Monad offered some of its earliest investors a chance to sell their locked MON tokens months before they were scheduled to become tradeable. Almost all of those investors chose not to take the deal.
The Monad Foundation said Tuesday that it had completed a program designed to purchase locked MON from certain early investors. The initiative had allocated up to $60 million for potential purchases.
However, the Foundation has not disclosed how much it ultimately spent, how many investors participated, or the price it offered for the locked tokens. Monad has also not publicly detailed the discount investors would have received compared with the market price.
Monad offered early investors an exit before token unlocks
The program effectively gave early investors an opportunity to receive liquidity ahead of schedule.
Instead of waiting for their MON holdings to unlock and become freely tradeable, participating investors could sell their locked tokens to the Foundation at a discounted price. In return, they would receive cash earlier than under the original vesting schedule.
Importantly, MON purchased through the program will remain locked according to its existing schedule. That means the initiative does not immediately increase the amount of MON entering the circulating supply.
The timing is significant because the first major investor unlocks are approaching.
Early investors received approximately 19.7 billion MON, representing nearly 20% of the token's original supply. Those tokens were locked when Monad's mainnet launched last November and are scheduled to begin unlocking after a one-year waiting period, followed by monthly releases over the remainder of a four-year vesting schedule.
November therefore marks the beginning of the period when these early investors can start receiving MON that they can sell normally.
MON remains below its public-sale price
The offer comes as MON continues to trade below the price investors paid during Monad's public sale.
MON was trading around $0.021 on Tuesday, approximately 16% below the $0.025 public-sale price from last year.
About 11.8 billion MON are currently circulating. At that supply level, the token has a market capitalization of roughly $250 million, compared with a fully diluted valuation of approximately $2.1 billion.
The gap between circulating and fully diluted value is particularly important for investors because a substantial amount of MON remains locked and is scheduled to enter circulation over time.
Future unlocks could increase the available supply and potentially create additional selling pressure if investors decide to realize gains or reduce their exposure.
Monad's network activity continues to grow
Despite MON's weak performance relative to its public-sale price, activity across the Monad ecosystem has expanded significantly.
The amount of capital deposited into decentralized finance applications on Monad has increased to approximately $895 million from around $360 million on July 2, according to DeFiLlama’s Monad data.
That represents an increase of almost 150% in roughly six weeks.
Stablecoins on the network currently have a combined value of about $707 million, while decentralized exchanges operating on Monad processed approximately $79 million in trading volume over the previous 24 hours.
The growth suggests that blockchain activity and liquidity have been increasing even as MON's market price remains under pressure.
Why did almost everyone reject the offer?
The Foundation's decision to offer early liquidity does not necessarily mean that investors were expected to sell.
For holders who remain confident in Monad's long-term prospects, accepting a discounted offer could mean giving up potential upside before their tokens officially unlock.
At the same time, the lack of sellers should not automatically be interpreted as a bullish signal.
The Foundation has not revealed the discount offered to investors, meaning there is no clear way to determine whether the terms were attractive enough to justify an early exit. Without knowing the purchase price, the number of participants, or the total amount spent, the program provides limited information about investors' expectations for MON.
Instead, the initiative appears to have been designed primarily as a liquidity option.
Foundation says the program was about flexibility
Monad said the program was intended to give early investors more flexibility if their financial needs or investment plans had changed.
Investors who needed liquidity could potentially monetize part of their locked position without waiting for the scheduled unlocks. Meanwhile, MON purchased by the Foundation remains locked, preventing those tokens from immediately increasing market supply.
The approach also allows Monad to potentially reduce pressure around upcoming investor unlocks without accelerating the release of purchased tokens.
For the broader market, however, the key question remains what happens when the scheduled unlocks begin.
MON investors face an important supply test
Monad's upcoming unlock schedule could become an important factor for MON's market performance.
With approximately 19.7 billion MON allocated to early investors, the amount of tokens eventually becoming available to the market is substantial compared with the current circulating supply of roughly 11.8 billion MON.
That does not mean all unlocked tokens will be sold. Investors may continue holding, stake their tokens, use them within the ecosystem, or sell only a portion of their holdings.
Still, the combination of a relatively small circulating supply, a large future unlock allocation, and a MON price below its public-sale level creates an important supply-side consideration for investors.
At the same time, continued growth in Monad's DeFi ecosystem could provide a counterweight if network usage, liquidity and application activity continue to expand.
For now, the Foundation's $60 million offer appears to have generated little appetite among the early investors it targeted. The bigger test may come later, when those investors no longer need the Foundation's offer to access their MON and can begin trading their unlocked tokens directly.
