Monad to roll out a public testnet on Feb. 19

High-performance EVM blockchain Monad said its public testnet would be rolled out on Feb. 19, a critical milestone for the project’s development.

The testnet has been in development for two years and serves as a testing environment for developers and users to experiment with the platform’s features before the mainnet launch.

This follows the rollout of a closed testnet in late 2024. Plans for a tentative mainnet launch are expected later in 2025.

"The Monad Testnet is the first publicly available environment of the Monad Protocol. For the first time, developers can
build-on and experiment with Monad," the team wrote in a statement on Tuesday.

Monad's new testnet showcases several improvements to the high-throughput network, including boosting its transactions per second to 14,000 from 10,000 TPS and reducing block times below the initially projected 1 second. It leverages technologies like parallel execution and features a custom database called MonadDb.

It's also fully compatible with Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) bytecode, making it easier for developers familiar with Ethereum to transition their applications.

At launch, Monad will integrate with apps like Uniswap, Magic Eden and OpenSea and supports the OKX, Backpack, MetaMask, Rabby and other wallets.

"I’m especially grateful for the efforts and support from thousands of community and ecosystem contributors across the globe," Monad co-founder Keone Hon said. "I’m also inspired to see that number continuing to grow, as more join the mission to accelerate EVM performance and bring the next-gen of applications on chain."

Monad Labs, the developer behind the blockchain, was co-founded by former Jump Trading developers. It has raised $225 million in funding in a round led by Paradigm.