Monad Labs 融資 2.25 億美元，用於創建更快、更便宜的 Layer-1 區塊鏈

A new player on the scene, Monad Labs, finalized a $225 million round led by Paradigm with additional funding by investors including Electric Capital and Greenoaks to build a layer-1 blockchain to challenge competitors such as Solana and Sui. (Fortune previously reported that Monad was in talks with Paradigm to raise money at a $3 billion valuation in March.)

新晉參與者 Monad Labs 完成了由 Paradigm 領投的 2.25 億美元融資，Electric Capital 和 Greenoaks 等投資者提供了額外資金，用於建立第一層區塊鏈，以挑戰 Solana 和 Sui 等競爭對手。 （《財星》先前曾通報 Monad 正在與 Paradigm 進行談判，以 3 月以 30 億美元的估值籌集資金。）

In an exclusive interview, Monad founder Keone Hon said Monad’s innovation comes from rebuilding Ethereum’s blockchain from the ground up—maintaining the ability to execute smart contracts while completing transactions at faster speeds, higher volumes, and lower costs. While other new blockchains have a similar value proposition, Monad is compatible with the program powering Ethereum, the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), meaning developers can port over applications built for Ethereum.

Monad創辦人Keone Hon在接受獨家採訪時表示，Monad的創新來自於從頭開始重建以太坊區塊鏈——保持執行智慧合約的能力，同時以更快的速度、更高的交易量和更低的成本完成交易。雖然其他新區塊鏈也有類似的價值主張，但 Monad 與以太坊的程式、以太坊虛擬機 (EVM) 相容，這意味著開發人員可以移植為以太坊構建的應用程式。

“We’re emerging from roughly two years of development,” Hon said. “At a time when a lot of the research community was focused on roll-up, data availability, and other directions of scaling, Monad basically went really deep on the pure execution side.”

「我們正在經歷大約兩年的發展，」Hon 說。 “當許多研究社區都專注於匯總、數據可用性和其他擴展方向時，Monad 基本上在純粹的執行方面非常深入。”

The crowded layer-1 landscape

Since the launch of Bitcoin in 2009, developers have introduced new blockchains that promise an array of new capabilities, from cheaper and faster transactions to applications like decentralized exchanges or lending protocols that can operate on top of a blockchain.

擁擠的第一層景觀自2009 年比特幣推出以來，開發人員推出了新的區塊鏈，這些區塊鏈承諾提供一系列新功能，從更便宜、更快的交易到可以在區塊鏈上運行的去中心化交易所或借貸協議等應用程式。

Although Ethereum launched in 2015 with the innovation of smart contracts, it’s struggled to scale with increased demand, meaning transactions often come with high execution fees, known as “gas,” or are slow to be processed. More recent competitors—including Solana, which launched in 2020—promised faster speeds at lower costs but still suffer from congestion issues.

儘管以太坊於2015 年隨著智能合約的創新而推出，但它很難隨著需求的增長而擴展，這意味著交易通常需要高昂的執行費用（稱為「gas」），或者處理速度很慢。最近的競爭對手（包括 2020 年推出的 Solana）承諾以更低的成本提供更快的速度，但仍面臨擁堵問題。

Hon worked for eight years at Jump Trading, the secretive Chicago-based high-frequency trading firm, building systems that could process large numbers of transactions quickly. He soon branched out into Jump’s crypto arm, working alongside Monad cofounder James Hunsaker.

Hon 在 Jump Trading 工作了八年，這是一家總部位於芝加哥的神秘高頻交易公司，負責建造可以快速處理大量交易的系統。他很快就涉足了 Jump 的加密貨幣部門，與 Monad 聯合創始人 James Hunsaker 一起工作。

“We realized there was a huge need for a more performant EVM, and that in spite of this need, no one was really working on this problem,” Hon told Fortune.

「我們意識到對性能更高的 EVM 的巨大需求，儘管有這種需求，但沒有人真正致力於解決這個問題，」Hon 告訴《財富》雜誌。

Unlike many new blockchains, Monad will have full support for the EVM bytecode, the standard that many developers build on when coding decentralized applications. Hon described EVM as the Web3 equivalent of JavaScript in the early 2000s—it’s used by blockchains including Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche, Binance Smart Chain, and Optimism. “Anyone who’s built an app for any of those blockchains can port it into Monad without any changes.”

與許多新的區塊鏈不同，Monad 將完全支援 EVM 字節碼，這是許多開發人員在編寫去中心化應用程式時所依據的標準。 Hon 將 EVM 描述為 2000 年代初 JavaScript 的 Web3 等價物，它被以太坊、Polygon、Avalanche、Binance Smart Chain 和 Optimism 等區塊鏈所使用。 “任何為這些區塊鏈建立應用程式的人都可以將其移植到 Monad 中，無需任何更改。”

Avichal Garg, managing partner of Electric Capital, said 90% of developers working on multiple crypto ecosystems are working only in EVM chains, pointing to a recent report from his firm. While that means that Monad doesn’t get the same benefits of redesigning its entire programming language like other new blockchains such as Aptos and Sui, Garg said it still gets most of the benefits.

