- Monad will conduct a token sale on Coinbase.
- The blockchain project will take in almost $188 million if it sells all tokens on offer.
- Monad has previously raised $348 million from venture investors.
Monad is taking advantage of the soaring demand for early stage crypto investments.
On Monday, the upcoming blockchain project announced it will sell $188 million worth of tokens to retail investors on Coinbase through a newly announced token sale platform.
According to Monad, the sale will help decentralise the project by distributing its MON token more broadly among its community. For retail investors, it’s another opportunity to get exposure to a high-risk bet in an unlaunched crypto project.
Monad has previously raised a total of $248 million over multiple funding rounds, according to Tracxn, a market data platform. This includes a $19 million seed round in early 2023, and a $225 million Series A round that closed in March 2024.
The token sale will be the first time a crypto project has attempted to sell tokens directly to US retail investors in more than seven years.
In 2017, direct crypto token sales, often called initial coin offerings, or ICOs, exploded in popularity.
But the lack of regulation meant ICOs were mired in hundreds of dubious projects, if not outright scams. They were swiftly cracked down on by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Bipartisan support for crypto legislation in the US, coupled with a more permissive approach to industry regulation from President Donald Trump’s administration, has given firms the confidence to revisit previously popular ideas.
Surge in demand
The sale comes amid a surge in demand for early-stage crypto investments.
Last month, rival blockchain project MegaETH sold $50 million worth of its native token at a $1 billion valuation through Sonar, a token sale venue tied to early-stage investing platform Echo.
The sale’s popularity vastly exceeded expectations, attracting over $300 million worth of pledged capital.
Monad’s token sale ups the ante by valuing the project at $2.5 billion. Some 7.5% of the MON token’s 100 billion starting supply is up for grabs at $0.025 per token.
The MON token is used to pay gas fees on Monad. Once the blockchain launches, MON holders can stake their tokens to secure the network.
If the demand for the available tokens outstrips supply, Coinbase will use a novel distribution mechanism to create a broad distribution among sale participants and limit asset concentration among large purchasers.
The public sale will open on November 17 and run until November 22.
Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi correspondent. Reach out to him with tips at tim@dlnews.com.
