Monad has introduced “Monad Cards,” a community engagement initiative aimed at Crypto Twitter users.
As of August 20, 2025, 5,000 active accounts are eligible to claim unique Monad Cards, with each able to nominate up to three friends, expanding to 10,000 total slots on a first-come, first-served basis. These cards assign handpicked roles within the Monad ecosystem and are accessible by linking an X account to check eligibility.
While there’s speculation about potential token airdrop rewards tied to holding these cards, no official confirmation has been provided. The initiative reflects Monad’s strategy to boost community interaction, leveraging its high-performance, EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain with 10,000 transactions per second and low-cost transactions.
Each card assigns handpicked roles within the Monad ecosystem, such as “Monadian” or “Monvangelist,” which may signal eligibility for future rewards. This gamifies participation, encouraging users to contribute meaningfully to the ecosystem through content creation, discussions, or testnet activities.
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By leveraging social media platforms like X and Discord, Monad Cards tap into existing crypto communities, amplifying awareness. The nomination system encourages peer-to-peer promotion, potentially increasing network effects and user retention.
Monad’s focus on active, verified X users and community roles (e.g., “Nads” or “OG” roles on Discord) suggests an intent to filter out bots and Sybil attacks, where users create multiple accounts to farm airdrops. This aligns with posts on X indicating proof-of-stake mechanisms to deter Sybil behavior, ensuring rewards go to genuine contributors.
By limiting initial cards to 5,000 accounts and requiring active participation, Monad prioritizes high-quality engagement, potentially reducing the dilution of rewards compared to traditional airdrops that attract low-value users.
Monad Cards may serve as a gateway to deeper ecosystem involvement, such as testnet participation, NFT minting (e.g., “1 Million Nads” NFT), or staking with partner projects like Wormhole or Pyth Network. These activities could enhance airdrop eligibility, creating a layered reward system that ties engagement to ecosystem growth.
Monad’s integration with projects like LayerZero, Wormhole, and Pyth suggests that cardholders might benefit from airdrops across the ecosystem, as seen in past examples where staking partner tokens increased reward chances.
Distributing tokens via airdrops, especially if tied to Monad Cards, could lead to token value dilution if not carefully managed, as noted in broader airdrop analyses. However, Monad’s targeted approach may mitigate this by focusing on committed users rather than broad distribution.
The hype around Monad Cards could attract speculative behavior, with users trading roles or NFTs (e.g., OG roles valued at $2,000–$3,000 OTC) for perceived airdrop benefits, potentially leading to artificial price pumps. Historically, airdrops like Uniswap’s 2020 distribution ($6.43 billion at peak) rewarded users based on simple criteria like wallet activity or holding specific tokens.
Cards introduce a curated, community-driven model, where eligibility is tied to social engagement, role acquisition, and ecosystem contributions. This aligns with evolving airdrop designs that prioritize quality interactions over broad token giveaways, as seen in projects using point systems or Layer3 quests.
The nomination system gamifies distribution, encouraging users to recruit others, which contrasts with standard airdrops that rely on automated snapshots or task completion. This social layer adds complexity and engagement, potentially setting a precedent for future airdrops.
Unlike traditional airdrops with uniform criteria (e.g., holding tokens or completing tasks), Monad Cards introduce tiered roles and activities (e.g., testnet interactions, NFT minting, staking partner tokens). This multi-faceted approach mirrors trends in airdrop evolution, where projects use layered criteria to reward diverse contributions, reducing bot-driven farming.
Monad Cards act as a pre-airdrop engagement mechanism, building a committed user base before any token launch. This contrasts with retroactive airdrops (e.g., Uniswap, rewarding past activity) by fostering proactive participation, aligning with trends toward multi-round airdrops that facilitate learning and adaptation.
By distributing NFTs and roles first, Monad can track user activity and refine airdrop criteria, potentially using snapshots to reward cardholders or active testnet users, as speculated in community discussions. Monad’s focus on community roles and transparent criteria (e.g., X activity, Discord engagement) addresses past criticisms of airdrop favoritism, as seen in the Aptos NFT drop.
Monad Cards reflect a coevolutionary approach to airdrop design, where projects and users adapt strategically over time. As noted in academic analyses, airdrops are becoming more complex, with criteria evolving to include social, on-chain, and ecosystem-specific tasks. Monad’s model could accelerate this trend, encouraging projects to integrate gamified, community-driven mechanisms.
