MegaETH, a high-performance blockchain designed to make Ethereum applications feel nearly instantaneous, debuted its public mainnet on Monday, entering an ecosystem mired in fundamental debate over how Ethereum should scale.
The project positions itself as a second-layer “real-time blockchain” targeting over 100,000 transactions per second (tps), which will make on-chain interactions feel closer to traditional web applications than today’s crypto networks. According to data from Token Terminal, Ethereum is running at less than 30 tps.
The launch capped a rapid rise, attracting technical curiosity and major financial support. MegaLabs, the project’s development arm, raised a $20 million seed round in 2024, led by Dragonfly. Last October, it announced an oversubscribed $450 million token sale, backed by some of the biggest names in cryptocurrency, including Ethereum co-founders Vitalik Buterin and Joe Lubin. The sale was one of the largest cryptocurrency fundraising events of the year.
MEGA, the native token that supports the network economy, was not fully unlocked at the time of release. According to the team, token distribution and utility will be rolled out gradually, with certain unlocks tied to network usage milestones.
MegaETH’s debut comes as Ethereum’s long-term scaling roadmap is under scrutiny, especially by Buterin. For years, the second-largest blockchain by market capitalization has relied on its second-layer network, an offline system that batches transactions and resettles them to the base layer, to handle much of the ecosystem’s growth.
But in recent discussions, Buterin said Ethereum may need to invest more in scaling the first layer of the network to reduce fragmentation and simplify the user experience.
The comments sparked debate across the ecosystem. Layer 2 proponents argue that so-called aggregation remains crucial and has delivered meaningful performance gains. Critics say over-reliance on them has led to liquidity and users being fragmented across dozens of networks. MegaETH’s high-speed, low-latency design sits squarely in the middle of this debate, betting that there remains strong demand for chains that push performance well beyond current standards.
Read more: MegaETH raises $450 million in oversubscribed token sale, backed by Ethereum founder
