🌎 Monad Labs Seeks $200 Million for Smart Contract Blockchain

New York City-based blockchain startup Monad Labs, founded by former Jump Trading staff, is in the process of raising $200 million to develop a scalable smart contract distributed ledger. The company is currently in discussions with crypto venture firm Paradigm, which has expressed interest in leading the funding round with a commitment of $150 million. While other investors are being approached, their identities have not been disclosed.

Monad Labs, established in 2023, is an Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible blockchain that utilizes the proof-of-chain consensus mechanism, capable of handling up to 10,000 transactions per second. In a seed funding round in February 2023, the startup raised $19 million, with Dragonfly Capital as the lead investor and participation from other firms such as Finality Capital, Placeholder Capital, Shima Capital, and Lemniscap.

If successful, the $200 million funding round would be one of the largest deals in the blockchain industry for 2024. This would be comparable to Islamic Coin, a Shariah-compliant crypto asset based in Switzerland, which secured $200 million from ABO Digital in 2023, according to data from Crunchbase.

Monad Labs is also reportedly working on its native token, mon, as mentioned in technical documents released in September 2023. Although details about the token have been limited, it is expected to be used within the blockchain ecosystem for transaction payments.