What Is MegaETH: The Ethereum L2 Backed by Vitalik Buterin

What Is MegaETH?

MegaETH is an upcoming high performance Ethereum Layer 2 (L2). MegaETH’s key features include: Transaction Processing Speeds (TPS) of over 100,000 and 10 millisecond block times (lower is better). MegaETH has recently gained significant public attention due to launching an exclusive soulbound (not tradeable) NFT collection.

Key Takeaways

• MegaETH is an upcoming high performance Ethereum Layer 2.

• MegaETH is backed by notable investors including Dragonfly Capital and Vitalik Buterin.

• The team is launching a 10,000 supply soulbound (untradeable) NFT collection in order to raise funds and promises a token allocation.

About MegaETH

MegaETH was founded by Yilong Li, who first conceptualized MegaETH in 2022. Development on the blockchain kickstarted in mid 2024, after a successful fund raise.

MegaETH’s timeline:

In a growing list of Ethereum L2s, MegaETH aims to differentiate themselves by being the fastest and highest performing L2.

List of EVM chains and their respective performance metrics:

Source: MegaETH

While the team currently boasts blockchain capabilities of 10 milliseconds (0.01s), their real goal is actually to bring it down to 1 millisecond, making it the world’s first “real-time blockchain”. Should the team be able to reach this goal, they would be able to bring Web2 levels of responsiveness to the crypto world, which would be a huge achievement.

Airdrop/Growth Potential

According to Cryptorank, MegaETH raised $20 million on 27 June 2024, $10 million on 13 December and with plans of raising a further $27 million (via the NFT mint). Altogether, the total funds raised by the end of Q1 2025, is expected to be at around $57 million.

This figure is relatively conservative when compared to the funds raised by other Ethereum L2s such as Blast, ZkSync and Scroll which had raised several hundred millions. With anti-vc sentiment growing in the airdrop farming space, this generally lower fund raise could be seen as bullish for some airdrop farmers.

Notable Investors

Several high profile investors that participated in the $20 million seed round include: Dragonfly Capital, Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum founder) and angel investor Santiago R. Santos.

MegaETH NFT collection

The MegaETH team announced their flagship NFT collection, “The Fluffe” on 5 February 2025. The Fluffe is a whitelist only 10,000 supply collection of humanoid rabbits that costs 1 ETH each to mint. The NFTs will be soulbound after minting (untradeable), the mint will happen in two phases, with the first phase starting on February 12, lasting two days.

Introducing our Flagship MegaETH NFT Collection: The Fluffle.

10,000 NFTs, soulbound, representing meaningful ownership in the MegaETH network. pic.twitter.com/RaDw9GRfl5

— MegaETH (@megaeth_labs) February 5, 2025

Why an NFT Collection?

According to the team, the NFT collection is a method to give the community “meaningful skin in the game”. The team went on to share that blockchain launches often attract airdrop farmers and that points programs often inflate metrics in an unhealthy manner. To avoid that, they decided to launch an NFT collection instead. Minting the NFT shows “conviction and commitment”. The team currently plans to airdrop at least 5% of MegaETH’s token supply to NFT holders. Token allocation would increase as users “evolve” their NFTs.

What Is an NFT Mint?

An NFT mint refers to the instance where an NFT is created, rather than purchased on a secondary market such as OpenSea. It’s similar to a Token Generation Event (TGE), where new tokens are introduced into circulation. For highly anticipated NFT collections, where supply is limited, mints often come with network congestion and higher gas fees as users compete to secure their NFTs.

How to Check If You're On the MegaETH NFT WhiteList

As mentioned, this NFT mint is whitelist only, meaning that only invited users are eligible to participate in this upcoming mint. 80K active Ethereum wallet addresses have been whitelisted for the first phase mint. You may check your eligibility here (nft.megaeth.com/). No matter your eligibility, you must register and link your socials to the eligible wallet prior to 12 February in order to be eligible for the RNG (randomized) raffle on the second day of the first phase of the NFT mint.

The First Phase of The Fluffe NFT Mint

The first phase of the mint will commence on February 12 (5,000 NFTs) and is open to a small number of wallets; this is the guaranteed whitelist for dedicated supporters and special partners, who can mint the NFTs for free (1,500 NFTs in total). 

The second day of the first phase is on February 13 (3,500 NFTs in total) and is open to a larger pool of whitelist participants. For this second day, 5,000 wallet addresses will be randomly selected, only registered users have a chance to be selected. Since 5,000 addresses will be gunning for 3,500 NFTS, the second day is “first come first served”. This second day is not to be confused with the second phase of the NFT mint, which will happen at an unconfirmed date “a few months after the first phase”.

Source: MegaETH

Design Features of The Fluffe Collection

While not as impactful as the tokenomics and potential airdrop gain of MegaETH, here are some of the design features of the NFT mint. Each Fluffe will have a unique appearance and belong to one of 16 cabals as part of a cool fictional story:

1. The Outlaw

2. The Executor

3. The Soldier

4. The Sage

5. The Witch

6. The Playboy

7. The Femme Fatale

8. The Musician

9. The Scientist

10. The Boss

11. The Samurai

12. The Innocent

13. The Muscular

14. The Mad

15. The Pilot

16. The Yob

In addition to being part of a clan, each Fluffe will also feature customizable cosmetics, a 2D profile picture and an option of “evolving”, which would also increase token allocation. Not much is known about the evolution feature at this moment.

Conclusion

Overall, the crypto community (on X) have mixed reactions to the MegaETH team launching and implementing an airdrop campaign in this manner (via NFTs). On one hand, the NFT collection is highly anticipated and is a welcome change from all the mostly unlucrative points farming. On the other hand, the NFT mint can also be seen as a “cash grab”, and an expensive one at that with each NFT costing 1 ETH ($2800 at the time of writing). That being said, the NFT collection is positioned as a form of public fund raising, with the team clearly promising a token allocation. 

It remains to be seen if the team would be able to execute and deliver on their promises but a strong community backing could help drive the project’s success.

This article is only for informational purposes and should not be taken as financial advice.