Monad has crossed 1 billion cumulative transactions on mainnet as the high-performance Layer 1 approaches its first anniversary. Data from the network’s MonadVision explorer show the milestone comes after public mainnet launched on November 24, 2025. The transaction count establishes a large cumulative execution footprint, but it should not be interpreted as an equivalent number of users or economically distinct actions. Monad currently targets 10,000 TPS with 300-millisecond block frequency and 600-millisecond finality through its parallel and asynchronous execution architecture.
The transaction milestone coincides with substantial capital deployed across Monad applications. DefiLlama placed DeFi TVL at approximately $983 million on October 26 after the network previously crossed $1 billion, while an October 20 CertiK ecosystem analysis measured roughly $1 billion on October 16. TVL therefore remains near the $1 billion level but should be treated as a changing balance rather than cumulative capital inflow.
Trading and Lending Concentrate Around Leading Protocols
CertiK measured $2.64 billion in spot DEX volume during the 30 complete UTC days from September 16 through October 15. Kuru accounted for approximately $1.25 billion, or 47.2%, while Uniswap V4, Curve, Hanji and Pendle brought the top-five share to 88.9%. Monad has developed multiple trading venues, but most measurable spot activity remains concentrated among a relatively small group of protocols.
Perpetual trading showed even greater concentration in a separate September 28 snapshot. Perpl generated approximately $2.19 billion of $2.5 billion in measurable Monad-only perpetual volume, representing 87.4%, while Perpl and LeverUp together accounted for 98.4%. High aggregate trading volume therefore does not imply equally distributed liquidity or usage across the ecosystem. Similar distinctions matter when comparing Monad with networks such as Aptos during periods of unusually high transaction activity.
Credit markets provide another measure of capital use. CertiK tracked approximately $1.11 billion in gross lending supply and $613.1 million in outstanding borrows, producing aggregate utilization of 55.2%. Aave alone represented about $708.1 million in supplied assets and $312 million in borrows. The lending figures demonstrate that a meaningful share of supplied capital is being borrowed, although gross lending supply should not be added to network TVL as if it represented separate capital.
One Billion Transactions Does Not Equal One Billion Users
Monad’s transaction milestone is notable in the context of other high-throughput networks, but raw transaction counts require careful interpretation. Ethereum has also recently posted record monthly mainnet transaction activity, while different chains count and generate activity through different application and execution patterns. Cumulative transactions measure successful network operations, not unique wallets, people, capital flows or economic adoption.
Economic activity on Monad is similarly concentrated at the fee layer. CertiK tracked approximately $6.38 million in protocol fees across 29 sources generating at least $10,000 during the 30 days through October 15, with the five largest sources contributing 71.9%. The fee data reinforce the same pattern seen in trading: broad application availability is developing alongside a smaller set of venues capturing most measurable activity.
The network also approaches a significant token-supply event. Third-party unlock trackers currently place a major MON cliff on November 24 involving team, investor and treasury allocations, one year after mainnet launch. The unlock changes the amount of MON eligible to enter circulation but does not establish that recipients will sell those tokens, just as the large locked allocation identified around MON’s original market debut did not itself determine subsequent market behavior.
Monad therefore reaches the 1 billion-transaction mark with DeFi TVL near $1 billion, active lending markets and billions of dollars in measured trading volume. The stronger signal is not transaction count alone, but the combination of repeated network usage and capital being deployed across trading, lending, stablecoins and tokenized assets, while concentration and the coming MON unlock remain important variables in assessing how broadly that activity develops.