Monad: $MON Airdrop Distribution Overview
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Monad: $MON Airdrop Distribution Overview
The primary goal of this airdrop is to enable Monad community members and deep blockchain users to become the network's first stakeholders.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Monad
Introduction
With the Monad mainnet launch approaching, the Monad Foundation officially announces the MON airdrop. This airdrop will distribute tokens to 5,500 Monad community members and approximately 225,000 members of the broader crypto community. The core principle behind the MON airdrop is to ensure that genuine users who truly "live and breathe Crypto" become the earliest stakeholders of the Monad network.
MON token distribution is divided into five major categories, each with several subcategories. Individuals meeting criteria across multiple subcategories can claim corresponding allocations cumulatively.
The distribution categories are:
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Monad Community
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Onchain Users
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Crypto Community
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Crypto Contributors & Crypto Curious
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Monad Builders
Anti-Sybil Mechanism
The primary goal of this airdrop is to make members of the Monad community and deeply engaged blockchain users the first stakeholders of the network. The challenge lies in the fact that new networks often become prime targets for Sybil attackers and bulk account farms. When designing screening criteria, we carefully assessed which behaviors are easily replicable by Sybils and which are harder to fake. For example, repetitive low-value transactions can be easily automated via scripts, so they cannot serve as standalone valid criteria—otherwise, real users' shares would be diluted by massive bot activity. Ultimately, we selected a set of criteria that reflect both high onchain activity and offchain real-world contributions:
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Onchain dimension: Long-term capital deployment in DeFi protocols, highly active DEX traders, specific NFT collectors, etc.
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Offchain dimension: Social identity verification, participation in Web3 education and community events, contributions to public goods or security research, etc.
The Foundation has also conducted extensive manual labeling and launched two applications—Monad Community Recognizer and Monad Cards—to invite the community to jointly participate in the selection process.
In addition, we partnered with third-party provider Trusta AI to perform Sybil detection and removal on onchain addresses, whose professional expertise in anti-Sybil distributions provided significant support.
Monad Community
The Monad Community constitutes the largest portion of this airdrop. The reason is simple: community is everything.
Monad has always emphasized that a single insightful and intelligent supporter can change the trajectory of a startup. For Monad, this effect is amplified thousands of times over.
Members of the Monad community continuously push boundaries: founding new companies, launching initiatives, building audiences, unleashing creativity, organizing others... Through their actions, they prove not only that the way the world transacts could fundamentally change, but that such change is highly probable—all driven by persistence, courage, and a bit of luck.
Crypto has always been a story about communities:
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Bitcoin's early believers united around "decentralization, censorship resistance, self-sovereignty, open-source code"
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Ethereum's early geeks were captivated by "programmable money on a world computer"
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Solana's community envisioned "Nasdaq-speed DeFi powered by hardware efficiency."
Each time, what gave technology profound impact was not the technology itself, but the optimistic and fully committed communities behind it.
Today, those early believers of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana have become industry leaders. But just a few years ago, they were simply smart, curious individuals willing to actively explore. Now, the Monad community stands at the same moment.
We want Monad community members to become key stakeholders of the network because we believe in their future influence and their potential to shape not only Monad but the entire Crypto ecosystem.
This allocation was determined through manual labeling, community voting, and social graph analysis, focusing on individuals with long-term deep engagement and sustained contributions to the Monad ecosystem.
Unlike traditional airdrops where "social distribution is often chaotic and inefficient, casting too wide a net to find a few truly important contributors," the Monad community consists of many high-contributors with tightly interconnected social networks, enabling precise, efficient, and impactful distribution.
The moral support, humor, creativity, goodwill, initiative, and genuine care from the Monad community have greatly inspired the Monad team and all ecosystem builders.
In one sentence: All in one.
Onchain Users
This category targets heavy onchain users across major blockchains, with criteria including transaction activity, NFT holdings, governance participation, etc. Specifically covering:
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High-frequency trading users on major DEXs
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Large deposits in mainstream DeFi protocols
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Long-term NFT holders
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Users recently active in Ethereum DeFi protocol governance
Snapshots were taken at 23:59 UTC on September 30, 2025, with some metrics calculated over multiple months.
Crypto Community
This portion targets the broader crypto community, using social graph exploration and the Monad Cards program for screening. The goal is to identify people who genuinely love Crypto.
While it's impossible to capture everyone, fully eliminate farms and bots, or avoid duplication, we strive to make those who truly care about Crypto into stakeholders of the Monad network.
Among these, Monad Cards is a key component. The program identifies active, dedicated, and deeply thoughtful users on Twitter/X, and allows selected individuals to nominate others who were overlooked but equally deserving. Wave 1, Wave 2 recipients, and those who missed claiming are all included in this airdrop.
In addition, we also cover:
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Community members
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Participants in the Legion fundraising platform
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Backpack users
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Fantasy Top heroes
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ARC community members
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LobsterDAO Telegram active members
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MetaDAO token holders
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Active users on Farcaster
Crypto Contributors
This allocation targets builders advancing the Monad ecosystem:
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Security researchers, protocol developers, education advocates
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Notable figures such as ZachXBT
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SEAL 911 members
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Cantina auditors (with high-value findings)
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Protocol Guild members (verified via Splits contract)
We also include participants and mentors from educational programs such as Rareskills and SheFi.
Monad Builders
This category covers builders driving the growth of the Monad ecosystem:
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Teams natively deploying on Monad
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Developers who submitted qualifying projects in Monad Blitzes, Dev Missions, and hackathons
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Individuals who actively participated and made significant contributions at IRL events
All lists were manually curated, focusing on verifiable proof of work and actual attendance.
To avoid ambiguity, Monad Builders in this airdrop do not include team members from the Monad Foundation or Category Labs. We have proactively excluded all identity markers associated with project team members, ensuring they are not on the eligible recipient list, and explicitly prohibit full-time team members of the Monad Foundation and Category Labs from claiming MON airdrop tokens.
Conclusion
This airdrop represents immense effort from the Monad Foundation's quant and engineering teams. Beyond analyzing vast amounts of onchain and offchain data, we built new tools like Monad Community Recognizer and Monad Cards to ensure a fairer, more community-driven distribution.
Nonetheless, some deserving individuals may still be missed. We sincerely apologize and deeply respect your passion and dedication.
Stay tuned—the upcoming launch of the Monad mainnet will bring more opportunities and surprises.
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