Original article by Odaily (Planet Daily)

Author: jk

On November 29th, BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes publicly expressed his pessimism about Monad, which had only been online for six days, during an interview with Altcoin Daily. He claimed it "could drop by 99%" and characterized it as "just another high-market-cap, low-circulation VC coin." These remarks quickly escalated, prompting a direct response from Monad co-founder Keone Hon on X, leading to a heated public confrontation between the two.

The following is a complete transcript of the conversation between the two parties.

Full text of the dialogue

Keone Hon, founder of Monad

Dear @CryptoHayes, I respect everything you've built for this industry. Perpetual contracts are an amazing innovation, and I believe they will continue to grow rapidly. You have had a tremendous impact on our industry.

I've seen you comment on Monad several times over the past few days. While I'm sure some of your comments may have been taken out of context, I thought you might be interested in understanding what makes Monad different and why it's not just another L1.

I believe you also had to deal with a lot of FUD (fear, doubt, and uncertainty) when you were innovating at BitMEX, and you just responded to those comments directly and moved on. I intend to do the same.

Here are some key points about why Monad is different:

It's incredibly fast. You withdraw funds from Coinbase, and the money arrives in your account within 1-2 seconds. It's like magic.
It's built on a completely new technology stack, making this speed possible in a highly decentralized network. Currently, there are 170 globally distributed validator nodes, with more to come. You can view the real-time network topology here: [link]
This is important because while everyone is saying that blockchains must be centralized, must be data center chains (or single orderers) to achieve high performance, Monad demonstrates the opposite possibility. Enterprises, asset issuers, and global developers want decentralization and trusted neutrality—they don't want to be controlled by a single orderer.
Monad's codebase is completely open source and audited, built entirely from scratch in C++ and Rust, and incorporates many optimizations for high-frequency trading styles.
Monad introduced MonadBFT, a cutting-edge consensus mechanism that solves the tail forking problem in pipelined consensus. This alone is a huge improvement because BFT consensus itself requires multiple rounds of communication; pipelined (interleaved) block production is the only way to achieve fast block times; and previously, pipelined systems were vulnerable to attacks involving single-block reorganization (tail forking), leading to MEV attacks. But now, that's no longer the case!
Monads introduced asynchronous execution, further improving efficiency by allowing consensus and execution to take place in separate swimlanes. Ethereum is attempting to adopt this technology.
Monad also features a range of other technological innovations, such as a full JIT compiler that compiles EVM bytecode into native code, a new database (MonadDb), a new block propagation mechanism (RaptorCast), and parallel execution.
The ecosystem is still in its infancy, but a number of new applications have already been developed by a group of young and energetic builders.
The Monad Foundation and the Category Labs team are fully committed to continuing to advance this field. Research contributions in areas such as asynchronous execution, gas pricing, and privacy will continue to drive the industry forward. This is day 6 since mainnet launch, and our amazing team continues to do things differently.
Finally, MON is the first token sold on Coinbase's token sale platform, with the aim of allowing as many people as possible to acquire tokens before the public launch. The token sale uses a "bottom-up" approach so that whales cannot snatch up the entire share as they do with many other offerings.

If you'd like some MON tokens to try out the network, let me know, and I'd be happy to send you some. Thanks again for your contributions to this field, see you on the blockchain.

Arthur Hayes, founder of BitMEX, KOL

I know nothing about your technology. I believe it's good; everyone who mentions you and your team says you're incredibly smart. But your token economics almost guarantees that MON will only keep falling.

Tell your community how this chain can absorb 90% of the tokens without crashing. Tell your community how much real usage is needed to generate organic demand to absorb the selling pressure from early investors and team members after their tokens are unlocked. There's nothing wrong with them selling; your early backers and team members took the risk and deserve a good return. Tell the community how you maintain this price level with approximately 1% monthly inflation solely due to staking rewards. Screw educating me. I don't care what your technology does; I'm a trader. Don't write me long paragraphs about cash flow to make me look like an idiot.

