Monad Foundation has completed a token buyback plan that offered some early investors a chance to sell locked MON before those tokens become transferable. The program was structured with up to $60 million in capital, but almost all of the investors approached chose not to sell.
The foundation said Tuesday that the buyback has been completed. It did not disclose the purchase price offered, how much money was ultimately deployed, or how many investors participated.
An early cash-out option drew little interest
The offer effectively created a way for early backers to exit ahead of schedule. Investors willing to accept a discounted price could receive cash immediately instead of waiting for MON to unlock and trade freely.
Monad Foundation said any tokens repurchased through the plan would still follow the original vesting and lockup timetable. That means the buyback would not cause those tokens to enter the market earlier than planned.
How MON is used and when investor tokens unlock
Monad is a high-performance public blockchain built to be highly compatible with Ethereum. Its native token, MON, is used to pay onchain transaction fees and help secure the network.
When the Monad mainnet launched in November last year, early investors were allocated about 19.7 billion MON, representing close to 20% of the initial supply. Those tokens are scheduled for a first unlock in November, then monthly releases over the following four years. Under that schedule, this November is the first point at which those investors were originally expected to be able to sell and realize cash proceeds.
Weak token price, stronger onchain activity
MON has recently underperformed on price. On Tuesday, the token was trading at about $0.021, below last year’s public sale price of $0.025, a decline of roughly 16%.
About 11.8 billion MON is currently circulating, implying a circulating market capitalization of nearly $250 million. Its fully diluted valuation stands at about $2.1 billion.
At the same time, activity in the Monad ecosystem has picked up. According to DeFiLlama data cited in the report, total value locked across Monad DeFi applications rose from about $360 million on July 2 to roughly $895 million, an increase of nearly 150% in six weeks.
Stablecoins on Monad total about $707 million, while 24-hour DEX trading volume is around $79 million.
Foundation says the plan was meant to provide liquidity
The report noted that stronger ecosystem data alone does not explain why investors declined the foundation’s offer. Without knowing the exact discount used in the buyback, the lack of selling cannot be read as a clear market consensus on MON’s future price direction.
Monad Foundation said the purpose of the early repurchase program was to provide a liquidity option for early investors whose investment plans or funding needs had changed, while keeping the remaining holder base aligned around a longer-term vision.
In the foundation’s framing, it would rather see committed holders stay in place than have large blocks of tokens change hands at a discount shortly before unlocks and move to short-term speculators.