The Mao Party Fails Monad: "The logic of the testnet Mao Mao race has collapsed"

Author: Hu Tao, ChainCatcher

Yesterday, the highly anticipated Layer 1 public chain Monad’s token MON officially launched. Its price once fell below the public offering cost for early investors. Currently, the FDV remains in the $3 billion to $3.5 billion range, which is not only below the $8 billion mainstream market cap predicted on Polymarket but also far below the $15 billion valuation of the early Pre-TGE market.

This is not only a heavy blow to the Layer 1 narrative but also a “tragedy” for the “whale hunting” community.

Previously, Monad was valued at $3 billion, making it the highest-valued unissued Layer 1 in the market, and was highly anticipated by whale hunters. Its testnet has accumulated over 300 million interaction addresses, with many studios registering Monad addresses using millions of addresses. At the end of October, Monad officially opened airdrop queries but unexpectedly excluded all testnet interaction addresses from the airdrop.

The logic of whale hunters is that “sunshine always shines,” and many projects’ usual practice is to maintain frequent interactions, which can earn them tokens worth a few dollars to dozens of dollars. The accumulated value of multiple addresses can still be significant. However, Monad’s official stance did not follow the whale hunters’ wishes and excluded all testnet addresses from the airdrop.

“A lot of addresses that interacted on the testnet are completely anti-whale, and participating in various NFTs is basically useless. The only addresses that received the Monad airdrop are some old addresses that never interacted with Monad but traded on Hyperliquid,” said A Du (pseudonym), head of a whale-hunting studio in Hangzhou, to ChainCatcher.

Suddenly, Monad became the target of fierce criticism from many whale hunters, but the Monad team remained unmoved. According to well-known KOL Fengmi, the idea behind this airdrop was to bind contributors, identity, and potential people to Monad—focusing on identity + contribution, such as Monad ecosystem developers, heavy DeFi users, and high-quality NFT holders.

Alpha influencer Spark received a reward of 3 million MON tokens in this airdrop, worth about $110,000. This was not due to his interaction record but because he served as a moderator in the Monad community for three years and established the Chinese community for Monad. The Monad team considers this a substantial contribution, which is also a key criterion for most project airdrops.

For project teams, airdrops serve to reward long-term supporters and demonstrate their value for community users. They also aim to incentivize active participants and influencers in the surrounding ecosystem, attracting them into their own ecosystem through rewards. From Uniswap to Gitcoin, Arbitrum, Scroll, Berachain, Aster, and thousands of other projects, airdrops have become an essential way to attract users.

Over time, the standards for airdrops have evolved and diverged. Some projects emphasize fairness and generosity, rewarding whale hunters who participate in interactions, while others impose strict rules on testnet/mainnet interactions, implementing rigorous “whale” screening based on points. This time, Monad completely abandoned testnet interaction users, or retail investors.

“If a network neglects retail investors for too long, it risks becoming overly elite early on, losing a broad community base. Early Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and BSC relied on seemingly insignificant retail investors who brought network effects and community vitality,” Fengmi said on X. He believes Monad should give grassroots retail investors a chance to grow gradually, even a little, so more people can truly become part of the MON network community.

Chasing the trend, some believe whale hunters contribute not only fees, data, and traffic but also serve as effective promoters. They argue that these whale hunters should be incentivized. “Monad’s approach is reckless, shaking the trust foundation of the entire industry,” said Bingwa on Twitter.

From the project perspective, long-term development considerations should guide airdrop strategies. “Whale hunters lack loyalty; they sell immediately after receiving airdrops and move on to the next project. This only creates selling pressure and offers no long-term benefit. Is it necessary to give them tokens?” said an anonymous KOL, describing whale hunters as “parasites” in the crypto ecosystem.

Australian veteran Da Sha also believes the industry’s airdrop logic is changing. “In the past, CEXs focused heavily on on-chain data activity and active user metrics when evaluating a project’s fundamentals. During cold starts, projects needed popularity. For a long time, project teams tacitly or explicitly reached an understanding with whale armies: you come to whale, help me get listed, and I’ll airdrop to you. But now, CEX listings no longer care about on-chain data or user metrics because everyone knows these numbers are heavily inflated,” he tweeted.

Business logic is ruthless. As on-chain data bubbles grow and whale hunters’ selling pressure negatively impacts many projects’ token prices, Monad’s approach is understandable. However, this will not be the choice for most projects, as Monad, as a heavily capital-backed public chain project, still has many options. Its technical strength and potential ecosystem explosion could bring a large community of users, but most projects are fundamentally marketing efforts that rely on airdrops to attract attention and market hype.

In the long run, airdrops remain a vital source of value in the crypto industry, but their logic and targets are undergoing profound changes. “The results of Monad’s airdrop essentially mark the collapse of the testnet whale hunting and whale farming logic. In the future, testnet farming will likely disappear,” Da Sha said.

In fact, many KOLs predicted Monad’s “table-flipping” this time. Veteran influencers like Da Sha, Bingwa, and Fengmi had already publicly stated they would not participate in Monad interactions. It is understood that top KOLs will focus more on “mouth farming,” arbitrage, and other diverse markets, while also concentrating on high-quality projects like Polymarket to create premium content.

Additionally, several studios interviewed reported that their earnings this year are lower than last year and below expectations. “The key is to find areas where we have advantages—low labor costs, advanced technology, keen research to spot early projects, or influential KOLs for mouth farming. It’s becoming harder to just follow the crowd and get substantial returns,” said A Du.

As the market cap of top projects like Monad significantly falls below expectations, and many projects lock up user airdrop shares for long periods after TGE, whale hunters’ position in the project ecosystem continues to decline, with token values shrinking. The whale-hunting logic based on volume is no longer sustainable.

“So, retail investors relying on labor to enter the primary market for cheap gains have already lost their window. The door has been closing for a long time; Monad’s airdrop just sealed the last crack,” sighed Da Sha.