Market Fundamentalism vs. Elite Governance: Monad V.S. MegaETH
TechFlow Selected TechFlow Selected
Market Fundamentalism vs. Elite Governance: Monad V.S. MegaETH
Why Monad?
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Forrest
It's strange that there isn't much discussion about Monad within the Chinese-speaking "core circle," yet the Monad ecosystem has been advancing vigorously across English and other language communities. At a time when the market is most challenging, I’d like to share my perspective on what I believe could be the last hope for our village—@monad_xyz.
AllianceDAO’s @QwQiao has long emphasized that a project’s choice of consumer platform on Ethereum or Solana is one of its most critical decisions. It's akin to choosing which country you want to build and run your business in—what kind of political ideals, operating environment, and strategies you align with; how you envision co-creating national culture and community ecosystems alongside the nation’s leaders, producers, and entrepreneurs. And more pragmatically, how you, your project, and your community will establish ties with this “country,” and how such relationships are balanced and sustained.
From a commercial and economic standpoint, blockchain governance resembles constitutional design for digital city-states. Running a chain is like governing a nation: early builders and governments act as institutional entrepreneurs who provide infrastructure, fund public goods via token-based taxation systems, and collect “taxes” from new immigrant entrepreneurs and producers—the users of this infrastructure. Beyond that, a chain’s founder functions as the spiritual leader of this nation, whose worldview and will permeate every detail from top to bottom. Building a long-term, community-driven chain is no easy task—it demands exceptional experience, insight, vision, courage, and depth of understanding about the world from the founding team.
We can clearly see the imprint of individual founders’ philosophies on major, truly successful blockchains (not just those that succeeded in pumping and dumping—such short-term “success” isn’t relevant here), such as Ethereum, Solana, BNB, Base, etc. Conversely, controversial chains often reflect equally strong but problematic founder ideologies—like Starknet and Scroll, or certain chains this cycle that gained attention through price manipulation rather than organic ecosystem growth. These resemble groups of politicians, VCs, and traders buying an offshore island solely to profit from passport sales and other speculative ventures—harvesting韭菜 (cauliflower) along the way. That’s why I want to share my subjective take with builders, so they can better choose leaders they admire and environments worth betting on.
As two of the most anticipated high-performance chains in this cycle, @monad_xyz and @megaeth_labs share similar narratives around performance, and both recently launched testnets nearly simultaneously. Many builders are curious how these two compare, so let me briefly share my thoughts and reflections for your reference. My views stem partly from objective facts, partly from personal interpretation, and also from limited interactions—with varying degrees of depth—with the founders, communities, and members of both ecosystems. This may not apply to everyone.
Let me first introduce the backgrounds of the co-founders. Interestingly, both studied in Boston. Monad’s founder @keoneHD completed his undergraduate and master’s degrees at MIT, earning double majors in CS and Mathematics as an undergrad, followed by double majors in CS and Finance at the graduate level—all within four years, totaling four degrees. A true academic prodigy and master of attention/time management. After graduation, he joined Quant, then Jump Trading, launching his career in trading. From my interactions with Keone, he strikes me as introverted and emotionally calm, deeply focused on maximizing the value and experience of everything he does. As a founder who evolved from ENTJ to INTP through building projects, I somewhat relate. For example, while playing a simple game in Denver where we tossed balls into holes, Keone suddenly said, “How can we make this crazier? Let’s redesign the gameplay.” We turned it into a fast-paced team relay race—much more intense and fun. He reminds me of those super-smart, nerdy, Ivy League grads I know (non-business majors), who care deeply about the process of experience, self-actualization, and social impact—not just financial success or conventional outcomes like TGE. His personality fits perfectly with his educational background.
MegaETH’s co-founder @hotpot_dao earned her bachelor’s degree in Psychology & Economics at Smith College, spent time abroad at the University of Copenhagen, and later completed an MBA at HBS. I haven’t spoken much with Bing兄, but our brief interactions left a strong impression: she embodies the classic HBS graduate (as one Princeton professor in the space once joked: if someone’s a Harvard alum, you’ll know it immediately 😂). Direct, efficient, aggressive, confident, sharp-minded—she exudes the vibe of a professional services veteran (banking/consulting)—goal-oriented, commercially driven. Definitely a founder with a distinct personality.
