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Monad ICO Underwhelms as Market Craters

Olivia Capozzalo & Squiffs _
November 19, 2025

gm, Defiers!

Today’s big story:

  • Monad’s ICO, the debut token sale on Coinbase's new platform, is proving underwhelming, especially compared to recent ICOs, like MegaETH and Stable.

In other news:

Read more below! But first, please give our sponsors some love; they make this newsletter possible.

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BitcoinBitcoin$88,922
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EthereumEthereum$2,878.26
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XRPXRP$2.04
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BNBBNB$875.21
-6.61 %
SolanaSolana$131.22
-7.38 %

Today’s Big Story

Monad ICO Raises $136 Million in 40 Hours

Less than a month after MegaETH’s $1.4 billion ICO raise, Monad announced its own ICO via Coinbase’s new token launch platform; however, Monad bulls have been left disappointed by the sale's opening days.

Monad is offering $187 million of MON at a $2.5 billion valuation, which is gated by Coinbase’s KYC requirements and geoblocking, and also features a $100,000 contribution cap for anyone other than Coinbase Prime users.

However, after 40 hours, the five-day raise has only raised $136 million, with 3 days left to fill the remaining 27% of the sale.

For comparison, MegaETH filled its $50 million allocation within 5 minutes and concluded its sale 28x oversubscribed.

That said, it's worth noting a few key differences between the MegaETH and Monad presales, notably the overall market’s health and pre-market valuations.

The MEGA ICO launched when BTC was trading above $110,000, yet BTC now sits at just $89,000. As a result, each token’s pre-market valuations have taken a hit.

During the MEGA ICO, pre-market perpetuals on Hyperliquid were trading at a $4 billion valuation, while MON traded at $6 billion.

Since then, the MON pre-market valuation has fallen 36% to $3.8 billion, implying just a 50% gain for ICO participants if MON were to launch at current prices.

In addition to market conditions, Monad has faced some uncertainty and doubt due to the community’s relatively small airdrop allocation.

Monad claims to take pride in the strength of its community, running regular events on Discord and awarding early and committed users with exclusive Discord roles and Telegram chats, only to finally allocate just 3.3% of the MON supply to the airdrop.

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MON Tokenomics

Enthusiasts and grinders alike have expressed feelings of betrayal after the team spent years leaning into the idea of “rewarding community” just to leave them to compete for allocations on a KYC-gated exchange. Additionally, the token sale is restricted to certain jurisdictions in which Coinbase operates, leaving out most of Europe and New York.

To be fair, a lot of the Nad roles and Discord grinders weren't real people; they were either bots or paid Discord users funded by airdrop farmers who would’ve instantly sold their tokens anyway. Monad probably understood this and avoided giving them a massive allocation, but nonetheless, there were still plenty of real users who had a carrot dangled in front of them for 3 years just to get a tiny airdrop.

It’s a pretty impossible situation to navigate, and as we’ve seen before, highly anticipated airdrops nearly always result in backlash, and MON is no different.

The sale will almost certainly fill its $187 million cap, and Polymarket still gives Monad an 85% chance of bringing in more than $300 million of commitments. A potential catalyst for flows into the MON ICO will be the finalization and release of funds from the MEGA ICO, expected on November 21, the day before the MON sale concludes.

Regardless, the lack of immediate demand for MON shows how cautious market participants are at the moment, and how important the sale structure and community sentiment can be for an ICO’s success.

Squiffs, resident degen at The Defiant

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