MegaETH, a high-performance blockchain built to make Ethereum applications feel almost instantaneous, debuted its public mainnet on Monday, entering an ecosystem mired in fundamental debates about how Ethereum should scale.
The project touts a layer 2 “real-time blockchain” targeting more than 100,000 transactions per second (tps), which would bring on-chain interactions closer to traditional web apps than today’s crypto networks. According to Token Terminal, Ethereum runs at less than 30tps.
This release caps a rapid rise that attracted both technical curiosity and massive financial backing. MegaLabs, the development arm of the project, raised a $20 million seed round in 2024 led by Dragonfly. Last October, the company announced a $450 million oversubscribed token sale backed by some of the biggest names in crypto, including Ethereum co-founders Vitalik Buterin and Joe Rubin. The sale was one of the largest crypto fundraisings of the year.
MEGA, the native token that underpins the network’s economics, is not fully unlocked at launch. According to the team, token distribution and utility will be rolled out in stages, with specific unlocks tied to network usage milestones.
MegaETH’s debut comes as Ethereum’s long-standing scaling roadmap is under consideration, especially by Buterin. The second-largest blockchain by market capitalization has long relied on its Layer 2 network, an off-chain system that batches transactions back to the base layer, to handle most of its ecosystem growth.
However, in a recent discussion, Buterin suggested that Ethereum may need to invest more heavily in expanding its Layer 1 network to reduce fragmentation and simplify the user experience.
These comments sparked discussion across the ecosystem. Proponents of Layer 2 argue that so-called rollups remain essential and already provide significant performance improvements. Critics argue that over-reliance on them has spread liquidity and users across dozens of networks. MegaETH’s high-speed, low-latency design is at the center of that discussion, as we believe there remains strong demand for chains that deliver performance far beyond current standards.
Read more: MegaETH raises $450 million in Ethereum founder-backed oversubscribed token sale
