TL;DR
Monad is a high-performance EVM-compatible Layer 1 with parallel execution, ~10,000 TPS, 400ms block times, and 0.8-second finality through its MonadBFT consensus.
Mainnet went live November 24, 2025. The native token is MON; the chain ID is 143.
Across supports Monad on mainnet and bridges canonical assets in roughly two seconds using its intents architecture.
You can bridge to Monad from Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, Solana, BNB Smart Chain, and the other 20+ chains Across supports.
Monad rewrote the EVM execution layer instead of working around it
Every EVM chain since Ethereum has executed transactions one at a time. That works fine until you need throughput, at which point most chains hit a wall they can only push by raising gas limits, sharding state, or moving to a non-EVM execution model. Monad took a different approach: keep full EVM bytecode compatibility, but run independent transactions in parallel and fall back to sequential execution only when transactions actually conflict on state.
The architecture is called optimistic parallel execution, and it's paired with a custom BFT consensus called MonadBFT that uses pipelining to push finality to roughly 0.8 seconds. Block times run 400 milliseconds. Throughput targets 10,000 transactions per second. Solidity contracts you've already written deploy unchanged.
Mainnet launched November 24, 2025. The chain ID is 143, the native token is MON, and the production environment has been live for around six months. If you're moving capital from another chain into Monad, here's what bridging looks like.
What Monad is, by the numbers
Monad is a Layer 1 (not a rollup) with its own validator set and its own consensus, not anchored to Ethereum for settlement. Where Unichain or Base inherit Ethereum's security and pay for it with rollup latency, Monad is independent and pays for that with the need to bootstrap its own security from MON staking.
The performance numbers are the headline:
10,000 transactions per second sustained throughput on mainnet conditions
0.4-second block times
0.8-second economic finality through MonadBFT
Full EVM bytecode compatibility, so any Solidity contract works without modification
Parallel execution for non-conflicting transactions, with sequential re-execution for conflicts
What that adds up to is a chain where high-frequency applications (onchain orderbooks, real-time games, agent-driven workflows) can execute at speeds that would have required a non-EVM chain a year ago.
What you need before you bridge
A wallet that supports custom EVM chains. MetaMask, Rabby, Rainbow, and any hardware wallet through WalletConnect will work. If your wallet doesn't auto-detect Monad, add it manually with chain ID 143 and a Monad RPC endpoint from the official Monad site.
MON for gas. Bridging an asset to Monad is the first step; you'll want enough MON in your wallet to cover gas for the trades, deposits, or contract interactions you plan to do next. Across deliveries arrive in your wallet ready to use, and gas-on-Monad is cheap enough that a small amount goes far.
Funds on a source chain Across supports. Across covers more than 22 chains on mainnet, including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, Polygon, Linea, zkSync, BNB Smart Chain, and Solana. Wherever your funds currently sit, the bridge picks them up from there.
Bridge to Monad with Across in three steps
Open the Across dapp and connect your wallet.
Select your origin chain on the left (Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Solana, etc.), pick the token you want to send, and set Monad as the destination chain. The dapp will show you the exact destination amount you'll receive after fees and the estimated fill time, which for L2-to-Monad transfers under $10K typically lands around two seconds.
Approve the input token if it's the first time you've bridged it with Across (one-time per token per wallet), then confirm the bridge transaction. A relayer wins the right to fill your intent and delivers the asset to your wallet on Monad from their own capital. You receive canonical tokens, not wrapped representations.
The protocol settles with the relayer afterward through a repayment bundle verified by UMA's Optimistic Oracle. That verification window doesn't slow you down. You already have your money.
Why a parallel-execution L1 needs a fast bridge
A chain with 0.4-second block times and 0.8-second finality exists because applications on it care about latency. A bridge that takes minutes to settle squanders the chain's advantage at the door. The user experience of a Monad-native app is broken if getting funds onto Monad takes longer than using the app.
Across's intent architecture matches Monad's speed profile because it decouples user-side delivery from protocol-side settlement. The relayer takes finality risk and fronts the destination-chain capital; the user gets canonical assets in seconds; the protocol does the verification work over a longer window without the user waiting. By the time the optimistic settlement bundle clears, the user has already done their first trade on Monad.
Two more architectural details matter here. Across never holds pooled user liquidity in a bridge contract on Monad. Relayers front their own capital, so there's no honeypot to drain. And Across delivers canonical assets only, so there's no wrapped-token failure mode where the asset you hold on Monad becomes worthless if the bridge has a bad day. The protocol has processed over $35 billion in crosschain volume for more than 2.5 million users with zero protocol-level security exploits.
What you can do once your funds are on Monad
The Monad ecosystem has spent six months since mainnet building out the application layer. A few of the categories that benefit most from parallel execution and sub-second finality:
Onchain orderbooks and perps. The latency profile makes central limit order books with millisecond-level price updates economically viable in a way they weren't on EVM chains before. Several perps and orderbook DEX teams have shipped native deployments since mainnet.
DeFi infrastructure. Money markets, AMMs, and stablecoin protocols have shipped to Monad. As of May 2026, FalconX expanded a tokenized credit facility onto Monad and TownSquare launched a $100M USD1 stablecoin liquidity program on the network.
Real-time apps. Onchain games, prediction markets, and consumer apps that need responsiveness rather than batch settlement run on Monad in a way they couldn't on slower EVMs. The throughput allows for transaction volumes that would have been priced out of Ethereum L1 entirely.
If you're a builder, the EVM compatibility is the point. Your existing Solidity, your existing tooling (Hardhat, Foundry, Wagmi, Viem), your existing audit firms: none of it changes. You ship to Monad the way you ship to Ethereum, and you get the throughput as the upgrade.
Costs, withdrawals, and what to expect
Across fees on the Monad route are a relayer fee plus an LP fee, both shown on the quote screen before you sign. For small transfers, total bridge fees usually come in under a dollar plus the source-chain gas cost. Source-chain gas is the dominant cost: bridging from an L2 is cheap, bridging from Ethereum L1 pays L1 gas.
Withdrawing from Monad back to another chain runs through the same Across flow in reverse. Set Monad as the origin, pick a destination, confirm. The relayer network handles the rest.
For builders integrating Monad into a multichain product, Across's API supports the Monad route the same way it supports every other chain. The integration is a single endpoint regardless of how many chains you bridge to.
Get on Monad in the time it takes to read this paragraph
Monad is the EVM that finally pushed past sequential execution without giving up Solidity. Across is the bridge that gets you there without giving up canonical assets or your two-second expectation.