MegaETH mainnet is live! It claims to achieve 50,000 TPS and 10 milliseconds block times, but token issuance is conditional.

MegaETH, an Ethereum Layer 2 network that emphasizes ultra-low latency and high throughput, officially launched its mainnet on Monday, with over 50 applications going live simultaneously. This new Layer 2 project, dubbed the “Real-Time Blockchain,” aims for a performance target of processing 50,000 transactions per second (TPS) and a block time of just 10 milliseconds.

The official statement indicates that MegaETH’s core design specifically addresses the blockchain “latency” issue. The team believes that latency is the true bottleneck limiting user experience. To tackle this, MegaETH developed a new system architecture called “Small Authentication Large Trie (SALT),” which retains critical data directly in memory to bypass traditional storage delays. The team stated in the announcement:

MegaETH leverages Ethereum for settlement and security while independently splitting the execution layer to break through the performance bottlenecks of traditional blockchain architecture.

Our goal is never to become a Layer 1 or Layer 2 blockchain, but to create the most performant blockchain possible. Such an architecture is an inevitable evolution in blockchain design.

Founded in 2022, MegaETH completed a $20 million seed round in June 2024, led by Dragonfly Capital. The investment lineup is quite impressive, including participation from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and Joseph Lubin.

The mainnet launch of MegaETH continues the results from last year’s testnet and the “Global Stress Test” conducted in January this year, which involved processing 11 billion transactions over seven days to verify the network’s throughput and stability under long-term, high-load conditions. Additionally, MegaETH’s public token sale in October last year sparked market frenzy, with oversubscription commitments reaching as high as $1.39 billion.

MegaETH states that its low-latency design has led to two innovative applications: a new on-chain asset trading system and new ways for users to interact with these assets, including gamification, click-based interactions, and wallet-free experiences, making users almost unaware of the blockchain’s presence.

The announcement also notes that MegaETH’s internal accelerator, MegaMafia, has incubated multiple teams that have raised over $70 million in venture capital from institutions such as Franklin Templeton, Robot Ventures, Maven11, and Figment Capital.

Notably, MegaETH has adopted a unique “decoupling” strategy: launching the mainnet does not mean the native token MEGA will be issued simultaneously. The team explicitly states that the MEGA token will be issued within 7 days after achieving any of the following three key performance indicators (KPIs).