Monad has wrapped up an early liquidity program that gave select investors the chance to sell locked MON tokens before their scheduled unlocks, but almost all of those approached decided to keep their holdings.
The Monad Foundation said Tuesday that it had completed the initiative, which involved offering to purchase locked MON from certain early investors at a discount. The program had a maximum allocation of $60 million.
The Foundation has not disclosed the discount offered, the amount it ultimately spent or the number of investors who participated. CoinDesk has sought clarification on the terms presented to token holders.
The arrangement effectively allowed eligible investors to exit their positions early. Rather than waiting for their MON to become transferable, investors could accept a lower price in exchange for immediate liquidity. Tokens acquired by the Foundation will remain locked under their original vesting schedules, meaning the purchases will not add to MON’s freely circulating supply in the short term.
Monad is a newer blockchain built to run Ethereum-compatible applications. Its native MON token is used to pay transaction fees and contribute to network security.
MON Investors Near First Unlock
Early investors were allocated around 19.7 billion MON, equivalent to nearly one-fifth of the token’s initial supply.
The holdings were locked when Monad’s public network launched in November last year. Following a one-year cliff, the tokens are scheduled to unlock each month over the remainder of a four-year vesting period.
As a result, November will be the first month when early investors can normally begin selling their unlocked tokens.
MON traded near $0.021 on Tuesday, roughly 16% below its $0.025 public-sale price.
Around 11.8 billion MON are currently circulating, giving the token a market capitalization of approximately $250 million and a fully diluted valuation of about $2.1 billion.
The token’s performance has remained subdued even as activity on the Monad network has increased.
DeFi Activity Grows on Monad
The amount of capital deployed across Monad’s decentralized finance ecosystem has expanded rapidly.
According to DeFiLlama, the total value locked in Monad-based DeFi applications reached approximately $895 million, up from about $360 million on July 2. That represents growth of nearly 150% in around six weeks.
Stablecoins on the network account for roughly $707 million, while decentralized exchanges recorded about $79 million in trading volume over the previous 24 hours.
However, growing network activity does not necessarily explain why most investors turned down the Foundation’s offer. Because the precise discount has not been disclosed, their decision to retain the tokens cannot automatically be interpreted as a bullish signal.
The Foundation said the program was created to give early investors an option to access liquidity if their financial circumstances or investment plans had changed, while keeping the remaining investor base aligned with Monad’s longer-term development.
