MegaETH debuts mainnet as Ethereum scaling debate heats up
MegaETH, a high-performance blockchain constructed to make Ethereum purposes really feel practically immediate, debuted its public mainnet Monday, getting into an ecosystem mired in a elementary debate over how Ethereum ought to scale.
The venture, which had pitched itself as a layer-2 “real-time blockchain” concentrating on greater than 100,000 transactions per second (tps), would make onchain interactions really feel nearer to conventional internet apps than as we speak’s crypto networks. Ethereum works at lower than 30 tps, in line with Token Terminal.
The discharge caps a speedy rise that has drawn each technical curiosity and main monetary backing. The venture’s improvement arm, MegaLabs, raised a $20 million seed spherical in 2024 led by Dragonfly. Final October, it introduced a $450 million oversubscribed token sale backed by among the most recognizable names in crypto, together with Ethereum co-founders Vitalik Buterin and Joe Lubin. The sale was one of many largest crypto fundraises of that 12 months.
The native token, MEGA, which underpins the community’s economics, will not be absolutely unlocked at launch. Based on the workforce, token distribution and utility will roll out progressively, with sure unlocks tied to community utilization milestones.
MegaETH’s debut comes as Ethereum’s long-standing scaling roadmap is being examined, significantly by Buterin. For years, the second-largest blockchain by market cap relied on layer-2 networks, offchain techniques that batch transactions and settle them again on the bottom layer, to deal with many of the ecosystem’s progress.
However in latest discussions, Buterin has recommended that Ethereum may have to speculate extra closely in scaling the layer-1 community to cut back fragmentation and simplify the person expertise.
These feedback have ignited debate throughout the ecosystem. Supporters of layer 2s argue that the so-called rollups stay important and already ship significant efficiency positive factors. Critics say an overreliance on them has scattered liquidity and customers throughout dozens of networks. MegaETH’s high-speed, low-latency design lands squarely in the course of that argument, betting that there’s nonetheless robust demand for chains that push efficiency far past present norms.
Learn extra: MegaETH Raises $450M in Oversubscribed Token Sale Backed by Ethereum Founders