In recent months, I’ve asked investors, builders, and communities across Asia and North America for their thoughts on these two ecosystems (though my reach has limitations, so blind spots exist). The results were fascinating. Here’s the takeaway: investors tend to favor MegaETH slightly more, whereas builders and grassroots communities lean toward Monad. Position shapes preference—and positions are shaped by interests.
-
Bing兄 comes from Consensys, giving her natural access to the “Ethereum core circle” and support from Asian-background investors (@ABCDELabs, etc.). Her Chinese heritage and translation of content from English to Chinese allow easier resonance with Chinese investors and influencers, creating positive feedback loops. Combined with X’s algorithmic amplification, this generates stronger visibility within elite circles. In contrast, Monad draws more North American investors; its founders lack Chinese backgrounds, its Asia growth team formed later, and it focuses primarily on ecosystem and community building—resulting in relatively lower presence and recognition among Asian investor circles on X.
-
Second, when it comes to how welcoming and beneficial the ecosystem is for investor participation, MegaETH clearly aligns better with investor preferences. MegaETH incubated MegaMafia—an initiative that internally selects and deeply supports promising projects—which appeals even to some investors who didn’t back MegaETH but did invest in Monad. Investors seek information asymmetry and certainty, and MegaMafia directly addresses both. In contrast, Monad offers something like MonadMadness—a pitch competition-style open stage, reminiscent of Solana’s hackathons—forcing investors to fish blindly in a vast sea of community projects. Capital groups, as 'privileged actors,' gravitate toward MegaETH’s selective incentives, while Monad exhibits characteristics of a 'latent group' driven by developers and community, forming spontaneous order through non-excludable provision of public goods and reputation capital accumulation.
-
Finally, stake timing matters. Monad was founded in 2022, MegaETH in 2023. In terms of capital cycles, MegaETH reached testnet significantly faster, fitting better with expectations of Asian funds. Monad’s 36-month ecosystem development plan suits endowment-style long-term capital instead.
Now let’s turn to the parts many care about: ecosystem and community. The contrast between Monad Madness and Mega Mafia reveals a lot about each ecosystem’s strategy—and likely reflects differences in founder background and worldview.
Project selection and expansion strategy:
-
Monad prioritizes fairness. From conversations with the team, I sense their approach is to treat all projects equally. They believe that subjectively selecting and heavily supporting specific teams would disadvantage others entering the same space. Creating fair infrastructure and rules for all is seen as superior. Monad generally provides no preferential treatment—Keone seems to have built a protocol-like, robust system designed to help any project integrate into the Monad community without bias. This is extremely builder-friendly. In contrast, Mega Mafia focuses on small-scale, deep support for young, high-potential founders, aiming to cultivate flagship projects with assistance spanning idea generation, PMF, visibility, and funding. This targeted model carries higher risk—after all, every founder believes their idea will succeed 😂.
-
This reminds me of past debates over China vs. U.S. business environments. Governance led by individuals versus market-driven mechanisms produces different outcomes at different times. Once again, we’ll witness this experiment play out in crypto. Which chain becomes the EVM+Solana hybrid, and which ends up like Scroll? Time will tell.
Go-to-market (GTM) strategy:
-
Both Monad and MegaETH have now launched testnets. MegaETH explicitly states it won’t offer airdrop rewards for testnet interactions—unsurprising. In a recent chat, Bing兄 argued that a community without real products is empty and will eventually become pure sell-side pressure. While I don’t fully agree, realistically speaking, history shows that chains failing to grow vibrant ecosystems before mainnet rarely succeed afterward—think of several S-named chains 😂. Human nature in this industry bets on expectations; once those fade, builders and communities lose clarity in chain selection. That said, MegaETH recently raised 4,964 ETH via NFT sales—a sign of tangible community support. Still, given its current community activity levels, it’s unclear where that buyer demand originated.
