Monad Opens Airdrop to Solana Users, Ethereum NFT Holders as MON Launch Nears

Monad, an upcoming layer-1 blockchain network designed to rival Solana and Ethereum, shared further details of its upcoming MON token airdrop on Tuesday, including outlining the community recipients and opening an eligibility checker. 

Eligible users may be able to see their allocation as early as October 28, though the claim will remain open until November 3—at which point it is expected that the token will be claimable. 

“This airdrop allocates tokens to 5,500 members of the Monad community, as well as to nearly 225,000 members of the wider crypto community,” the Monad Foundation wrote in its announcement. “The MON airdrop is designed to make people who eat, sleep, and breathe crypto the initial stakeholders in the Monad network.” 

In building its airdrop recipient base, the Monad Foundation used strict anti-sybil measures, or criteria designed to weed out bots and those performing low-value activities apparently just to farm a potential token airdrop. 

Beyond anti-sybil efforts, the Foundation focused on identifying the Monad community, on-chain users that participated in major DeFi protocols on-chain, high value DEX traders, and long-term holders of notable NFT collections to receive MON tokens. 

Specifically, holders of popular Ethereum NFT collections like CryptoPunks, Azuki, Moonbirds, Pudgy Penguins, Meebits, and others based on a September 30 snapshot were eligible for MON. 

Additionally, significant traders using protocols like Solana token launchpad Pump.fun, Virtuals, Hyperliquid, and recent participants in on-chain governance of major Ethereum DAOs will have an allocation of MON tokens set aside. A select group of contributors to crypto education and builders in the Monad ecosystem will also receive tokens.

Exact tokenomic details remain outstanding, though eligible participants were able to reveal an “airdrop strength level” based on their on-chain activity and social media presence. Crypto users on X have begun speculating on the potential value of an ensuing airdrop for each level, though nothing has been confirmed by Monad. 

Monad was founded in 2022 and raised $225 million to build an EVM-compatible network that could accommodate for extremely high traffic while staying cheap, secure, and fast. The network officially unveiled its Monad testnet earlier this year.   

Pre-market trading of the MON token on Hyperliquid has it changing hands at a price of around $0.08 on more than $7.3 million in 24 hour volume.