Welcome to Monad

The Monad mainnet is now live and cooking! A massive congratulations to the team on their tremendous efforts in building the most performant EVM chain. We covered Monad’s technology extensively in a previous article for those who are searching for a more technical deep-dive, but in this article we are going to take a look at some of the top applications that users have been experimenting with during the testnet phase to give you a starting point for your own exploration of this blossoming ecosystem.

Let’s dive in.

Wallets

Like with any blockchain, in order to interact with Monad you will need a wallet. From launch, Monad supports the vast majority of major EVM wallets including Metamask, Rabby, Phantom, OKX and more. As always, check and double check all URLs before interacting with apps and signing transactions.

Once your wallet is set up and funded with some MON tokens, head to monad.xyz and you’re ready to start exploring!

Bridge

Once your Monad address is set up, you may want to bridge some funds over to the chain. From day one, you have a few options. Your starting place should be the official Monad bridge, powered by Wormhole. You can head to

https://monadbridge.com/

To view all your options.

If you can’t find what you need there, You can head over to Jumper Exchange who will support the Monad mainnet with their Mayan Finance partnership:

https://jumper.exchange/

Finally, the Backpack wallet will also support Monad, so you may not need to go far if you’re already a user there.

Once you’ve got funds on your Monad address, it is time to start playing with the myriad of applications that are already live. We will use the Top 20 list of applications that had the most activity in the last month on the testnet to provide some recommended starting points for your Monad journey.

Staking

To contribute to network security while earning rewards, native Monad $MON staking is a good choice for capital allocation. At CryptoCrew, we operate enterprise-grade infrastructure to ensure maximum security of your staked assets. Monad uses a custom delegated Proof Of Stake (dPOS) implementation, so there is no minimum amount required to stake. You can just connect your wallet, select our validator, and start earning 10-12% APR. Please note that this is an estimated return and is projected to significantly fluctuate, especially in the first few days after the network launch. The unstaking period is 1 epoch, which is about ~5.5 hours.

To delegate your $MON head to: https://www.gmonads.com/staking, connect your wallet, add your amount under “New Stake” and find ✅ CryptoCrew in the validator list. Ledger is supported, although you need to enable blind-signing in your Ethereum ledger app.

Tadle – The Monad OS

Incubated by Chainlink and Base and touted as “the Monad OS”, Tadle might be an interesting first stop on your Monad explorations. Similar to how an app store gives users access to a variety of apps available for their phone, Tadle gives Monad users instant access to a wide variety of whitelisted Monad applications like Uniswap, aPriori, and Ambient. It was also the most used application on the testnet, with over 380,000 addresses having transacted with it.

Tadle lets you ****interact with applications via prompts to a native LLM, which will handle the creation of transactions and help you define any necessary parameters. The biggest draw here may be for DeFi farmers: by using apps through Tadle, you will be simultaneously make yourself eligible for points on Tadle AND whatever points are available through the secondary app you’re interacting with. For more details you can check out this thread.

Liquid Staking

If you’re planning on utilizing your MON tokens in Defi, but don’t want to miss out on staking, then you are going to need a Liquid Staking Token (LST). We covered the mechanics of liquid staking extensively in this article for those who need a refresher, but the core idea is that you will swap your MON tokens for a Liquid Staked Token (LST) which gradually gains value against the MON token as staking rewards accrue.

According to testnet user statistics, the most popular choice for MON liquid staking is Apriori with their aprMON LST. Coming in at over 150,000 interacting addresses, Apriori had the second largest number of testnet accounts, signifying that Monad users are hungry to participate in Monad’s DeFi ecosystem from the get go.

If you want to diversity your LSTs, a few other liquid staking applications in the top 20 include: Kintsu, FastLane, and Magma.

Decentralized Finance

There is no question: Monad users want Defi. After Tadle and Apriori, the application with the next highest user count was Ambient Finance – a decentralized exchange (DEX), so this feels like a reasonable next stop for your Monad journey – whether to trade, LP, or participate in other Defi offerings.

An additional five applications in the list are also ready with their own DEX variations including Bean Exchange, OctoSwap, Taya Swap, and Madness Finance, as well at the OG Uniswap. For those looking to provide liquidity in a more active way, iZumi might be what you’re looking for.

On top of that, three separate apps are looking to provide Monad users with the more CEX-like onchain orderbook experience. If this is more your speed, you can swing by Clober, Crystal, or Purps to compare their offerings. Finally, if you just want the best deal on your trades, the Monrail aggregator.

Gaming

Monad is designed to be excellent for all sorts of experiences, and if get your blockchain fix from gaming then there’s also lots to explore. Want to gamble on Bitcoin blocks? HashGame – the most popular game on the Monad testnet with over 1.6 million transactions – allows user to bet on the last characters of a given Bitcoin block. Scratch that itch with provable randomness from the most secure database in history.

For those who love a campaign, Lumiterra gamifies daily interactions in an MMORPG, allowing users to unlock digital costume NFTs, special rewards, and more. It was the 10th most popular application on the testnet this month with over 42,000 players, and the mainnet “Survival Season” is sure to impress.

Finally, for something a little bit different, Talentum attempts to gamify the accrual of onchain reputation. Participants can earn points by socializing and completing quizzes, tasks, and challenges in the pursuit of points. Likely an interesting stop for those in the yapper meta, Talentum is looking to broaden the scope of onchain reputation.

Conclusion

As a genesis validator for Monad, we are excited to see the EVM pushed to its limits. We believe applications will thrive here, and are thrilled to see the emphasis on development. As always, be safe when utilizing any new application – check and double check URLs, transaction data, and never share your seed phrase on any website. Stay safe, and gmonad.

Explore all Monad dApps: https://app.monad.xyz/app-hub