Renaud Partners Special Report | Why Monad Wins Why Every New Ecosystem Fails Without a Cultural Front Door As longtime Monad backers, Renaud Partners has had a front row seat to the team and it’s ecosystem of builders. We believe they are primed to thrive beyond their much hyped airdrop and have a strong shot at becoming one of the largest projects in crypto for years to come. Let’s look at why and Gmonad to everyone reading this. Today marks a major milestone for @monad. The early airdrop reveal is live and thousands of new users are checking how much allocation they’ve received. For many, this will be their first real interaction with Monad and in a couple of weeks there'll be the first click. The first wallet connection. And like every new ecosystem before it, this is the critical moment that decides what happens next. Because airdrops are incredible at bringing people in. They’re terrible at keeping them around. The Post Airdrop Problem Every new ecosystem experiences the same story. Launch, incentives, surge, collapse. Data from across the industry tells it clearly: > Airdrops reliably generate massive spikes in activity. For instance, at the ARB launch, Arbitrum briefly processed ~2.5 million daily transactions. > Blur’s token launch captured over 70% of NFT trading volume overnight. > But the hype doesn’t stick. On average, activity falls back to just 20–40% above pre-airdrop baselines within weeks. > About 88% of airdropped tokens lose value within three months, showing how little early activity converts into lasting usage. Incentives are distribution engines. They are not discovery engines. That’s the real challenge Monad will face in a couple of weeks not whether people show up, but whether they stay to explore what’s being built here. These dynamics expose a deep truth: user acquisition via incentives is relatively easy. Keeping them is not. Most ecosystems collapse not for lack of tech but for lack of a sustained attention infrastructure. Some projects have tried to push past this: In Optimism’s Airdrop 5, recipients saw a +4.2 percentage point lift in 30-day retention, and +2.8 pp at 60 days. But even that effect decays. The boost is stronger early, then attenuates. What these cases show is that well-designed incentives can nudge retention. But systemic, culture level retention requires more than boosting numbers. It requires embedding discovery and habit into the ecosystem. The Discovery Gap In Web2, discovery was solved decades ago. App Stores, search algorithms, and social feeds made new platforms accessible overnight. In crypto, we never really built that layer. Instead, users land in a maze of bots, DEX pages, and Telegram links. They’re greeted by noise, scams, and the constant sense that they’re missing something important. Even with the strongest fundamentals, new ecosystems struggle to convert attention into community. Users come for the airdrop, but without a structured, safe, and engaging way to discover what’s next, they drift back to where their social graph already lives. That’s the discovery bottleneck: attention without direction. Why Monad Can Break The Cycle Monad is uniquely positioned to do what past ecosystems couldn’t: solve discovery before it becomes a problem. > Performance: Monad’s parallel execution and deep EVM compatibility make it one of the first truly scalable environments where complex consumer apps can run at speed. > Developer experience: By designing for Solidity native builders, Monad lowers the barrier for proven teams to deploy instantly meaning the ecosystem can fill with real products fast. > Timing: It’s launching into a consumer ready cycle, where wallets, identity layers, and social protocols have matured enough to support mainstream experiences. The combination is rare: throughput and usability, developer familiarity and new design space. But the biggest advantage is temporal. Monad can design its cultural layer at genesis, rather than bolting it on after the first wave of users has already left. The Cultural Front Door Every ecosystem needs a front door, the place where users feel the chain before they fully understand it. It’s not documentation, it’s not an explorer, and it’s not a DEX. It’s a cultural entry point. Something that makes exploring Monad fun, safe, and social from day one. The front door has to answer three questions at once: > Why should I care? (acquisition) > What’s worth trying? (discoverability) > Why do I return? (retention) Without that layer, ecosystems remain invisible. Technically elegant, but emotionally empty. A cultural front door transforms discovery into belonging. The Discovery Loop With the gamified airdrop process they're already starting to tap into this huge potential. And now imagine an experience where new users can explore Monad through play, e.g. opening digital “capsules” that reveal ecosystem tokens, NFTs, or project perks from verified builders. Each interaction creates a small spark of curiosity. Gamified discovery reframes how ecosystems grow: > Acquisition happens naturally through curiosity. > Discoverability emerges through curated, trusted content. > Retention is driven by fun, repetition, and reward. It’s not about points or farming; it’s about turning exploration itself into entertainment. Over time, that loop builds something most ecosystems never achieve: cultural gravity. While we don't know if this is Monad's plan we strongly believe the team is capable of achieving a whole new way of exploring an ecosystem. The Takeaway Airdrops bring attention. Discovery builds identity. Monad now sits at a rare inflection point: technically advanced enough to support real usage, and early enough to design culture as infrastructure. The ecosystems that endure this cycle will master the psychology of attention. How users find, connect, and stay. The next platform layer is discovery. And the ecosystems that build their cultural front door early will create communities that last.