MegaETH

Built by MegaLabs, MegaETH was co-founded in early 2023 by Shuyao Kong and Yilong Li, with Lei Yang as CTO, positioning itself as the world's first 'real-time' Ethereum L2 focused on sub-10-millisecond latency and high throughput.

In 2024, MegaETH raised a $20 million seed round led by Dragonfly, with Ethereum co-founders Vitalik Buterin and Joseph Lubin among backers, anchoring early capital and ecosystem credibility.

Ahead of launch, MegaETH's testnet was stress-tested hard, processing roughly 10.7 billion transactions in days via games like Smasher and Crossy Fluffle, more than Ethereum handled in nearly 11 years, validating its real-time performance.

In September 2025, MegaETH launched its native stablecoin USDm with Ethena to align network incentives, run the sequencer at cost, and deliver the lowest fees for users and builders.

On October 27, 2025, MegaETH's MEGA token opened its public sale on Sonar with a $50 million cap that drew over $1.39 billion in commitments, about 9x oversubscribed.

MegaETH's mainnet went live in February 2026, claiming 100,000 TPS and sub-10-millisecond blocks, and integrated the Chainlink ecosystem so roughly $14 billion in DeFi assets like Aave and GMX became directly accessible.

On April 30, 2026, MegaETH's MEGA launched via the industry's first KPI-triggered TGE, with a fixed 10 billion supply and over 53% unlocking only as the network hits growth targets.

MEGA officially launched via TGE on April 30, 2026, the industry's first KPI-triggered token launch (triggered one week after 10 MegaMafia apps went live onchain on April 23). The token listed on 13 exchanges including Binance, Coinbase, OKX and Upbit, opened around $0.18-$0.20, hit an ATH of $0.2249 before falling about 21% on day one, with a circulating market cap of roughly $200 million and FDV of about $1.7-$1.8 billion.

Tokenomics and unlocks: 10 billion fixed supply with 11.3% initially circulating; 53.3% is tied to KPI-gated staking rewards (Flux) released upon milestones; the team holds about 9.5% (12-month cliff, 3-year vesting) and investors about 15%, with unlock events at the 6- and 12-month marks. The Foundation has committed to using USDm stablecoin yield to buy back and accumulate MEGA.

Ecosystem and incentives: a Season 1 points campaign ran from April 28 to June 23 with a reward pool of 2.5% of supply; the genesis airdrop distributed about 500 million tokens to roughly 500,000 wallets; the MOSS wallet launched on June 17, with apps like Euphoria going live.

Public mainnet went live on February 9, 2026. Chainlink was integrated on February 7, bringing Aave, GMX and roughly $14 billion in blue-chip DeFi assets at launch. The first KPI was met on April 23 with 10 MegaMafia apps deployed, triggering the MEGA token generation event on April 30: 10 billion total supply, 53.3% tied to later KPIs, and a Sonar auction of 5% of supply that drew more than 50,000 bidders and $1.39 billion in commitments. In a stress test the network processed 11 billion transactions in seven days, the highest in EVM history. Yet onchain DeFi TVL was just $12.5 million on October 18, down 91% from its May 12 peak, and native stablecoin USDm supply stood at about $17.4 million to $18.25 million, only 3.5% of its $500 million target. MEGA carries a $48.81 million market cap and a $432 million fully diluted valuation, still below its public sale level. MegaETH ties issuance to verifiable operating metrics, and its real business is selling latency: USDm reserve yield funds steady MEGA purchases, Proximity Markets auction seats by distance to the sequencer, and Sequencer Rotation lets operators stake MEGA for cross-region ordering rights, so revenue comes from position in block space rather than gas markups. Demand has yet to prove itself, with DeFi TVL around $12.5 million, USDm still short of the $500 million target and accelerator projects leaving, so rebuilding balances and paying users through OMEGA apps over the next two quarters is the live test of this KPI economy. With 53% of supply tied to KPIs, tokens do not circulate until targets are met, an experiment in hard-coding issuance discipline.

Yilong Li is co-founder and CEO of MegaETH. He holds a PhD from Stanford, where he researched low-latency data centre computing and programmable networks and published on nanosecond-scale scheduling and hardware acceleration. In 2022 he began working through the engineering path to millisecond block times with his team, and he owns hiring.

Lei Yang is co-founder and CTO, with a PhD from MIT in blockchain consensus and peer-to-peer networks, owning node architecture, sequencer design and data availability. Shuai Kong is co-founder and chief business officer, previously ConsenSys' global head of business, covering ecosystem and Asia; Namik Muduroglu is chief strategy officer, working on community. Protocol, infrastructure and business groups report to the CTO and CBO, and most research roles are held by PhDs.

David Canellis joined MegaETH in September 2026 as Head of Brand & Communications.

Mu Gao joined MegaETH in 2025 as Product Lead and Ecosystem Support and left in June 2026.