The Monad Pulse #030
Monad Ecosystem Updates, May 14 - 21
A heavy week on the infrastructure side. v0.14.3 enforced Authenticated UDP on mainnet, the validator community navigated the upgrade with mostly clean rollouts (and some recovery work), and v0.14.4 dropped on testnet. The May 21 validator sync covered VDP redesign, MIP-9 active set expansion timing, metrics enforcement, and monitoring security best practices. Echo Protocol experienced an application-layer exploit on Monad - the network itself was unaffected. And Category Labs picked up a Distinguished Paper Award at IEEE S&P for cryptography work that powers BTX.
A lot to track, so let’s get into it.
Ecosystem Updates
Monad DeFi Adds Payments, Credit, Routing, and Liquidity
A multi-protocol wave hit Monad this week:
Rain added Monad support, letting users spend stablecoins directly from Monad through partner-issued cards.
Pareto Credit + FalconX launched the FalconX Credit Vault on Monad. AA_FalconXUSDC can now be bridged to Monad and used as collateral in supported lending markets.
LeverUp launched AnyCollateral, giving users tradeable margin for ecosystem tokens.
TownSquare announced a $100M USD1 pipeline aimed at institutional yield products.
LIFI launched a validator on Monad.
naddotfun introduced custom routing for trading fees.
Perpl launched referrals.
A lot of building happening at the same time. The DeFi stack is filling out.
Category Labs Receives Distinguished Paper Award at IEEE S&P
Category Labs researchers and collaborators received a Distinguished Paper Award at IEEE S&P for work on Weighted Batched Threshold Encryption - research that directly contributed to BTX, Category Labs’ Batched Threshold Encryption scheme for encrypted mempools on Monad.
Academic recognition at this level matters. It’s the difference between a protocol team claiming cryptographic rigor and one whose work has been peer-reviewed and awarded at the top venue in the field.
Weighted Batched Threshold Encryption paper | BTX paper
LP.new Launches Monad Liquidity Discovery
LP.new launched as a liquidity discovery page for Monad DeFi activity. Users can view available liquidity venues across protocols without opening each site individually. Token-specific URLs like lp.new/mon show MON-related venues and integrations. A bridge-checking tool is also included for selecting source and destination tokens and viewing routing options.
Camille Bzd and Jay Miller built it. Useful tool, no friction to try it.
Echo Protocol eBTC Exploit - Application Layer, Not Chain Layer
An incident involving Echo Protocol’s eBTC on Monad was reported this week. An address minted 1,000 eBTC, borrowed WBTC against it on Curvance, bridged funds, and moved assets through Tornado Cash. Security researchers estimated approximately $816,000 was stolen.
Keone Hon confirmed publicly that the Monad network was not affected. This was an application-layer exploit at Echo Protocol, not a chain-level issue. Investigation is ongoing.
The distinction matters. The chain held up, the protocol didn’t.
Axal Integrates Monad
Axal added Monad support, citing the network’s infrastructure as part of the integration with a focus on performant consumer-facing applications. Supported references include Morpho, Curvance, Neverland Money, and the Studio NYC builder community.
Monad Blitz Çanakkale - 26 Projects in a Few Hours
A short-format hackathon produced 26 projects, several with clear product-market fit potential:
Troia: payment orchestration letting Troy card users pay with crypto directly in Turkish lira without opening a wallet.
RUNAD: mobile-first social running app turning real-world activity into onchain reputation via location-based NFT achievements.
Refaktör: RWA factoring platform tokenizing SME export invoices into fractional onchain assets, placed third.
Port Dev noted the strongest projects were tightly scoped and solved practical problems. That observation matters more than the winner list.
Category Labs on Formal Verification Progress
Following Vitalik’s recent essay on AI-assisted formal verification, Keone Hon shared an update on Category Labs’ work toward formally verifying the Monad blockchain implementation. Significant progress has been made.
Read the formal verification update
Raj Parekh Joins StableDash Live
Monad Head of Stablecoins Raj Parekh joined a live interview with Drew Rogers on StableDash, covering stablecoins and Monad’s role in onchain financial infrastructure.
Babak Gilkalaye Explains BTX and Encrypted Mempools
Pipeline hosted Category Labs cryptographer Babak Gilkalaye for a discussion on privacy, MEV attacks, BTX, and Monad’s technical design. Worth listening to if you want the cryptography behind encrypted mempools explained by someone who built it.
Protocol Updates
Mainnet Release v0.14.3 - Authenticated UDP Now Enforced
v0.14.3 is live on mainnet. The release enforces Authenticated UDP for RaptorCast - previously available in optional mode, now required. Auth UDP reduces overhead in verifying consensus messages.
The release also enables full nodes to participate in reputation scoring and includes preparatory work for Deterministic RaptorCast (MIP-10).
Full changelog | Auth UDP context
Testnet Release v0.14.4 - CODE ORANGE
v0.14.4 is available for testnet operators. Mainnet release expected next Thursday if rollout runs smoothly. CODE ORANGE classification means action recommended within 24-48 hours.
