> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.monad.xyz/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Why Monad: Decentralization + Performance

> Monad addresses today's performance bottlenecks through optimization while preserving decentralization.

## Decentralization matters

A blockchain has several major components:

* Consensus mechanism for achieving agreement on transactions to append to the ledger
* Execution/storage system for maintaining the active state

In increasing the performance of these components, one could cut corners, for example by requiring all
of the nodes to be physically close to each other (to save on the overhead of consensus), or by
requiring a huge amount of RAM (to keep much or all of the state in memory), but it would be at a
significant cost to decentralization.

And decentralization is the whole point!

As discussed in [Why Blockchain?](/introduction/why-blockchain), decentralized shared global state
allows many parties to coordinate while relying on a single, shared, objective source of truth.
Decentralization is key to the matter; a blockchain maintained by a small group of node operators (or
in the extreme case, a single operator!) would not offer benefits such as trustlessness, credible
neutrality, and censorship-resistance.

For any blockchain network, decentralization should be the principal concern. Performance improvements
should not come at the expense of decentralization.

## Today's performance bottlenecks

Ethereum's current execution limits (2.5M gas per second) are set conservatively, but for several
good reasons:

* Inefficient storage access patterns
* Single-threaded execution
* Very limited execution budget, because consensus can't proceed without execution
* Concerns about state growth, and the effect of state growth on future state access costs

Monad addresses these limitations through algorithmic improvements and architectural changes,
pioneering several innovations that will hopefully become standard in Ethereum in the years to come.
Maintaining a high degree of decentralization, while making material performance improvements, is the
key consideration.

## Addressing these bottlenecks through optimization

Monad enables pipelining and other optimizations in four major areas to enable exceptional Ethereum
Virtual Machine performance and materially advance the decentralization/scalability tradeoff.
Subsequent pages describe these major areas of improvement:

* [MonadBFT](/monad-arch/consensus/monad-bft), a frontier BFT consensus mechanism solving the
  [tail-forking](https://www.category.xyz/blogs/monadbft-fast-responsive-fork-resistant-streamlined-consensus) problem
* [RaptorCast](/monad-arch/consensus/raptorcast) for efficient block transmission
* [Asynchronous Execution](/monad-arch/consensus/asynchronous-execution) for pipelining
  consensus and execution to raise the time budget for execution
* [Parallel Execution](/monad-arch/execution/parallel-execution) and [JIT Compilation](/monad-arch/execution/native-compilation) for efficient transaction
  execution
* [MonadDb](/monad-arch/execution/monaddb) for efficient storage of Ethereum state