TL;DR:
- The MegaETH Mega Mafia acceleration program ends after two years of exercise and supporting two cohorts of startups.
- The startups incubated beneath this program managed to boost roughly $80 million in funding.
- The overwhelming majority of this system’s flagship tasks opted emigrate or broaden to competing networks reminiscent of Base and Monad.
MegaETH, an Ethereum scalability mission, closed its flagship acceleration program, referred to as Mega Mafia. The data was revealed this Thursday by Shuyao Kong, a member of the platform’s core group, via a put up on X.
After spending the final two years constructing the MegaMafia, we’ve determined to sundown this system.
Whereas it was successful in some ways, we consider that this system was constructed on assumptions that now not maintain.
Listed below are some reflections, and what’s developing subsequent.
> We had actual…
— Shuyao Kong (@hotpot_dao) July 16, 2026
Kong famous that whereas the initiative achieved important success in varied areas, the group believes this system was structured beneath assumptions which can be now not legitimate in at present’s market.
Throughout its working interval, this system instantly chosen near 20 growth groups to stay and collaborate carefully with the protocol’s founders. These startups acquired technical, administration, and market-making assist. The chief indicated that the overall worth of funding obtained by these corporations, from pre-seed rounds to Sequence A with enterprise capital, reached $80 million.
Venture flight to competing networks
The principle purpose behind the closure of this system lies within the retention of the generated worth. In keeping with Kong’s report, a substantial portion of the profit didn’t consolidate inside the native ecosystem, as a lot of the incubated purposes stopped constructing on MegaETH.
A number of of the highest-profile tasks that have been a part of Mega Mafia selected emigrate their operations to different ecosystems:
World Token Alternate (GTE): The flagship mission of the primary cohort introduced that it’s going to develop its personal blockchain community. The agency has raised $25 million throughout varied funding rounds.
Noise: This social consideration market platform, which secured a $7.1 million seed spherical led by Paradigm in January 2026, most popular to launch on the Layer 2 community Base.
HelloTrade: The buying and selling startup opted to combine into the Monad community, whereas different backed tasks, reminiscent of Avon and Valhalla, shut down operations completely.
Cap: The stablecoin mission launched on the protocol in early 2026 is presently implementing a multichain deployment technique.
This technological dispersion was facilitated by the accelerator’s preliminary insurance policies. Program documentation particulars that MegaETH didn’t take fairness, tokens, or governance rights within the taking part corporations. The protocol’s management primarily based this determination on the idea {that a} coverage freed from company obligations would foster real alignment with its long-term technical imaginative and prescient.
Strategic refocus on native purposes
Following the mainnet launch in February 2026, the issuance of its native token MEGA was executed in April 2026. This milestone was conditioned on the efficiency and deployment of at the least ten accelerator purposes inside the community.
Beginning this quarter, the group will droop plans for a 3rd Mega Mafia cohort. As a substitute, the event group will redirect capital and technical efforts towards the creation of first-party purposes.
In keeping with the projections printed by the group, this strategic pivot seeks to determine direct channels with finish customers to make sure that the worth of technological growth is captured solely inside the mainnet. Improvement priorities will give attention to digital pockets infrastructure and the mixing of its personal stablecoin.
