MegaETH is shutting down its Mega Mafia accelerator after two years, saying the program helped startups raise substantial capital but failed to keep enough value inside its ecosystem.
Summary
- MegaETH ends Mega Mafia after most successful incubated applications stopped building on its blockchain network.
- Two accelerator cohorts supported about 20 teams that collectively raised approximately $80 million from investors.
- MegaETH will redirect funding toward first-party consumer apps and products designed specifically for its infrastructure.
Core team member Shuyao Kong said on X that most successful applications backed by the program are no longer being built on MegaETH.
The accelerator supported about 20 teams across two cohorts, which collectively raised roughly $80 million from pre-seed through Series A rounds. MegaETH selected teams to work closely with its core developers and provided technical, management and market-making support. However, the network did not take equity, governance rights or ownership positions in the projects it helped build.
MegaETH shifts resources toward first-party applications
Kong said MegaETH originally believed founders would remain aligned with the network without formal ownership arrangements. That approach produced successful startups, but many later chose different technical paths. “Very little of that value has trickled to Mega,” she wrote, while announcing that there will be no Mega Mafia 3.0 cohort.
Several projects show how that model changed. Global Token Exchange, or GTE, decided to build its own chain after participating in the first accelerator cohort.
Social attention market Noise later chose Base, while HelloTrade moved toward Monad. Meanwhile, stablecoin project Cap launched on MegaETH but has pursued a broader multichain strategy.
The decision comes only months after Mega Mafia applications helped MegaETH reach a key network milestone.MegaETH launched its MEGA token on April 30 after 10 ecosystem applications met the first performance target required to trigger the token generation event. The milestone tied the accelerator directly to the network’s early growth strategy.
MegaETH has since expanded the economic systems around its blockchain. As crypto.news reported in May, the MegaETH Foundation started a MEGA token buyback program funded by net income generated by the USDm stablecoin issuer. The structure connects stablecoin activity with recurring token purchases as MegaETH develops high-speed onchain applications.
However, ending Mega Mafia changes how the team plans to build future demand. Kong said MegaETH will focus resources on “OMEGA” applications, meaning products designed around capabilities that the team believes are specific to MegaETH. The network also plans to invest more directly in first-party consumer applications.
Under the new approach, MegaETH expects to build direct relationships with users instead of depending mainly on independent startups to create products and eventually return value to the network. Kong said first-party development would also give the team greater responsibility for product results.
The change comes after Mega Mafia played a central role in MegaETH’s move from development into mainnet activity and its MEGA token launch. The network is now testing whether building more consumer-facing products itself can keep users, activity and economic value closer to its core ecosystem.