Before that, MON was a hot potato. It was fun to play around with in the short term, but due to supply and demand, the overall trend would only be downward.

Keone Hon

I'm not sure where you got your information, but it's incorrect.

The inflation rate is 2% per year, far lower than almost all other L1 loans.

The fact that locked tokens cannot be staked is quite unprecedented.

Coinbase's token sale adopts a "retail-first" approach, giving priority to retail participants.

Everything was built from scratch in order to substantially expand the capabilities of truly decentralized blockchains.

It only happens once in a lifetime, so it's worth a try.

I think if you look closely at what I and my team are doing, you'll see that a lot of things are different. We're not copying the same script.

If you have any specific criticisms of Monad, please let me know, I'm all ears.

Arthur Hayes

Unlock all tokens now, and you'll be different from all those so-called $ETH killers. Go ahead and do it.

Keone Hon

You haven't answered my question—what specific criticisms do you have of Monad? I'm pretty sure the companies in your VC portfolio also have locked tokens.

Besides, you yourself said you heard our team is very talented and technically excellent. What if it actually works? The current state of blockchain can't possibly be the final form of blockchain. If we were all like you, then everyone should just pack up, go home, and go to sleep.

Arthur Hayes

It's all about traffic, bro. Do you dare unlock all the tokens right now and let the market find the real price for your coins?

(As of press time, the two sides have not engaged in further verbal attacks.)

Community reaction: Hayes, you've gone too far.

This standoff sparked a great deal of discussion in the crypto community, with many questioning the logic behind Hayes' criticism.

Some people dug up Hayes' previous comments and directly asked: Why did you think it could rise to $10 in the first place?

@Doudounadz pointed out that Hayes never asks these questions about the projects he invests in: "It's strange that you never ask these questions to any of the teams you invest in. I don't quite understand this hate, to be honest (although I can probably guess why)."

@gmoneyNFT went even further, saying: "Then you demonstrate how to unlock tokens for all the companies in your portfolio."

Some people view this debate from a more macro perspective. @0xMardiansyah believes that this precisely reflects the fundamental difference between traders and developers: traders don't care about the technology, they only focus on the price; while developers painstakingly build from scratch, considering all aspects including token economics, only to be judged by people who only look at candlestick charts.

@NFT5lut said: Hayes is just Barry Silbert of Monad. He has never been right about anything except creating panic to make people sell and then buying up the shares at a low price.

MON price trend

The Monad mainnet officially launched on November 24th, and MON tokens began trading simultaneously.

It's worth noting that MON's performance on its first day of trading was lackluster, with the opening price briefly dipping below the public sale price—relatively mild for a highly anticipated L1 token. In stark contrast to recent projects like Plasma, which sold out instantly, MON's public sale took longer to complete, but its price subsequently rose slowly. However, nearly a week after its mainnet launch, MON's price has fallen from its high of over $0.04 and is currently fluctuating around $0.03.

An asymmetrical war of public opinion

What's interesting about this confrontation is that the two sides are not even talking on the same level.

In the public discourse, commentators have an advantage over builders. Hayes made it clear from the start: "I know nothing about your technology," and "I don't care what your technology does; I'm a trader." Hayes's argument isn't new; the notion that "VC tokens with high FDV and low circulation will eventually crash" has been one of the most prevalent narratives in the crypto market over the past two years . The collective memory of numerous retail investors losing money in projects with similar structures makes any criticism pointing to "VC exploitation" easily resonate, especially during a bear market.

Judging from the dissemination effect, Hayes did indeed hit this emotional nerve.

For Keone, this is a difficult situation to win. Technological advantages need time to be proven, and the prosperity of the ecosystem requires developers to vote with their feet, while Hayes's questioning is immediate, intuitive, and easy to understand.

This is a debate that will never reach a conclusion. What will truly determine Monad's fate is whether, in the next few years, any developers actually use it to build something of value.

From this perspective, Keone isn't wrong: "It only happens once in a lifetime, so it's worth a try."

A Monad airdrop address sold 5.5 million MON tokens after the price fell below the public price.

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