Monad to Launch On-Chain Perpetuals DEX

Monad's core innovation is its high-performance architecture, which rebuilds the Ethereum Virtual Machine from the ground up to enable parallel transaction processing. This design targets a throughput of 10,000 transactions per second with sub-second finality, providing the speed necessary to operate a fully on-chain central limit order book (CLOB) without relying on off-chain components. The project's focus on high-frequency trading capabilities stems from its founders' backgrounds. Co-founders Keone Hon and James Hunsaker both spent eight years at the high-frequency trading firm Jump Trading, where they specialized in building ultra-low-latency systems responsible for billions in daily volume. This vision attracted significant capital, with Monad Labs raising a total of $244 million. The funding includes a $225 million round led by Paradigm at a $3 billion valuation, as well as a prior $19 million seed round led by Dragonfly Capital, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Electric Capital, and angel investors like Naval Ravikant and Cobie. The launch comes as the decentralized perpetuals market is experiencing explosive growth, with DEXs' share of the global perpetual futures market growing from 2.7% at the end of 2023 to 26% by mid-2025. The total trading volume for perpetual DEXs surged by 346% in 2025, reaching $6.7 trillion for the year. Beyond a single platform, Monad is fostering an ecosystem of derivatives protocols. Perpl, a fully on-chain perpetuals exchange, raised $9.25 million in a round led by Dragonfly. Other perpetuals DEXs building on the network include Kuru Exchange, Drake Exchange, and Zaros. The Monad public mainnet officially went live on November 24, 2025, which also marked the token generation event for its native MON token. The launch activated the network for developers and dApps, with integrations from partners like MetaMask and Chainlink ready for the ecosystem.