Electric Capital 的執行合夥人 Avichal Garg 指出，他的公司最近發布的一份報告稱，在多個加密生態系統中工作的開發人員中 90% 只在 EVM 鏈中工作。雖然這意味著 Monad 無法像 Aptos 和 Sui 等其他新區塊鏈那樣獲得重新設計整個程式語言的好處，但 Garg 表示，它仍然獲得了大部分好處。

“The way you go to market is you hit the EVM compatibility and suck over a bunch of devs,” he told Fortune. “To us, it felt like this is the playbook.”

「進入市場的方式就是達到 EVM 相容性並吸引一群開發人員，」他告訴《財星》雜誌。 “對我們來說，感覺這就是劇本。”

‘A much more performant blockchain’

After raising a $19 million seed round announced in 2023, Monad’s $225 million funding round represents the largest crypto fundraise of 2024 so far, according to Crunchbase’s Web3 Tracker, signaling that the sector’s bear market is beginning to thaw. Paradigm, the crypto VC firm leading the round, is reportedly raising a new fund over $750 million. The round also represents one of the first crypto deals for Greenoaks Capital, the VC firm led by veteran investor Neil Mehta, after a small bet on FTX.

「性能更高的區塊鏈」 根據Crunchbase 的Web3 Tracker 的數據，在2023 年宣布籌集1900 萬美元種子輪融資後，Monad 的2.25 億美元融資是2024 年迄今為止最大的加密貨幣融資，這表明該產業的熊市正在開始解凍。據報道，領投本輪融資的加密貨幣創投公司 Paradigm 正在籌集超過 7.5 億美元的新基金。該輪融資也是由資深投資者 Neil Mehta 領導的創投公司 Greenoaks Capital 在對 FTX 進行小額押注後進行的首批加密貨幣交易之一。

While Jump incubated a number of crypto projects, including Wormhole and Pyth Network, Hon said Monad is completely separate from the trading firm. Jump has been embroiled in scandal due to its role in the collapse of the so-called stablecoin project Terraform Labs led by Do Kwon, whose civil trial resulted in a guilty verdict in federal court last week. Hunsaker testified at the proceedings, where it was revealed that he filed a whistleblower complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission against his former employer.

雖然 Jump 孵化了許多加密項目，包括 Wormhole 和 Pyth Network，但 Hon 表示 Monad 與貿易公司完全分開。由於 Do Kwon 領導的所謂穩定幣計畫 Terraform Labs 的崩潰，Jump 捲入了醜聞，該計畫的民事審判上週在聯邦法院做出了有罪判決。洪薩克在訴訟程序中作證，據透露，他向美國證券交易委員會提交了針對其前雇主的舉報投訴。

Armed with its new round of funding, Hon said that Monad aims to deploy its mainnet by the end of the year, as well as a testnet in the next couple of months. Monad Labs currently has around 30 employees and plans for a native token, although Hon declined to comment on whether it would launch with the mainnet.

Hon 表示，憑藉新一輪融資，Monad 的目標是在今年年底前部署其主網，並在未來幾個月內部署測試網。 Monad Labs 目前擁有約 30 名員工，並計劃推出原生代幣，但 Hon 拒絕評論是否會與主網一起推出。

While crypto companies continue to chase mainstream adoption, Hon said Monad’s first use case will likely be for the type of high-frequency trading he performed at Jump, citing that the biggest stock and futures exchanges in the world process between 500 million and 1 billion transactions per day.

儘管加密貨幣公司繼續追求主流採用，Hon 表示 Monad 的第一個用例可能是他在 Jump 進行的高頻交易類型，並指出世界上最大的股票和期貨交易所處理 5 億至 10 億筆交易每天。

“If we want the scale of an exchange, like NASDAQ or a CME, to be possible on the blockchain, we need a much more performant blockchain than what exists right now,” he told Fortune.

他告訴《財星》雜誌：「如果我們希望像納斯達克或芝加哥商品交易所這樣的交易所規模能夠在區塊鏈上實現，我們就需要一個比現在現有的區塊鏈表現更高的區塊鏈。”

Hon also pointed to other applications that could be enabled by a blockchain with high transaction capacity and low fees, such as games. A program like Runescape might have a player picking up 50 items in an hour, meaning that a blockchain-based game would need to update their stats each time, with each update representing a new transaction that needs to be cheap and fast enough to make economic sense on a blockchain.

Hon 還指出了可以透過區塊鏈實現的具有高交易能力和低費用的其他應用程序，例如遊戲。像Runescape 這樣的程式可能會讓玩家在一小時內拾取50 個物品，這意味著基於區塊鏈的遊戲需要每次更新其統計數據，每次更新都代表一個新的交易，該交易需要足夠便宜和足夠快才能產生經濟效益區塊鏈上的意義。

While VCs are betting big on Monad, Garg said his investment doesn’t preclude other blockchains from succeeding—just in different capacities. “We think of these ecosystems in a non-zero-sum way,” Garg told Fortune. “Just because Facebook exists doesn’t mean that Twitter and LinkedIn and Tiktok and Instagram and WhatsApp can’t exist.”

儘管創投家在 Monad 上下了大注，但 Garg 表示，他的投資並不妨礙其他區塊鏈取得成功，只是功能不同而已。 「我們以非零和的方式思考這些生態系統，」加格告訴《財星》雜誌。 「Facebook 的存在並不意味著 Twitter、LinkedIn、Tiktok、Instagram 和 WhatsApp 就不能存在。”