Nitro, a Monad-focused accelerator, provides up to $7.5 million to execution-driven teams to turn already-funded crypto projects into actual, shippable products.
summary
- Nitro will support up to 15 early-stage Monad teams in a three-month hybrid program for a total of $7.5 million.
- Accelerators prioritize consistent shipments and product-market fit over short-term token metrics and aggregate valuations.
- Backers such as Paradigm, Electric Capital, Dragonfly, and Castle Island Ventures will mentor founders and participate in Demo Day.
Nitro, a crypto accelerator built around the Monad blockchain, launched its application on Tuesday, promising to fix one of the industry’s most predictable failures: founders raising money quickly and shipping slowly. The program will support up to 15 early-stage teams with a total of $7.5 million in funding, or up to $500,000 per project, over a three-month program split between New York and remote work.
What Nitro actually does
Nitro is not cautious when it comes to diagnosing the market. This one-sheet explains, “Common problems in raising capital for crypto ventures: Teams often raise capital quickly, but often struggle to ship production-ready products or achieve product market fit.” In response, accelerators are “structured around execution, shipping cadence, and validation rather than short-term growth metrics or token-driven incentives,” clearly positioning themselves to counter the raise-the-drift pattern that defined much of the previous cycle.
You may also like: Solana’s ultra-low fees challenge Base, BNB, and Polygon in large-scale DeFi
The first cohort will target infrastructure, developer tools, and user-facing applications on Monad, and says it will prioritize founders who have already “demonstrated a clear path to consistent shipping and product-market fit.” The program will culminate with a demo day for crypto and technology investors, including backers Paradigm, Electric Capital, Dragonfly, and Castle Island Ventures. These investors are expected to provide “mentorship, feedback, and involvement in the Demo Day,” not just a logo on a slide.
why monads need this now
Nitro comes after more than $108 million has already been raised by projects in the Monad ecosystem, and more than $244 million in funding for Monad itself from the likes of Paradigm and Coinbase Ventures. The foundation describes Monad as a “high-performance, EVM-compatible Layer 1 built for high-frequency financial and autonomous systems,” with mainnet going live in November 2025. In layman’s terms, there is already ample funding in this area of cryptocurrencies. What is missing is disciplined execution.
That tension is also exhibited against risk-on tape, albeit on a softer level. Bitcoin (BTC) is trading around $70,096, down about 0.6% in 24 hours. Ethereum (ETH) was trading around $2,104, up about 0.5% on the day. Solana (SOL) is hovering around $86.70 after an eventful week that saw the stock trade above $89 during the day.
If previous bull markets rewarded narratives and fully diluted valuations, Nitro is making a narrower, more testable bet. In a capital-heavy ecosystem, the teams that matter now will be the ones that can ship on time and survive without another hype cycle to bail them out.
read more: Chainlink founder says these three trends will define the next era of cryptocurrencies
