Perpetual Futures on Monad

Monad is an EVM-compatible L1 designed for high throughput through parallel transaction execution and pipelined consensus. As of mid-2026, Monad is in testnet. No perp DEX in PerpFinder's tracked set has launched a mainnet deployment on Monad yet.

What Monad promises for derivatives

The Monad team publishes benchmarks claiming 10,000 TPS with 1-second block times and single-slot finality. The parallel execution engine (MonadBFT + MonadDb) is designed to execute non-conflicting transactions simultaneously — the same property that makes Solana and Sui attractive for order book applications.

EVM compatibility is the key differentiation from non-EVM high-throughput chains. An Arbitrum perp DEX could, in theory, redeploy to Monad with minimal contract changes. The Monad documentation explains the compatibility scope: full Ethereum opcode support with custom precompiles for performance-critical operations.

Which protocols are building here

Several protocols in PerpFinder's coverage set have announced Monad testnet programs or expressed intent to deploy. We have not listed any as "on Monad" because testnet activity does not represent production trading volume, and points-program deployments on new chains frequently precede protocol migrations that never materialize at scale.

DefiLlama's Monad page will track TVL once mainnet launches. Until then, on-chain data is limited to testnet metrics.

The risk of early-chain perp deployments

New chain launches attract a predictable cycle: a points-farming period, initial liquidity inflows, and then a normalization once incentives wind down. Perp DEX traders who chased points on Blast, Sei, or early Mantle experienced this cycle firsthand. Volume concentration during points periods does not predict sustained activity.

PerpFinder will add Monad-native protocols to our tracked set once mainnet launches and protocols accumulate 30 days of verified on-chain volume data. We apply this threshold to avoid surfacing low-liquidity venues where slippage risk is meaningful.

What to watch

The practical test for Monad's perp DEX story is whether an existing large-venue team — one of the Arbitrum or Solana protocols with proven liquidity — chooses to deploy here as a primary chain rather than a secondary one. Secondary deployments fragment liquidity; primary deployments concentrate it.

Follow our perpetuals overview page for new protocol additions as Monad mainnet develops, or check the cost comparison tool to see how testnet fee estimates stack up against live chains.