Do We Need Another L1? - Inside Monad’s Parallel EVM with Co-Founder Keone Hon

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Tech News, Technology, News

4.7 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 25 November 2025

⏱️ 87 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Monad just launched Mainnet! That’s why Ryan sits down with Monad co-founder Keone Hon today. We ask the blunt question: do we really need another general-purpose L1? Why not just build this as an Ethereum L2 instead? Keone explains how Monad’s parallel, pipelined EVM works under tight consumer-hardware constraints (32GB RAM, 2TB SSD, 100 Mbps), delivering ~500M gas/sec, 400ms blocks, and fast finality while preserving decentralization. Enjoy the episode! ------ 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔵COINBASE | ETH & BTC BACKED LOANS https://bankless.cc/coinbase-borrow 🪙FRAXNET | MINT, REDEEM, & EARN https://bankless.cc/fraxnet 🦄UNISWAP | SWAP ON UNICHAIN https://bankless.cc/unichain 🛞MANTLE | MODULAR L2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle 💤EIGHT SLEEP | IMPROVE YOUR SLEEP https://bankless.cc/eight-sleep ------ TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Another L1? 1:36 Why L1 vs L2? 2:46 Decentralization 10:19 Run at Home vs Datacenter Chains 12:09 The Purpose of a Blockchain 14:06 The Purpose of Monad 16:00 Why EVM? 28:33 Solana for the EVM? 29:47 Monad vs Ethereum 34:23 Monad Scaling 36:40 Ethereum Roadmap 39:43 How Monad Benefits Ethereum 42:51 Keone’s Background 50:49 How Fast is Too Fast? 59:12 MEV 1:04:07 Monad Layer2s? 1:05:14 Monad Launch Decentralization 1:06:00 Launch Ecosystem 1:08:22 Monad Token 1:16:55 L1 Token Valuations 1:19:18 Monad vs MegaETH 1:23:59 Monad’s Success Case 1:25:57 Mainnet 1:27:11 Closing & Disclaimers ------ RESOURCES Keone Hon https://x.com/keoneHD Monad https://x.com/monad Monad Website https://www.monad.xyz/ Monad Links https://linktr.ee/monad_xyz ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Monad design delivers performance that is needed right now
0:05.4	and also delivers a high degree of decentralization right now
0:09.8	and delivers that fast finality right now.
0:13.3	Some of the struggles in other ecosystems are related to slow finality,
0:18.7	and in particular, that problem is already kind of addressed in Monat.
0:26.0	Keone, I got to start with the question that I think is in everyone's mind as we answer this episode.
0:31.0	Do we really need another general purpose layer one chain?
0:36.3	I love the question.
0:38.7	Monad is a significant engineering effort.
0:43.2	You can think of it as a technology effort
0:46.6	to bring new technologies to the EVM
0:49.6	and pioneer those in a way that are all compatible with each other and that stack on top of each other
0:56.7	to prove what's possible and to prove that decentralization can become more powerful if we
1:04.9	focus very deeply on software architecture improvements. I agree with your line of questioning in the sense that new layer
1:17.3	ones need to be very different and very innovative. But Monad is an effort that is really grounded
1:24.5	in research and engineering to deliver a really powerful experience for
1:29.9	the EVM and to make the EVM more powerful and more perform it in a highly decentralized
1:35.6	way.
1:36.6	I think that's a theme.
1:37.6	It's a massive optimization of the EVM.
1:39.9	We'll get back to that.
1:40.7	But why not just build Monad as a layer two, maybe on Ethereum? Why instead
	...

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