A Foray into MegaETH’s Public Testnet

MegaETH’s public testnet officially went live on March 6, 2025, marking a significant step forward for this high-performance Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution. The rollout has been phased: from March 6 to March 10, the focus was on onboarding applications and infrastructure teams, allowing developers to integrate and adapt to MegaETH’s architecture. Starting March 10, broader user onboarding began, giving the public access to test the network’s capabilities. As of the latest updates, MegaETH’s testnet is delivering impressive performance—20,000 transactions per second (TPS) with 10-millisecond block times and up to 1.7 gigagas per second of single-threaded compute power.

This was demonstrated vividly on March 20, 2025, when MegaETH airdropped testnet ETH to over 190,000 wallets in just 15 seconds, showcasing its real-time processing potential. The network aims to eventually scale to 100,000 TPS with sub-millisecond latency, positioning it as a competitor to high throughput blockchains like Solana while leveraging Ethereum’s security. MegaETH diverges from traditional rollup-based Layer 2 solutions (like Arbitrum or Optimism) by acting as a standalone execution engine. It uses specialized nodes—sequencers for transaction processing, provers for validation, and replica nodes for state updates—alongside innovations like parallel EVM execution and integration with EigenDA for data availability.

This architecture targets real-time applications, such as gaming or high-frequency trading, where low latency is critical. The public can now explore the testnet, where they can interact with applications, claim testnet ETH via a faucet (or receive it directly during onboarding), and use native MetaMask integration. Posts on X from MegaETH Labs confirm the launch and emphasize its purpose: battle-testing the infrastructure, enabling builders to explore new tech, and letting users experience real-time apps—no airdrop incentives, just pure tech focus.

MegaETH, an Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution developed by MegaLabs, has raised significant capital to fuel its ambitious goal of achieving real-time blockchain performance with over 100,000 transactions per second (TPS). Dragonfly Capital leads the VC table with notable participants including Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, ConsenSys CEO Joseph Lubin, EigenLayer founder Sreeram Kannan, Figment Capital, Robot Ventures, Folius Ventures, Tangent, Big Brain Holdings, and Credibly Neutral, along with angel investors like Cobie (Jordan Fish), Santiago Santos, Kartik Talwar, Hasu, and Mert Mumtaz.

The round was structured as equity plus token warrants, with a fully diluted token valuation reported at a “nine-figure” amount, estimated to be at least $100 million. Funds were earmarked to develop the MegaETH protocol, with a mainnet launch planned for later in 2025. Community Round via Echo (December 13, 2024) raising $10 million. Conducted on the Echo platform, this round allowed over 3,300 crypto-native investors to participate in a private funding event. It was completed in just three minutes, marking Echo’s largest investment volume week at the time. This round emphasized community involvement, aligning with MegaETH’s ethos of giving users “skin in the game” rather than relying solely on traditional VC funding.

MegaETH launched “The Fluffle,” a collection of 10,000 soulbound NFTs (SBTs), sold at 1 ETH each. The sale occurred in two phases: Day 1 for guaranteed whitelist addresses, and Day 2 for remaining whitelisted participants on a first-come, first-served basis. NFT holders are promised a 5% token allocation, with 50% unlocking at the Token Generation Event (TGE) and the rest vesting over six months. The sale implied a fully diluted valuation (FDV) ranging from $540 million to $1.14 billion, depending on token supply assumptions, competitive with other Ethereum scaling solutions. Combining the Seed round ($20M), Echo round ($10M), and NFT sale ($27.73M), MegaETH has secured approximately $57.73 million in total funding by March 25, 2025.

MegaETH reportedly turned down a $1 billion VC offer to prioritize broader token distribution via community-focused methods like the Echo round and NFT sale. This aligns with sentiments from supporters like BMAN of ABCDE Venture, who praised the project for favoring community ownership over higher VC valuations. The funding has supported key milestones, including the public testnet launch on March 6, 2025, which achieved 20,000 TPS and 10-millisecond block times in initial testing. This mix of institutional backing, community participation, and innovative fundraising (via NFTs) reflects MegaETH’s strategy to blend strong financial support with a decentralized ethos, positioning it as a contender in Ethereum’s scaling race.

Despite early hiccups, like RPC memory issues reported shortly after launch, the team has been refining the network, with full public access solidified by March 21, 2025. This launch, backed by $30 million in funding from heavyweights like Vitalik Buterin and Dragonfly Capital, NFT sales, underscores MegaETH’s ambition to push Ethereum’s boundaries. Whether it can sustain these metrics, and scale further will be key as it progresses toward a mainnet release later in 2025. For now, it’s live, operational, and open for testing—bridging Web2-like performance with Web3 potential.