion FDV. And then if we look on Polymarket, people are betting on what

[12:22] the odds are that after 1 day, so 24 hours, is it going to be above 2 billion? The consensus is very much yes. Is it going to be above 3 billion? So, 500 million over the current raise valuations, 80% of people think yes with

[12:37] nearly half a million in volume. And then it's a 50/50 split if it's going to then it's a 50/50 split if it's going to be over 4 billion after 24 hours. This doesn't mean the second it launches. After a 24-hour period, which gives you

[12:51] plenty of time to exit if you want to sell, right? Even 5 bill, which is a 2X the raise, people are tossing a coin, it's a one and three chance. So, to me, I like these odds, right? Again, it there's no guarantee this does well, but

[13:05] I like these odds and it's something I would gamble on for an immediate flip. Long-term, like who knows? We have seen this narrative so many times of like we're going to fix Eth, we're going to so many L2s, even L1s. I mean, right now

[13:19] the current landscape is Solana, which is at 90 billion FDV. Do I see it going anywhere near Solana? Absolutely not. If we look at some other coins in the realm, we have Sui, which is close to 20 bill. We have Sei, which pushed a very

[13:33] similar narrative, which is at 1.66 billion. And we have Aptos, which is currently at 3.5 billion. So, I think there's good odds that it trades above its 2.5 billion. However, as a more long-term play where you're holding for

[13:47] months and months on end, a lot of people like to point to Berachain, which has literally been a bearish chain being down only. So, personally I would play down only. So, personally I would play this as I invest, I get my money, and

[14:00] you got to consider the future investment opportunity cost that you're giving up when it comes to other rounds, especially base, which we just saw that JP Morgan article, they're evaluating it

[14:12] at like 35 billion dollars for the chain. So, if they did a raise at 1 bill or 2 bill, that's a 30-something to 15X return. And that does it for today's Let me know what you guys are doing in the comment section down below. Do you

[14:27] plan on entering the Monad sale or do you think it's just some BC scam that's going to open under 2 and 1/2 billion? Interested to hear your opinion to get a general consensus of how my audience feels about this raise. If you

[14:40] see more like it, hit the like button. It really helps with the distribution. subscribe button, smash that bell notification. Thank you for watching notification. Thank you for watching another Crypto Gorilla video.