Monad DeFi TVL hits $770M, enters top 10 chains

3 min

: : [Crypto/Report] Monad: The Last General-Purpose Layer 1
Author: Calvin

- Monad is the final, large-scale bet of unprecedented capital and time on the thesis of “a high-performance, general-purpose chain that can host everything,” and the last major experiment testing whether integrated production can beat specialization in an era of purpose-built chains. Its success conditions narrow down to three: 1) proving the composability premium that only integration can create, 2) preventing successful apps from leaving, and 3) monetizing demand that operates without incentives.

- Monad’s ecosystem is the product of a four-stage funnel: community building designed as a status economy without a token, a founder funnel exemplified by Monad Madness, testnet validation with 2.6 billion cumulative transactions and full client open-sourcing, and staged mainnet support. However, while this process alleviated doubts about the technology, it did not prove that the traffic is real demand willing to pay. That must be demonstrated by post-mainnet metrics.

- The trading sector showed starkly divergent outcomes. Kuru surpassed Uniswap in volume with a 36.4% market share amid declining chain-wide trading, but fees remain effectively at zero. Perpl is smaller but has been charging fees from the start and is growing. LeverUp, using a house model, has recorded the highest volume and fees, but faces a caveat of a thin user base concentrated in a small number of wallets. The landscape shifted in July: the perp segment led a rebound in chain volume, and, by foundation figures, 30-day perpetuals volume ($1.6 billion) surpassed spot ($1.3 billion) for the first time. Perpl crossed $1 billion in cumulative volume and over $800 million monthly, becoming the ecosystem’s top exchange by weekly volume.

- Lending currently contributes the most to Monad’s TVL, but the capital is largely mercenary, moving with incentives. By contrast, liquid staking has the widest gap between expectations and results: despite over $46 million raised cumulatively, combined TVL is only about $12 million. Structural factors—native staking embedded in consensus and the absence of slashing—are capping the added value of liquid staking protocols.

- Stablecoin circulation has reached an all-time high of $517 million, but the increase was driven mainly by a single asset, AUSD, aligned with Pendle incentives. Outcomes in payments, RWA, and institutional directions—such as being selected as the sole settlement chain for MetaMask Money Account, Aave’s official deployment, and joining the x402 Foundation—have only just begun to show up in the metrics. In July, this trend accelerated: Aave’s total deposits surpassed $500 million within a month of launch, pushing Monad’s DeFi TVL to $770 million and into the top 10 chains. Stablecoin circulation expanded to over $550 million, and new dollar assets onboarded—Athena, Maple, Saturn Credit—diversifying inflows. Active RWA market cap exceeded $430 million, making Monad the No. 3 RWA chain after Ethereum and Solana.

- The most immediate variable over the next six months is ecosystem projects’ TGEs. This TGE cycle will go beyond valuation events for individual projects and mark the first sector-level measurement of how much demand remains on Monad without incentives.

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