Upgrade instructions | Full changelog
Validator Metrics Reporting: Action Required
The Monad Foundation issued a reminder that approximately 15% of mainnet operators and 20% of testnet operators are not pushing metrics to Foundation monitoring infrastructure. Validators must run the provided setup script on both mainnet and testnet.
The script verifies its SHA-256 checksum before execution, then configures the OTel collector to label metrics with the validator’s SECP public key and push to Foundation monitoring. If configuration already exists, the script exits without changes.
If you’re a VDP participant, check whether you’re in the missing 15-20% before the Foundation reaches out directly.
Validator Biweekly Sync - May 21, 2026
VDP Application Process Being Redesigned
The Validator Delegation Program remains active, but the application process is being revamped - leaner, more efficient, better at evaluating applicants. Once the new process launches, it will effectively function as the next VDP wave, even if it isn’t formally called “Wave 3.” Existing applicants will need to reapply, but previously completed KYC or KYB won’t need to be repeated if the same entity applies.
MIP-9 Active Set Expansion - Still Coming
The expansion from 200 to 300 active validators is still in progress but won’t ship in v0.14.4. It’s being bundled with MIP-11 priority fee distribution changes, which is extending the timeline. May land in the next testnet release cycle, or the one after.
When it does ship, onboarding will be staged, accepted validators added in two or more cohorts spaced by epochs rather than weeks. Reduces operational risk if any cohort has issues.
Approved VDP validators waiting for expansion: don’t spin up mainnet infrastructure before there’s a confirmed release schedule. Onboarding instructions will follow once the release candidate is scheduled.
Metrics Flow May Shift From Push to Pull
The current metrics flow has validators pushing data to Monad. That may change in the coming weeks to a pull or scrape model, where the Monad client exposes metrics directly through an endpoint. If that happens, the OpenTelemetry collector setup may no longer be required.
Keep Monitoring Tools Off Validator Machines
A useful security reminder from the call: don’t run third-party monitoring binaries directly on validator machines. Export or push metrics to a separate machine and run dashboards or alerting tools there. Fewer third-party processes on the validator node means fewer attack surfaces.
No official Grafana dashboard template has been released, but community-built tools are widely used.
Community Tooling Database Coming Soon
The R1M team is preparing a dashboard where validators can submit ecosystem contributions - tooling, dashboards, snapshots, developer activations, and other public resources. As the validator set grows toward 250 and eventually 300, a searchable contribution database matters more than relying on Discord threads.
Other Notes
The recent FastLane update was reviewed briefly, focused on improving security and operational reliability. Both Category Labs and the Foundation were involved in discussions given the share of network stake using FastLane infrastructure.
Monad Blitz in Lisbon will be a side event separate from the main ETH event happening around the same time, a main conference ticket likely won’t be required.
Validator Community Discussions
v0.14.3 Upgrade Rollout
socialforging warned operators still running v0.13.0 without Auth UDP enabled that their mainnet validators would be disconnected at the next upgrade. Operators began confirming v0.14.3 upgrades throughout May 14-15 - most reported clean rollouts.
Some hit post-upgrade issues. crypto_new encountered a “high qc too far ahead of block tree root” error, initially tried a soft reset, then had to fetch the latest forkpoint. lakestake hit the same error path - soft reset led to an “Unexpected locked epoch valset” assertion requiring hard reset to recover. denysk shared that restarting hugepages before upgrading helped avoid the soft or hard reset paths entirely.
socialforging confirmed later that after a brief period of timeouts and hard resets, everyone was back up and producing blocks.
Metrics Endpoint Questions
thefrey asked whether others were seeing duplicate entries on the metrics endpoint after the upgrade. sheznez asked whether Monad could provide a link for operators to verify their metrics are actually being received - particularly for teams running their own monitoring stacks who can confirm local setup but not whether data is reaching the Foundation.
The request is reasonable. The current setup leaves a verification gap that announcements about “some percentage of validators not sending data” don’t close.
Bootstrap Peer Configuration
knoxtrades reported that their node.toml did not include an auth port on any bootstrap peers, raised shortly after the Auth UDP enforcement warning. No visible follow-up resolution in the logs, treat this as a reported configuration concern, not a resolved issue.
Bitcoin Mining and AI Compute
A side discussion emerged later in the week. socialforging asked whether validators were running BTC mining operations. Several confirmed Bitcoin-related infrastructure - full nodes, miners, Stacks validators, BTC RPC full nodes.
The conversation shifted to whether miners are moving toward AI compute. nodersseptima noted hearing about miners migrating because mining profitability dropped. johnxie mentioned companies entering Bitcoin mining, AI compute platforms, and open-source model training for customer service simultaneously. knoxtrades added that profitability depends heavily on hardware generation - S19s aren’t profitable, S21s and S23s remain so. diegovas_ noted large farms have cost advantages from bulk hardware purchases and energy contracts.
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