TLDR Tech / Crypto
Cadence: Monad's Answer to MEV
Category Labs released Cadence on July 2, a Multiple Concurrent Proposers consensus protocol for Monad that folds multi-proposer ordering directly into consensus, finalizing blocks in the same three communication rounds as single-leader systems while its Chorus and Conductor components decouple block interval from network latency. In simulation across Monad mainnet's 200 validators at a 100ms block interval, transactions reached proposal inclusion in an average of 50ms, with finalization at 219ms and speculative finality at 167ms. The design departs from Solana's Constellation, which adds two extra rounds atop Alpenglow and only narrows the state-update window to 50ms, and from Sei's Autobahn, which aggregates bandwidth rather than breaking leader monopoly. Cadence instead pairs multi-proposer ordering with Category Labs' BTX encrypted mempool to remove MEV's structural preconditions at the protocol level. That could unwind Monad's MEV-coupled liquid staking products like FastLane's shMON and aPriori, though Cadence's fee-attribution rules and a mainnet deployment timeline remain unpublished.
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