Monad just posted a genuine all-time high in total value locked, the kind of number that usually gets celebrated across every crypto news outlet without much scrutiny.
At almost the exact same time, one of the industry’s most widely used wallets announced it’s dropping support for that same network entirely. I don’t think that’s a coincidence worth glossing over, and I think understanding both sides is the only way to actually judge whether Monad’s momentum is real.
The Numbers Behind Monad’s New $831 Million High
Monad’s total value locked has reached a new all-time high of $831 million, according to a recent update from CertiK.
I think the scale of this jump deserves context. Just weeks earlier, Monad’s TVL was being reported around $477 million, and before that, around $800 million with roughly $3,000 a day in fee revenue. Crossing $831 million now represents a genuinely fast climb, even by the standards of a chain that’s spent most of this year growing quickly.
The data behind that headline number breaks down across two distinct categories, and I think both are worth understanding separately, because they tell somewhat different stories about where the growth is actually coming from.
Lending Protocols Are Driving The Surge
Over the past month, four major DeFi protocols on Monad posted genuinely dramatic growth. Aave V3 led the pack, climbing to $273.8 million, a 630% increase. Euler V2 followed at $223.2 million, up 89%. Pendle grew to $143.6 million, up 139%, and Morpho Blue reached $151 million, up 61%.
I think the Aave figure is the one that actually demands the most scrutiny, precisely because 630% growth in a single month is an extraordinary number for any established lending protocol on any chain. Aave’s Monad deployment only crossed $100 million in early July, and reports around that milestone specifically flagged the question of whether the liquidity showing up was organic usage or capital chasing incentive programs rather than genuine, sticky demand. Going from roughly $100 million to $273.8 million in the following weeks doesn’t settle that question on its own. It just makes the answer matter more.
RWAs And Stablecoins Are Quietly Doing Even More
Beyond DeFi lending specifically, Monad’s capital base expanded meaningfully across real-world assets and stablecoins too. Distributed RWA value reached $464.3 million, up 113.7%, while 30-day RWA transfer volume hit $531.4 million, a 520.7% jump. Stablecoin market cap on the network climbed to $1.12 billion, up 118.8%.
I think this side of the growth is actually more interesting than the lending numbers, because RWA and stablecoin activity tends to reflect genuine settlement demand rather than yield-chasing behavior specifically. A 520% jump in transfer volume suggests real money is actually moving through the network for practical purposes, not just parking itself in a vault to farm a temporary incentive. That’s the kind of signal I think matters more for judging whether a chain is building durable infrastructure versus inflating a temporary liquidity mining number.
A CertiK Rating That Backs Up The Momentum
Alongside the TVL milestone, Monad currently holds a CertiK Skynet rating of AA, with a score of 89.29. I think that rating matters because it’s an independent, ongoing assessment rather than a self-reported metric, covering factors like governance structure, code security, and operational risk rather than just raw dollar figures sitting in contracts. A high Skynet score doesn’t guarantee a chain’s economics are sustainable, but it does suggest the underlying infrastructure being trusted with that $831 million has been through meaningful independent scrutiny.
CertiK framed the overall picture as evidence that Monad’s high-performance network is becoming a broader financial stack spanning lending, yield, and real-world assets rather than staying a narrow, single-purpose chain. I think that framing is fair based on the breadth of what’s actually growing here, lending, structured yield through Pendle, and RWA settlement all expanding simultaneously rather than one category carrying the whole number.
The Uncomfortable Timing Of Phantom’s Exit
Here’s where I think this story gets genuinely more interesting than a straightforward TVL milestone. Phantom announced its plans to end support for the Monad network, notifying users in-app with guidance on how to move or swap their Monad-native assets before the cutoff. MetaMask, notably, moved almost immediately to fill that gap, publicly offering to cover gas fees for anyone bringing their Monad activity over instead.
I don’t think Phantom’s exit necessarily contradicts the TVL growth story, since Phantom built its core identity around Solana and was always somewhat peripheral to Monad’s EVM-native ecosystem in the first place. But I do think it’s worth sitting with the optics here. A chain posting a genuine all-time high in locked value, at the exact moment a major wallet decides the return on continued engineering investment isn’t worth it, is a legitimately mixed signal. It doesn’t mean the growth is fake. It does mean not every part of the ecosystem is reading the trajectory the same way.
Is This Growth Actually Sustainable?
I think the honest answer requires holding two things at once. The RWA transfer volume growth and stablecoin market cap expansion look like genuine demand signals, the kind of activity that doesn’t typically get manufactured just to hit a milestone number. The lending protocol growth, especially Aave’s 630% jump, deserves more scrutiny given how recently questions were already being raised about whether Monad’s liquidity is organic or incentive-driven, and given that a meaningful token unlock looms later this year that could pressure the chain’s economics regardless of how healthy current TVL numbers look.
I don’t think Phantom walking away settles that question either way. What I do think is that anyone treating this $831 million milestone as an uncomplicated bullish signal is skipping past a genuinely relevant counter-data point that landed in the same news cycle. Monad’s numbers are real, verified independently through CertiK’s rating and multiple protocol-level figures. Whether that capital stays put once incentive programs taper off, and whether more wallets follow Phantom’s lead or move the other direction like MetaMask just did, is the actual test this chain is heading into next.
Disclosure: This is not trading or investment advice. Always do your research before buying any cryptocurrency or investing in any services. Follow us on X @nulltxnews
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