MegaETH is winding down its Mega Mafia accelerator after two years, saying the program helped launch promising startups but failed to retain enough economic value inside the protocol.
What happened
- Mega Mafia supported roughly 20 teams across two cohorts. Those startups collectively raised about $80 million from pre-seed through Series A. The accelerator paired teams with MegaETH core developers and provided technical, management, and market-making support — but it never took equity, governance rights, or ownership stakes.
- Core team member Shuyao Kong said on X that MegaETH’s early bet — that founders would remain aligned with the network without formal ownership arrangements — didn’t hold. “Very little of that value has trickled to Mega,” she wrote while announcing there will be no Mega Mafia 3.0.
Where the projects went
Several of the most successful accelerator alumni have since moved off-chain or to other platforms:
- Global Token Exchange (GTE) built its own chain after the first cohort.
- Social attention market Noise migrated to Base.
- HelloTrade moved toward Monad.
- Stablecoin project Cap launched on MegaETH but immediately pursued a broader multichain strategy.
Why this matters
Mega Mafia played a central role in transitioning MegaETH from development into mainnet activity. In fact, MegaETH launched its MEGA token on April 30 after 10 ecosystem applications met a performance target tied to the accelerator — linking Mega Mafia directly to the network’s early growth. Since then, MegaETH has also expanded its onchain economics: the MegaETH Foundation began a MEGA buyback program funded by net income from the USDm stablecoin issuer, connecting stablecoin revenue to recurring token purchases.
What’s next
With Mega Mafia shuttered, MegaETH is pivoting strategy:
- It will concentrate on “OMEGA” applications — products designed around capabilities the team believes are unique to MegaETH.
- The network plans to invest more directly in first‑party consumer apps to build direct relationships with users and retain more activity and economic value on-chain.
- Kong said this first-party approach will also put greater responsibility for product results onto the MegaETH team.
Bottom line
The accelerator produced successful startups and helped trigger MegaETH’s token generation event, but most of that success migrated off-network. Now MegaETH is testing whether building and owning more consumer-facing products itself can keep users, activity, and value closer to the core ecosystem.
Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news
