Monad Foundation Makes Power Move: Snags Portal Labs to Supercharge Stablecoin Payments

Stablecoins just got a turbo boost—Monad Foundation's acquisition of Portal Labs signals a full-throttle push into payments infrastructure.

Why it matters: The deal puts Monad in pole position to dominate the race for real-world crypto adoption. No more 'volatility' excuses.

Behind the buy: Portal's cross-chain tech lets stablecoins flow between networks like water—perfect for Monad's ambitions to undercut traditional payment rails.

The cynical take: Because what crypto really needed was another player promising to 'revolutionize' finance while chasing the same use case as every other blockchain project.

Bottom line: When the dust settles, this could be the acquisition that finally makes stablecoins usable for your morning coffee—or just another line on Monad's hype deck.

The Monad Foundation announced Wednesday its acquisition of Portal Labs, the team behind Portal's embedded stablecoin wallet infrastructure platform, in a strategic MOVE to accelerate stablecoin adoption and expand payment capabilities on the high-throughput Layer-1 blockchain.

The integration aims to create a comprehensive ecosystem for enterprise-grade stablecoin payments while maintaining Portal's existing customer relationships and multi-chain approach.

Monad Foundation has acquired @portal_hq

Portal’s stablecoin infrastructure platform allows any business, bank, or financial institution to accept stablecoin payments - currently powering millions of dollars in daily settlements.

Read more on the acquisition below ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/9GSK6YsfqK

Following completion of the deal, Portal CEO and co-founder Raj Parekh will transition to head of payments and stablecoins at the Monad Foundation, bringing extensive expertise from his previous role as director of Visa's global crypto product. Parekh will spearhead stablecoin ecosystem adoption efforts, working with issuers, payment platforms, financial institutions, and fintechs to build and deploy stablecoin-based products, the announcement said.

"Portal was built to lower the barrier for anyone to move money onchain," said Parekh. "The complementary visions of Portal and the Monad Foundation will scale that mission faster."

Operational Structure and Expansion Plans

Portal will continue operating independently as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Monad Foundation, with co-founders Parsa Attari as CEO, David Scrobonia as CTO, and Rami Shahatit as COO maintaining leadership roles, the announcement said. The acquisition positions Portal to accelerate development of new modules and developer tooling across multiple blockchain networks.

The integration will add Monad's high-throughput, low-latency blockchain capabilities to Portal's existing multi-chain strategy, enabling more comprehensive stablecoin payment solutions for both web2 and web3 businesses.

According to Monad, its blockchain infrastructure has demonstrated significant scale, processing 2 billion transactions from over 300 million onchain addresses with peak throughput exceeding 10,000 transactions per second. This technical foundation complements Portal's existing payment rails, which currently facilitate millions of dollars in daily stablecoin settlements.

Keone Hon, co-founder and GM of the Monad Foundation, emphasized the strategic importance of payments in driving broader crypto adoption: "Payments are a killer use case for blockchains and present an exciting unlock for widespread crypto adoption," Hon stated. "Portal's production-grade stablecoin rails will provide enterprises and developers with plug-and-play solutions to incorporate stablecoin payments into their platforms and apps."

The Monad Testnet is currently live and accessible for developers looking to explore the platform's capabilities ahead of mainnet deployment.