MegaETH is winding down its startup accelerator, Mega Mafia, after two years — a move that highlights a growing tension in crypto incubators between seeding fast-growing projects and keeping value inside a network.
The program supported roughly 20 teams across two cohorts and helped those startups raise about $80 million from pre-seed through Series A. Mega Mafia paired founders with MegaETH’s core developers and offered technical, management and market-making support — but notably, the network did not take equity, governance rights or ownership stakes in the companies it aided.
That hands-off ownership approach, MegaETH core team member Shuyao Kong said on X, was based on an assumption that founders would stay aligned with the network without formal ties. The assumption didn’t hold. “Very little of that value has trickled to Mega,” Kong wrote while announcing there will be no Mega Mafia 3.0 cohort, adding that the accelerator is being “sunset.”
Several high-profile alumni illustrate the drift. Global Token Exchange (GTE) moved to build its own chain after participating in the first cohort. Social attention market Noise migrated to Base. HelloTrade shifted toward Monad. Stablecoin project Cap launched on MegaETH but pursued a broader multichain strategy. In short: the accelerator produced marketable startups, but many chose technical paths off the MegaETH stack.
Mega Mafia had also been directly tied to MegaETH’s early mainnet momentum. The network launched its MEGA token on April 30 after 10 ecosystem applications met the performance threshold that triggered the token-generation event — a milestone that linked accelerator outcomes to token economics. Since then, MegaETH’s economic design has evolved: in May, the MegaETH Foundation introduced a MEGA token buyback program funded by net income from the USDm stablecoin issuer, connecting stablecoin activity with recurring token purchases as the network focuses on high-speed onchain apps.
With the accelerator ending, MegaETH is pivoting its strategy. Rather than relying primarily on independent startups to generate ecosystem value, the team will concentrate on “OMEGA” applications — products built around capabilities the team considers uniquely suited to MegaETH — and invest more directly in first-party consumer apps. Kong says this shift aims to create direct relationships with users, keep activity and economic value closer to the core chain, and give MegaETH greater control and accountability over product outcomes.
The change follows Mega Mafia’s central role in moving MegaETH from development into mainnet activity and in catalyzing the MEGA token launch. Now the network is testing whether building and operating more consumer-facing, first-party products can better capture and retain the value its accelerator helped create.
Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news
