LVMON staking is live. Open a MON-collateral position on LeverUp, close it to receive LVMON, then stake that LVMON to earn yield generated by Monad’s native LST infrastructure — without selling your MON or giving up your exposure.
That’s the short version. Here’s exactly how it works and how to use it.
What Problem LVMON Solves
Holding MON on Monad is a straightforward bet on the network. But idle MON is just that: idle. Every day it sits unstaked, you’re missing the yield that Monad’s liquid staking ecosystem is generating.
The catch: to participate in LeverUp’s perpetuals market, you previously needed USDC. MON holders either sold into a stablecoin (giving up spot exposure) or kept MON separate from their trading activity.
LVMON closes that gap. It lets MON do two things simultaneously: act as trading collateral inside LeverUp, and keep earning staking yield outside your positions.
How LVMON Works
LVMON is not minted by depositing MON directly. You get it by opening a position on LeverUp with MON as collateral, then closing that position — the protocol settles the close in LVMON. The MON the protocol holds through those settlements doesn’t sit idle. It gets deployed across Monad’s active yield-bearing LST protocols — currently shMON and dMON. These protocols stake the underlying MON and generate yield from Monad network activity.
The yield flows back to LVMON stakers. The mechanic that makes the APY particularly interesting:
The participation rate amplifier. The protocol earns yield on the total MON held in the vault. But only LVMON that has been actively staked is eligible for yield distribution. This means if 60% of LVMON holders stake, the 60% who do stake share yield generated by 100% of the underlying MON. The effective APY is inversely proportional to the participation rate: the lower the staked fraction, the higher each staker’s share.
The effect comes from how rewards are distributed across only the actively staked portion of LVMON. When participation is lower, active stakers may receive a larger share of vault-generated rewards, though effective APY will change as more LVMON is staked.
Staking: Step by Step
For a walkthrough with screenshots, see How LVMON Staking Works on LeverUp.
Step 1: Get MON Make sure you have MON in your connected wallet on Monad mainnet.
Step 2: Get LVMON Go to app.leverup.xyz, navigate to the LVMON page, and select the Mint & Redeem tab.
Click Open Position to open a position with MON as collateral. When you close that position, the protocol settles it in LVMON, which arrives directly in your wallet.
Step 3: Stake LVMON With LVMON in your wallet, select Stake on the same screen. This commits your LVMON to the yield distribution pool and starts accruing your share of the vault’s earnings.
You can stake any portion of your LVMON. Unstaked LVMON remains as a liquid token representing your MON position.
Step 4: Claim or Compound Each epoch, staking rewards are distributed. You can:
- Claim rewards to your wallet in the reward token
- Compound by re-staking rewards to grow your position
Redemption: Getting MON Back
Redemption is the reverse of minting: burn LVMON, receive MON.
The protocol processes redemptions from the vault’s MON holdings. Because the MON in the vault is deployed across LST protocols, redemptions may go through a short unbonding window depending on vault utilization at the time you request.
To redeem:
- Navigate to the LVMON section of the Earn tab
- Select Redeem, enter the LVMON amount
- The protocol initiates the redemption and provides an estimated time for MON to arrive in your wallet
Under the current redemption settings, LeverUp does not charge a redemption fee. You receive MON at the current LVMON:MON exchange rate, which reflects your position value plus any accrued yield that has not yet been distributed.
LVMON as Trading Collateral
Staking yield isn’t the only thing LVMON enables. As a supported collateral type on LeverUp, LVMON can be used directly as margin for perpetuals positions.
This means LVMON can keep MON exposure productive while also serving as supported margin for perpetuals positions, subject to LeverUp’s collateral and risk parameters.
This is the design principle behind AnyCollateral applied to LeverUp’s own synthetic token: capital stays productive across all of its uses at once.
$LV and the LVMON Connection
Every epoch, the protocol takes a commission from the LVMON staking vault and uses it to buy $LV on the open market and burn it. This is the first active $LV buyback stream, and it’s already running. The buyback amount is on-chain and observable per epoch.
For a full breakdown of how the $LV buyback and staking mechanisms work, see What is LeverUp?
Why This Matters for Monad
LeverUp’s LVMON vault is a structured yield product built natively for Monad users. For the ecosystem, it means:
- MON holders have a productive home for their tokens within a DeFi primitive, not a bridge to another chain
- LST protocols (shMON, dMON) gain depositor volume routed through the LeverUp vault
- Trading activity on LeverUp generates additional utility for MON without requiring MON holders to exit their position
The infrastructure is composable by design. As Monad’s DeFi layer expands, LVMON is positioned as a way for MON to participate in yield, trading, and protocol activity — all from within the same protocol.
Start earning: app.leverup.xyz