Monad Cards redefine airdrop distribution by prioritizing targeted, merit-based engagement over mass token giveaways, leveraging social media, NFT minting, and ecosystem roles to build a committed community. This approach enhances fairness, reduces Sybil attacks, and fosters organic growth but introduces complexities like speculative trading and dilution risks.
Solana’s 100K TPS Test Showcases Its Potential to Redefine Blockchain Scalability
Solana briefly hit over 100,000 transactions per second (TPS) in a mainnet stress test on August 17, 2025, peaking at 107,540 TPS, as reported by validator “Cavey Cool” and Helius co-founder Mert Mumtaz.
This was driven by “no-op” transactions—lightweight, non-computational calls used to test network capacity—rather than real-world activity like token swaps. While this demonstrates Solana’s potential to scale far beyond its typical 3,600 TPS (or ~1,000 TPS for user transactions, per Solscan), critics note these tests don’t reflect organic usage.
Developers estimate Solana could handle 80,000–100,000 TPS for practical operations like transfers with further optimizations. This milestone outpaces Visa’s 65,000 TPS and other blockchains like Ethereum, reinforcing Solana’s scalability for high-frequency applications.
Achieving 107,540 TPS, even in a controlled test, positions Solana as a leader in blockchain scalability. This far surpasses Visa’s 65,000 TPS and competitors like Ethereum (~15–30 TPS for layer-1, higher with rollups). It signals Solana’s capacity to handle enterprise-level or global-scale applications, such as decentralized finance (DeFi), gaming, or payment systems.
High TPS makes Solana attractive for developers building high-frequency applications (e.g., NFT marketplaces, DeFi exchanges, or real-time data platforms). Institutional players, like payment processors or financial firms, may view Solana as a viable infrastructure for cost-efficient, high-speed transaction processing.
Solana’s architecture, leveraging Proof of History (PoH) and parallel transaction processing, keeps transaction costs low (often less than $0.01). High TPS could further reduce per-transaction costs by distributing network fees across more transactions, making it competitive with traditional payment systems.
The test suggests Solana can handle significantly more load than its current ~3,600 TPS average (or ~1,000 TPS for user transactions). Developers estimate 80,000–100,000 TPS for practical operations with upgrades like Firedancer (a new validator client). This could enable Solana to support global-scale applications without relying heavily on layer-2 solutions.
Solana’s performance pressures competitors like Ethereum, Aptos, and Sui to accelerate their scaling efforts. It could also challenge centralized payment systems by offering decentralized alternatives with comparable speed and lower costs.
Why No-Op Transactions Enable Faster Settlement
No-op transactions are essentially “empty” instructions that don’t require significant processing, such as executing smart contract logic, updating state, or performing cryptographic operations beyond basic validation.
In Solana’s architecture, transactions are processed in parallel using its Proof of History (PoH) and Gulf Stream mechanisms. No-ops bypass resource-intensive steps, allowing validators to bundle and process them rapidly. Solana’s PoH creates a verifiable time sequence for transactions, reducing consensus overhead. No-ops, with their simplicity, maximize the efficiency of this process, enabling validators to handle thousands of transactions in a single block (produced every ~400ms).
The test’s 107,540 TPS reflects Solana’s ability to pack many no-op transactions into blocks, as they require minimal state updates or disk I/O compared to complex transactions like DeFi swaps. No-ops have smaller data footprints, reducing the time needed for validators to propagate and verify transactions across the network.
Solana’s Tower BFT consensus ensures rapid finality (~1–2 seconds), and no-ops accelerate this by minimizing validation delays. In contrast, real-world transactions (e.g., token transfers or AMM trades) involve state changes, storage updates, and computational checks, which slow settlement.
No-op transactions are used in stress tests to simulate maximum throughput, isolating network performance from computational bottlenecks. By flooding the network with no-ops, developers can measure how many transactions Solana can handle under ideal conditions, revealing the upper bound of its capacity (e.g., 100K+ TPS).
While no-ops settle faster, they don’t reflect typical user activity. Real-world transactions (e.g., DeFi trades, NFT mints) require more processing, reducing TPS to an estimated 80,000–100,000 for simple transfers, per developer estimates.
Faster settlement of no-ops demonstrates Solana’s potential for applications requiring near-instant finality, like high-frequency trading or micropayments. However, achieving similar speeds for complex transactions requires further optimizations, such as Firedancer or improved state management.
No-op transactions enable faster settlement by minimizing computational and storage demands, allowing Solana to maximize its parallel processing and PoH advantages. While real-world transactions won’t yet reach 100K TPS, ongoing optimizations could close the gap, positioning Solana as a high-speed, low-cost alternative to traditional financial systems and competing blockchains.