Splendid (♟,♟,♣️)

Excluding monad, here are some ecosystems that I like: @solana: Solana saved me. As a 9 year old boy who couldn’t afford to do anything on ETH (I still can’t afford to do anything on ethereum BTW), focusing on solana was the only option and I’m glad I did as it really helped me. Plus, solana is one of those ecosystems that puts community first, so it just makes sense. Overall, I’m glad I could still give back to the ecosystem in my own little way when I was still active there by highlighting projects building on it and doing micro onboarding. @nillion: I really like nillion ecosystem mainly because they didn’t farm their community, they genuinely rewarded core believers (That should be the norm, but it’s something most projects find really hard to do these days.) I also really love Nillion because of what they’re building. In this new AI driven world where privacy doesn’t mean anything, any project like nillion that’s preserving privacy should be held in high regard. @HyperliquidX: I have zero exposure to HyperLiquid, but it’s another ecosystem I really like just because they did right by the community and built a cult like group of believers. @SuccinctLabs: Succinct is another ecosystem I like (I might be biased ’cause I got a code to stage one testnet), but I genuinely fw the fact that they didn’t farm the community. Everything was done according to the roadmap and fast too. @irys_xyz: I’d been seeing Irys around a lot due to the yapping meta, but I got a closer look recently after the space they had with nillion. Listening to @josh_benaron speak made me feel like it’s another ecosystem that actually cares about the community so it’s growing on me. Plus, they’re building the DA infrastructure needed for performant, trust minimized apps in crypto, AI, social and beyond. So yeah, I think it’s something we really need in today’s world.

LET'S TALK ABOUT AZEX Perps. Spot. Yield. Copy trading. Most chains get one of those right. @azex_io is coming to monad and bringing all of it in one stack. Let's talk about what they’re building and why it fits perfectly on monad. --- • But First, What Is AZEx? Think of it as your A-Z (Like this series😉) DeFi terminal: spot & perp trading (up to 100x), LP farming with idle capital, permissionless token listings, AI copy trading and azUSD-backed pools, you name it, azex has it... and yes, it’s live on monad testnet. But AZEx isn’t your average DEX. It’s building something more ambitious: a modular, permissionless DeFi infrastructure where any token can go from launch to perpetual trading with no governance, no gatekeeping, no oracles. You can list any token as a perp (yes, even a meme), trade with up to 100x leverage and earn passive income as an LP. It auto farms idle funds, routes liquidity to yield sources like berachain protocols and uses azUSD as a unified base asset. They’re building trading infrastructure for the long tail, the assets that don’t make it to dYdX or Hyperliquid. With AZEx, any token can get a spot and perp market instantly. All of that, wrapped into one composable stack. Hence the name: AZEx... your A-Z DeFi Hub. --- • Why It Makes So Much Sense On Monad AZEx’s entire architecture screams modularity, capital efficiency and permissionless design and monad is built to supercharge exactly that. --- • Here’s why the match is perfect: 1. Infinite Market Creation: On AZEx, anyone can list any token and instantly create a perp market by spinning up a V4 pool with azUSD. Monad’s parallel execution and ultra fast block times make this actually scalable. You’re not fighting for blockspace like you would on Ethereum or Solana. You can spawn perp markets like memes and they’ll just work. 2. Net Open Interest X Capital Efficiency: AZEx doesn’t need 1:1 liquidity backing like traditional perp DEXs. It uses Net OI accounting, meaning it only needs to collateralize market imbalances. Combined with monad’s throughput, this unlocks insane capital efficiency especially for long tail assets that wouldn’t survive on other chains. 3. No Oracles, No Problem: AZEx derives perp prices from its own spot markets, not external oracles. This removes latency, attack vectors and listing restrictions. It also fits monad’s low latency architecture like a glove. No oracles = faster, safer and truly onchain markets. 4. One Pool, Many Layers: AZEx is modular from the jump... Foundation Layer: V4 + Hooks, Market Layer: Spot + Perp auto-linked Governance Layer: az33 model to guide incentives. Monad lets all of this execute fast, final and in parallel. Each layer flows into the next without getting choked up by sequential logic or chain congestion. 5. Real DeFi Rails for Monad Native Assets: Early stage projects on monad don’t need to beg for listings anymore. With AZEx, you can launch your token, spin up a market, bootstrap LPs and unlock perp trading on day one, all on the same stack. --- • So, Here's What AZEx brings to Monad – Capital-efficient perps – Real volume via copy trading – Passive income for LPs – Long-tail asset support – Composable infra for future dApps – A unified, permissionless trading engine --- To sum it all up... AZEx doesn’t just fit into monad, it amplifies everything monad stands for: modularity, parallelism, capital efficiency and permissionless access. If @monad is the execution layer for the next era of DeFi, AZEx is one of the protocols that’s going to make that real.