MegaETH vs. Monad: Two Paths to Faster, Cheaper Ethereum Transactions

Even after a decade of its launch, Ethereum (the mainnet) is stuck at sub-20  transactions per second for the most part. The battle for scalability, speed, and cost efficiency is no longer just about Ethereum and its rollups—it’s about who can redefine performance without sacrificing decentralization or developer experience. Two of the most talked-about projects of 2025, Monad and MegaETH, are on a collision course to do just that.

Despite the sea of challenges in going mainstream, EVMs developer ecosystem is buzzing with activity and, more importantly, passion to build better. Here Monad focuses on parallel execution whereas MegaETH is optimizing for single-threaded execution performance. 

For perspective, almost three-fourths of multichain developers work on at least one EVM chain. The EVM-based multichain deployers also grew four-fold since 2021, rising from 2% in November 2021 to 8% in November 2024.

Image Source

On one side, MegaETH, a high-speed Layer-2 rollup came up with an audacious bet: a single ultra-fast sequencer capable of processing 100,000 transactions per second (TPS). It promises near-instant finality and a trading experience rivaling TradFi, all while remaining tethered to Ethereum’s security.

On the other, Monad, a new Layer-1 blockchain, is selling parallelized transaction processing and pipelined consensus. Monad aims to achieve 10,000 TPS while maintaining the sovereignty and decentralization of an independent network.

In this article, we dive deep into the architecture, innovations, trade-offs, and potential of both projects.

What is MegaETH?

MegaETH is an Ethereum rollup, meaning it inherits Ethereum’s security while dramatically improving speed and cost-efficiency.

Image Source

Unlike Ethereum, where transactions take around 12 seconds to confirm, MegaETH uses an innovative single-sequencer design that finalizes transactions in just 1-10 milliseconds – that’s faster than most centralized exchanges.

What if blockchain transactions were as fast as a swipe on your phone? That’s the vision of MegaETH, a next-generation Layer-2 (L2) scaling solution for Ethereum that aims to process over 100,000 transactions per second (TPS) with near-zero latency.

MegaETH is built on three key technologies:

1. Single Ultra-Fast Sequencer: MegaETH has one high-performance sequencer (not a set) that orders and executes transactions instantly. While this means transactions are fast, it also introduces some trust assumptions.
2. EigenDA for Data Availability: Storing all transaction data on Ethereum is expensive. So, MegaETH uses EigenDA, a data availability layer that reduces storage costs while maintaining security.
3. Optimistic Rollup with Fraud Proofs: MegaETH follows an Optimistic Rollup model, meaning transactions are assumed to be valid unless challenged. If any incorrect transaction is detected, a fraud-proof mechanism ensures that invalid data is rejected and Ethereum remains the ultimate source of truth.

MegaETH is built for traders, developers, and users who need instant transactions at low cost. If you’ve ever been frustrated by high Ethereum gas fees or slow transaction times, MegaETH offers a web3 experience as fast as web2 apps.

One of the biggest debates around MegaETH is its reliance on a single sequencer. While this allows for blazing-fast transactions, it also creates a point of centralization. However, MegaETH developers argue that its security ultimately comes from Ethereum, and future updates could introduce more decentralization over time.

What Is Monad?

Monad is a high-performance Layer-1 blockchain designed to solve Ethereum’s biggest bottlenecks: speed, scalability, and cost. Its selling point is a high transaction throughput of 10,000 TPS.

​​

Image Source

Unlike rollups like MegaETH, which rely on Ethereum’s security, Monad is a fully independent blockchain that improves on Ethereum’s design while staying fully compatible with Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) smart contracts. That means developers can move their existing Ethereum applications to Monad without changing a single line of code.

Monad achieves its speed and efficiency through three key innovations:

1. Parallel Execution of Transactions: Monad processes multiple transactions simultaneously using parallel computing. So, the network can handle thousands of transactions at once instead of waiting for each one to finish before moving to the next.
2. MonadBFT, A Faster Consensus Mechanism: Monad uses MonadBFT, a streamlined Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus protocol that ensures blocks are finalized in about one second.
3. Optimized Storage & Execution Engine: Monad has rebuilt Ethereum’s execution engine to handle transactions more efficiently, reducing storage costs and optimizing how data is accessed to make smart contracts run faster and cheaper.

Monad is designed for developers and users who want Ethereum’s features but with far better performance and lower costs. It’s particularly useful for:

• DeFi platforms that need fast transactions without congestion.
• NFT marketplaces that want to avoid high minting and trading fees.
• Gaming applications that require quick, low-cost on-chain interactions.
• Enterprises & fintech looking for blockchain solutions that scale without breaking the bank.

Monad positions itself as a next-generation blockchain that combines Ethereum’s smart contract capabilities with Solana’s speed. But the challenge is building a strong enough ecosystem to attract developers and users.

Monad vs. MegaETH: Key Differences

Monad and MegaETH take distinct approaches to scaling and execution, leading to key contrasts.

Core Vision

Monad

Monad is on a mission to push blockchain performance to its limits without compromising decentralization.

