Monad Now Runs at 300ms — and Your Swaps Feel It — Monad Research

MIP-12 just cut Monad's block time from 400ms to 300ms — a 25% speedup. Here's what that actually changes when you trade, and why a faster chain quietly makes an aggregator like NullTerminal better.

Key takeaways

• Monad shipped MIP-12 on July 23, 2026, dropping block time from 400ms to 300ms — a 25% speedup (2.5 to 3.33 blocks per second), confirmed live by co-founder Keone Hon.
• A faster chain helps aggregators disproportionately: fresher quotes, tighter orderbook prices, and quicker confirmation all compound into better fills for you.
• NullTerminal's quote engine was already sub-400ms — the upgrade sharpens the other half of every swap, the chain confirming your transaction, so trades land noticeably quicker.
• Less time between the quote and the fill means less price drift and less slippage. That's the practical payoff of 100 milliseconds.

Monad just got 25% faster

On July 23, 2026, Monad shipped MIP-12 — a coordinated hard fork that dropped the block time from 400 milliseconds to 300. Keone Hon, one of Monad's co-founders, put it about as plainly as it gets: “Upgrade successful. Monad block times are now 300 ms.” No fanfare, no downtime. The chain just woke up a quarter faster than it went to sleep.

On paper it looks like a rounding error. It really isn't. Here's what 100 milliseconds does the moment you start trading.

Blink and you'll miss it — literally

A human blink takes somewhere around 100 to 150 milliseconds. Monad now produces a full block in roughly the time it takes you to blink once. At 400ms the chain made 2.5 blocks a second; at 300ms it makes 3.33. That's 25% more blocks and 25% less waiting, every second of every day.

For most blockchains, block time is a spec-sheet number nobody ever feels. On Monad it's the whole point — you're supposed to feel it. Swaps confirm before you've moved your cursor. And the shorter each block, the less room there is for anything to move between the price you saw and the trade that actually lands.

Why this matters more for an aggregator

Here's the part most people skip past: a faster chain doesn't just help traders, it helps aggregators disproportionately — and that flows straight back to you.

When you swap on NullTerminal, we quote across every live DEX on Monad, pick the best route (often splitting your order across a few venues at once), and hand you a single transaction. Every link in that chain gets sharper at 300ms:

• Fresher quotes. Our price is only as good as the block it's read from. Faster blocks mean the number you're shown is closer to the number you get — less drift, less slippage, fewer surprises at signing.
• Tighter orderbook prices. Venues like Kuru and Hanji are real central-limit orderbooks, and their market makers requote every block. Give them 25% more blocks per second and they can quote tighter — which is a better price routed straight to you.
• Quicker confirmation. Approve, sign, done. The half of every swap that's just the chain confirming your transaction got 25% faster for everyone.
• Split routes still land together. Even when your order fans out across four venues to squeeze out the best fill, it all settles in one transaction — now at 300ms.

So… is trading on NullTerminal actually faster now?

Honestly? Yes — and it's worth being precise about why. We didn't ship this upgrade; Monad did. Our routing engine was already quick, returning single-hop quotes in about 200 to 400 milliseconds. What changed is the other half of the loop: the chain confirming your swap. That just got 25% faster for everyone — and because we deliberately route across the fastest venues on Monad, you feel it on basically every trade.

Note: The short version: Monad got faster, so your swaps confirm faster — and because NullTerminal routes across orderbooks and AMMs that all benefit from quicker blocks, the price you're quoted holds up better by the time it lands.

Want the receipts?

We measured the entire 400ms era on-chain the day it ended — $9.48 billion of volume across 39.1 million trades in 2,210 tokens. If you want the full data story behind the number that just changed, it's all in one place.

See also: The 400ms Era — the full data report

Or skip the reading and just go make a swap. Odds are it'll be confirmed before you finish this sentence.

FAQ

Did NullTerminal get faster, or did Monad?

Monad did. The MIP-12 hard fork cut the chain's block time from 400ms to 300ms. NullTerminal's routing engine was already fast (~200–400ms per quote). The upgrade speeds up the part of every swap where the chain confirms your transaction, which makes trading through us feel snappier without us changing a thing.

Does a faster block time actually give me a better price?

Indirectly, yes. The shorter the gap between the price you're quoted and the block your trade lands in, the less it can drift — so quotes hold up better and slippage tends to be lower. Orderbook venues also requote more often at 300ms, which can tighten the spread you get routed.

Is 300ms live right now?

Yes. Monad activated MIP-12 on July 23, 2026, and co-founder Keone Hon confirmed block times are now 300ms. Every swap you make on NullTerminal today already runs on the faster chain.

Sources: Keone Hon (@keoneHD) — MIP-12 300ms announcement, Monad — Contextualizing Blockchain Performance, Monad Developer Documentation

Last reviewed 2026-07-24. More Monad research.

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