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MegaETH mainnet to go live Feb. 9 in major test of ‘real-time’ Ethereum scaling

This follows its October 2025 $450 million token sale that was heavily oversubscribed.

Jan 28, 2026, 6:22 p.m.
(MegaLabs)

What to know:

  • MegaETH, the much-watched high-performance Ethereum layer-2 network, announced that its public mainnet will go live Feb. 9, marking a major milestone for a project that has gained a lot of attention in the scaling landscape.
  • MegaETH positions itself as a “real-time” blockchain for Ethereum, designed to deliver ultra-low latency and massive transaction throughput.

MegaETH, the much-watched high-performance Ethereum layer-2 network, announced that its public mainnet will go live Feb. 9, marking a major milestone for a project that has gained a lot of attention in the scaling landscape.

MegaETH positions itself as a “real-time” blockchain for Ethereum, designed to deliver ultra-low latency and massive transaction throughput.

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The project has attracted significant attention and capital over the past year. MegaETH has been backed by prominent figures in the Ethereum ecosystem, like Ethereum co-founders Vitalik Buterin and Joe Lubin, and has raised millions of dollars to date. Most recently in October 2025, it completed a $450 million token sale that was heavily oversubscribed, CoinDesk previously reported.

That sale, which offered roughly 5% of the protocol’s 10 billion MEGA supply, saw thousands of investors rush into allocations within minutes, underscoring intense demand for next-generation scaling infrastructure.‌‌

The project is being developed by MegaLabs which raised $20 million in a seed round led by Dragonfly in 2024, pitching MegaETH as a new kind of real-time blockchain rather than a traditional scaling solution.

MegaLabs has said that the protocol is designed for applications that need near-instant transaction speeds, such as trading platforms, games and other consumer-facing crypto apps — an area where Ethereum has historically struggled during periods of heavy use.

Read more: MegaETH Raises $450M in Oversubscribed Token Sale Backed by Ethereum Founders

AI Disclaimer: Parts of this article were generated with the assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk's full AI Policy.

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What to know:

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk's weekly wrap of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I’m Margaux Nijkerk, a reporter at CoinDesk.

In this issue:

  • Robinhood starts testing its own blockchain as its push into crypto and tokenization deepens.
  • Citadel Securities backs LayerZero as it unveils ‘Zero’ blockchain for global markets.
  • MegaETH debuts mainnet as Ethereum scaling debate heats up.
  • Ethereum's ENS identity system scraps planned rollup after Vitalik's warning about layer-2 networks.