Vitalik Buterin backs new blockchain MegaETH as it raises $20 million at '9-figure' token valuation

MegaLabs, the developer of a new blockchain called MegaETH, has raised $20 million in a seed funding round.

MegaLabs began raising funds for the seed round last December and closed it in May, co-founder and chief business officer Shuyao Kong told The Block. The round was structured as equity plus token warrants and brought MegaETH's fully diluted token valuation to a "9-figure" amount, Kong said, meaning at least $100 million.

Dragonfly led the seed round, with Figment Capital, Robot Ventures, Big Brain Holdings and others participating, MegaLabs said Thursday. Angel investors, including Ethereum ETH +2.47% co-founder Vitalik Buterin, ConsenSys founder and CEO Joseph Lubin, EigenLayer founder and CEO Sreeram Kannan, ETHGlobal co-founder Kartik Talwar, Helius Labs co-founder and CEO Mert Mumtaz, Santiago Santos, Hasu and Jordan Fish, aka Cobie, also joined the round.

What is MegaLabs and its blockchain MegaETH?

MegaLabs was founded in early 2023 by Kong, a former global head of business development at Consensys, and Yilong Li, who holds a PhD in computer science from Stanford University and previously worked at software company Runtime Verification Inc., Kong said. Kong added that she still stays on with Consensys as an advisor.

The idea of the MegaETH blockchain emerged because most Ethereum virtual machine (EVM)-compatible blockchains can only achieve 3-digit transactions per second (TPS), while MegaETH aims to achieve 100,000 TPS, Kong said.

MegaETH dubs itself as the first "real-time blockchain" with full Ethereum compatibility. Real-time here means MegaETH is capable of processing transactions "as soon as they arrive and publishing the resulting updates in real-time," Kong said. "Further, it must support high transaction throughput and substantial compute capacity to maintain the real-time experience even during peak user demand," she added.

MegaETH uses Ethereum security, Optimism 's fault-proof system and its own optimized sequencer to achieve real-time performance, Kong said.

Specifically, MegaETH's two key techniques — a heterogeneous blockchain architecture and a "hyper-optimized" EVM execution environment — help it achieve 100,000 TPS in real time, the project said. The heterogeneous blockchain architecture boosts performance by allowing network nodes with different hardware configurations to specialize in specific tasks, and the hyper-optimized EVM execution environment pushes throughput, latency and resource efficiency to hardware limits, MegaLabs said.

"These techniques stand in stark contrast to today's homogenous architectures, which can only utilize less than 1% of the compute capacity of a modern web2 server," it added.

On investing in MegaLabs, Buterin said in a statement, "Creating hyper-scalable EVM implementations is a key prerequisite for truly scaling Ethereum. I am excited to see brilliant developers taking on this challenge."

MegaETH launch timeline

MegaETH's public testnet will go live in early fall, with the mainnet expected near the end of the year, Kong said. When asked if MegaETH's native token will launch alongside the mainnet, Kong said that decision has yet to be made.

With fresh funding in place, MegaLabs plans to continue building its blockchain, onboard developers and grow its community, Kong said. MegaLabs recently launched a builder program called MegaMafia to help developers around the world co-build with the MegaLabs team and its advisors.

Currently, fewer than 20 people are working on MegaETH, and Kong isn't looking to hire more people.

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