Refining Layer 1 architecture slashes hardware requirements, making it possible for everyday users to run full nodes on consumer-grade devices.

With groundbreaking innovations like parallel processing, deferred execution, and its custom database (MonadDB), Monad delivers high throughput while keeping blockchain participation open and accessible.

MegaETH

MegaETH takes a different route to blockchain efficiency, optimizing throughput and slashing latency with a novel approach to node design.

Instead of the traditional full-node model, MegaETH introduces node specialization, where sorters, provers, and full nodes each play distinct roles.

This division of labor streamlines network operations reduces hardware demands and ensures seamless scalability.

Notable Developments

Monad

Monad began its journey with a devnet release in March 2024, reaching an impressive 10,000 TPS. The momentum continued with the launch of Testnet v0.2 in February 2025.

Monad, with its $248 million in funding and with key initiatives, including Mach, an accelerator designed to support new builders in launching startups. Not just that, their Monad Madness, a global pitch competition, offers $1 million in prizes to founders shaping the Monad ecosystem.

MegaETH

MegaETH has raised over $20 million in funding rounds led by Dragonfly, Robot Ventures, and even Vitalik Buterin. Currently in a private testnet phase, it is gearing up for a public testnet release in early 2025.

The team has been actively involved in the community, with initiatives such as the Fluffle NFT mint generating over $13 million, signaling strong early interest.

Decentralization

One of the biggest trade-offs in blockchain design is between performance and decentralization. While both MegaETH and Monad aim to push transaction speeds to new heights, they take very different approaches when it comes to how decentralized their networks are.

MegaETH

MegaETH inherits Ethereum’s security but does not have its own decentralized validator set. Instead, MegaETH relies on a single sequencer to order and process transactions – this is what enables its sub-millisecond transaction finality and 100,000 TPS.

The fact that all transactions pass through one sequencer means MegaETH is currently centralized in terms of execution.

Interestingly, MegaETH reduces hardware costs by splitting full node functions into specialized roles. Tasks like state synchronization, transaction sorting, and execution are handled by separate nodes, distributing the workload for easier participation.

At the time of writing, MegaETH Labs (the team behind the project) runs the sequencer, meaning users must trust that it won’t censor transactions or act maliciously. The team, however, has plans to decentralize the network down the road.

Monad

Unlike MegaETH, Monad is a Layer-1 blockchain with its own validator network. It uses Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus, meaning anyone with enough stake can participate in securing the network.

Consequently, Monad is much more decentralized than MegaETH because it has multiple validators, rather than a single sequencer.

One potential challenge for Monad is that its validators require high-performance hardware (e.g., 32GB RAM, fast SSDs), which could limit who can afford to run a validator. However, because it allows delegation, smaller token holders can still participate indirectly.

Architecture

MegaETH

MegaETH's architecture revolves around four essential node types:

1. Sequencers
2. Provers
3. Full nodes
4. Replica nodes

At its core, a single active sequencer manages transaction ordering and execution, streamlining operations by removing the need for consensus overhead.

Replica nodes stay in sync by receiving state updates from the sequencer via a peer-to-peer network. Rather than re-executing transactions, they apply changes directly to their local state and rely on cryptographic proofs from provers to verify blocks efficiently.

Image Source

Full nodes take a more involved approach, re-executing every transaction to ensure block validity. This execution mechanism is particularly valuable for power users like bridge operators and market makers, who require rapid finality despite the higher hardware demands.

Lastly, provers play a critical role in validation, operating asynchronously and out-of-order by leveraging a stateless validation model to confirm blocks efficiently.

Monad

Monad is a full-fledged Layer-1 blockchain that introduces parallel transaction execution to maximize throughput.

In traditional blockchains, like Ethereum, each new transaction must wait for the previous one to complete. Monad breaks this bottleneck by executing transactions in parallel, meaning multiple transactions can be processed at the same time (as long as they don’t modify the same state).

Ethereum struggles with high storage costs due to slow state reads/writes. Monad fixes this by implementing MonadDB, a high-speed storage layer optimized for blockchain data.

As a custom key-value database, MonadDB is tailored to handle authenticated blockchain data with maximum efficiency. Its design focuses on optimizing Merkle Patricia Trie node storage, allowing data to be managed effectively on disk.

Monad's pipelining, combined with MonadDB, takes parallel processing to the next level. By breaking tasks into smaller stages, it enables multiple instructions to be handled simultaneously at different points in the process.

Image Source

Storage

MegaETH

Since MegaETH is an Optimistic Rollup, it does not store full transaction data on Ethereum. Instead, MegaETH relies on EigenDA, a decentralized data availability layer, to optimize storage and reduce costs.

MegaETH also brings a new state trie designed for maximum efficiency, enabling it to handle terabytes of data without adding extra I/O costs, even on machines with limited RAM.

Monad

Monad stores all transaction and state data itself. To handle this efficiently, it uses MonadDB, a custom-built database optimized for high-speed execution.