-
In contrast, Monad follows a completely different community-building philosophy. Judging by FOMO levels across Discord, X, and multilingual communities, Monad’s cultural cohesion feels cult-like—no exaggeration. Before testnet launch, Monad kickstarted early user acquisition via MACH 2 (an NFT accelerator), using low-barrier NFT campaigns to ignite grassroots engagement. Then, right before testnet went live, they locked all social media—only allowing existing high-quality users (those with historical transactions, deposits, social contributions) to claim water drops—as an emotional marketing tactic that sparked massive community excitement. At launch, multiple protocols emerged trading these water drops, and the team manually distributed drops in X comments (very down-to-earth). After stabilization, they continuously brought in legendary old and new projects with high playability. Monad is a marketing genius—rhythm control is impeccable. Post-testnet, almost every week had a theme: NFT Week, Break Monad, etc. They deeply understand human psychology, leveraging emotional capital to create addictive network effects—a perfect mirror of Arthur’s increasing returns theory on-chain.
-
Moreover, anyone—whether user or builder—can easily notice Monad’s terrifyingly refined and solid execution in marketing and growth. From manually curating/kicking inactive users in Discord to maintain quality, mastering X traffic dynamics, to designing dashboards, it’s clear these are people who never sleep.
The rest of this piece will focus on Monad because I’ve chosen to participate directly, giving me hands-on experience. I haven’t engaged deeply with MegaETH, so I lack the proper angle to discuss it further.
First Principles and Minimalism: Several investors told me they’re unsure what Monad is doing, calling its strategy unclear or insufficiently supportive. But in my view, Monad has a very clear roadmap. First, Monad publicly disclosed $244 million in funding across two rounds—making it a fundraising giant in crypto. Yet builders deep in the ecosystem know Monad operates like a disciplined CFO: money is spent only where it counts—Monad Madness, Founders Lounge, etc.—all centered on project growth. No big parties, only effective work. They refuse to waste time or capital on inefficient activities. Again, this reflects founder temperament and team background. Honestly, before mainnet, will anyone really build, contribute, or buy tokens just because they attended a wild party and got drunk?
In practice, nearly every need—from community collaboration and growth to development and even founder personal growth—has been met in a highly systematic, clear, and efficient manner:
-
System effectiveness: Whenever we had operational needs, both North American and Asian Monad teams provided standardized guidance documents—sometimes down to granular GTM details—with extremely logical, thorough, and meticulous instructions. I was stunned. These weren’t custom-made for us—they were shared within minutes of asking. Clearly, this is accumulated wisdom from helping numerous projects onboard, meticulously systematized over time. You could practically compile it into *The Monad Eco CMO Bible* 😂.
-
Team effectiveness: Many Monad team members—including Keone himself, @shreya, @harvey, @michael—have backgrounds in banking, consulting, or market-making. This ensures high efficiency and reliability. Treating builders fairly, no bluffing, no ghosting (yes, even basic communication hygiene is rare in most ecosystems 😂), prompt responses and support—simple expectations, yet incredibly hard to find elsewhere.
-
Infrastructure effectiveness: On day one of testnet launch, Monad already offered extensive tooling—explorers like monadexplorer, analytics platforms like nadradar—even many community-built tools—that rival mature top-tier L1s.
In this era of fleeting, diluted attention spans—where we mindlessly rush forward second by second—it’s easy to miss depth. But when you truly dive into Monad’s progress, you’re genuinely amazed. According to @nikil's post, the Monad testnet is already among the top three most-used chains by developers (including both testnets and mainnets). At this difficult market juncture, it’s truly the last hope for the village. My motivation in writing this is sincere: I hope we collectively build meaningful things, so our journey here matters.
Lastly, I welcome more builders joining the Monad ecosystem to connect. @opinionlabsxyz’s initial core product will launch next week on the Monad testnet. Please share feedback and potential collaborations.
If Solana and Ethereum had a baby, that’s Monad. LFG.
Join TechFlow official community to stay tuned
Telegram:https://t.me/TechFlowDaily
X (Twitter):https://x.com/TechFlowPost
X (Twitter) EN:https://x.com/BlockFlow_News
@ForrestOLAB
