EPISODE · Apr 25, 2026 · 54 MIN
Strictly 4 The Builders - Keone
from Deeply Intents · host apriori, Keone Hon
In this episode of Deeply Intents, we chat with Keone Hon co-founder & GM at Monad Foundation. Keone spent a decade at Jump Trading building algorithmic trading systems before co-founding Monad. We get into what actually transfers from HFT to crypto, why the Monad team rolled their own database, and Keone's bigger thesis on crypto as humanity's universal asset layer. We open with the Jump years. In particular, what high-frequency trading actually teaches you (confidence, shipping cadence, intuition for hardware), and why the real edge isn't technical but psychological. From there, we walk through the engineering decisions that shaped Monad including values choices, not an engineering ones. We discuss why testnet metrics are mostly fake and how the Monad community quietly built itself into real social infrastructure during the bear market. We close on Keone's case for crypto as a universal asset layer, with income share agreements as one of the most underrated frontier use cases. We touch on specific EVM improvements he wants upstreamed to Ethereum, why agentic workflows are "directionally correct" but too early to pick winners, and a final note on creatine. Timestamps (00:00) - Algorithmic trading to Monad Foundation (02:53) - Filtering out signal from noise (04:59) - Learnings from HFT (09:48) - Confidence, intuition, and mentality (14:00) - Technical dominoes (18:25) - Testnet metrics are not real (21:05) - Ecosystem building learnings (23:53) - Startup Founders own communication (25:25) - Everything is about expectations (28:29) - Comfort with uncertainty (32:37) - Delivering value to the community (38:43) - Autonomous decentralized community (42:34) - Interfacing with the Ethereum community (44:21) - The EVM can be improved over time (46:39) - Crypto is humanity's universal asset layer (47:37) - Income Share Agreements (51:10) - Enabling rapid experimentation (52:43) - Steel manning creatine DisclaimerNothing in this episode should be interpreted as financial, technical, or legal advice. The host does contract work for Heliax, a public goods laboratory, focusing on Anoma.
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What this episode covers
In this episode of Deeply Intents, we chat with Keone Hon co-founder & GM at Monad Foundation. Keone spent a decade at Jump Trading building algorithmic trading systems before co-founding Monad. We get into what actually transfers from HFT to crypto, why the Monad team rolled their own database, and Keone's bigger thesis on crypto as humanity's universal asset layer. We open with the Jump years. In particular, what high-frequency trading actually teaches you (confidence, shipping cadence, intuition for hardware), and why the real edge isn't technical but psychological. From there, we walk through the engineering decisions that shaped Monad including values choices, not an engineering ones. We discuss why testnet metrics are mostly fake and how the Monad community quietly built itself into real social infrastructure during the bear market. We close on Keone's case for crypto as a universal asset layer, with income share agreements as one of the most underrated frontier use cases. We touch on specific EVM improvements he wants upstreamed to Ethereum, why agentic workflows are "directionally correct" but too early to pick winners, and a final note on creatine.
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Strictly 4 The Builders - Keone
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