MonadDB is designed specifically for fast transaction processing and minimizes storage bottlenecks. It uses asynchronous I/O (input/output) operations to parallelize state access, meaning multiple storage requests can be processed at once.

Importantly, since Monad supports parallel execution, its storage system must also handle multiple state changes at the same time. So, MonadDB is optimized to process these updates efficiently, allowing thousands of transactions per second (TPS) to be written without slowdown.

Developer Ecosystem & Community Support

MegaETH

As an emerging Layer-2, MegaETH is in the early stages of building its developer ecosystem. Its primary advantage is that any Ethereum developer can become a MegaETH developer with minimal friction – the tooling and languages are the same.

In late 2024 and early 2025, MegaETH garnered attention from notable figures in crypto – even Ethereum’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin and others have discussed it, indicating high interest in its approach. This buzz has helped attract developers’ curiosity. MegaETH launched its public testnet in Q1 2025​, which is a crucial step for developers: they can now deploy contracts and test integrations on a live network.

Early projects are already aligning with MegaETH – for example, an upcoming DEX called GTE raised funding with the intention to build on MegaETH.

To foster community support, MegaETH and its backers have initiated programs like developer grants, hackathons, and a community initiative known colloquially as “MegaMafia” (a developer community group focused on bootstrapping MegaETH dApps).

Monad

Monad enters the scene with significant momentum in terms of developer interest and community backing. As a new Layer-1 aiming to be an “Ethereum killer,” it has attracted major investments and talent – for example, it closed a $19M seed round led by Dragonfly Capital in 2022​, and its founding team includes former Jump Trading engineers who are respected in both TradFi and crypto circles​. This credibility has translated into strong community support even before launch.

Notably, over 100 established Ethereum projects have pledged to support or build on Monad once it’s live.

On the developer tools front, Monad has done everything to smooth adoption: it supports the Ethereum RPC API and EVM bytecode fully​, so developers can use familiar wallets (e.g. MetaMask connects to Monad RPC like it would to an Ethereum node) and block explorers. The Monad team has already published documentation and open-sourced much of their code (their GitHub and docs are publicly accessible​), which is encouraging developers to tinker.

Comparison Table: Monad vs. MegaETH

Feature	MegaETH	Monad
Blockchain Type	Layer-2 (Ethereum rollup)	Layer-1 (independent)
Execution Model	Single ultra-fast sequencer (transactions executed sequentially)	Parallel execution (multiple transactions processed simultaneously)
Consensus Mechanism	Optimistic Rollup with fraud proofs	MonadBFT (Byzantine Fault Tolerant Proof-of-Stake)
Transaction Speed	100,000+ TPS	~10,000 TPS
Finality Time	~1-10 milliseconds for execution, but finality depends on Ethereum L1	~1 second
Decentralization	Centralized execution (single sequencer controls ordering, future plans for decentralization)	Highly decentralized (multiple validators secure the network)
Smart Contract Compatibility	Fully EVM-compatible	Fully EVM-compatible
Security Model	Secured by Ethereum L1	Secured by its own validator network
Storage Model	EigenDA (off-chain data availability with Ethereum settlement)	MonadDB (custom high-speed on-chain storage)
Gas Fees	Extremely low (due to off-chain storage)	Lower than Ethereum, but validators bear storage costs
Hardware Requirements	Lower hardware requirements for nodes, but sequencer is high-performance	Requires high-performance validators(e.g., 32GB RAM)
Data Availability	Stored off-chain with EigenDA, with Ethereum as fallback	Stored on-chain with MonadDB
Governance	Centralized governance (team-controlled for now, future decentralization possible)	Validator-driven governance with potential on-chain voting
Best Use Cases	High-frequency trading, real-time applications, and instant microtransactions	DeFi, NFTs, gaming, and high-performance smart contracts
Ecosystem Growth	Gaining traction, backed by Vitalik Buterin & key investors	Over 100+ projects pledged support, strong developer backing
Funding & Development	$20M+ in funding, backed by Dragonfly, Robot Ventures, and Vitalik Buterin	$248M+ in funding, major backers include Dragonfly Capital
Launch Status	Private testnet live, public testnet launching in 2025	Testnet live, mainnet expected 2025
Main Trade-Off	Ultra-fast but centralized, reliant on Ethereum for finality	Requires powerful validators, but remains decentralized

Conclusion

Both Monad and MegaETH push the envelope of blockchain performance, but in different domains.

MegaETH is just in testnet, it doesn’t have live users yet. However, interest from the industry is high. It has been highlighted in discussions as potentially transformative for DeFi (some call it an “iPhone moment” for crypto in terms of user experience).

Monad’s appeal is broad because it doesn’t force a trade-off between using Ethereum’s ecosystem and getting better performance – you get both. Real-world adoption will depend on how quickly those pledged projects deploy and attract users. If even a portion of those 100+ projects go live and bring their user bases, Monad could quickly have a thriving ecosystem across multiple industries.

Each project, through its unique path, contributes to the ultimate goal of making decentralized platforms more accessible, usable, and powerful for real-world needs.