Key Points
- MegaETH Parent Company MEGA Confirms 20% Layoffs
- The organization has committed to investing $30 million in the new AI product.
- The public AI inference market is planned to be launched in December 2026.
MEGA is the organization behind Ethereum's Layer 2 network and MegaETH. The organization has laid off 20% of its staff and has pledged to invest $30 million in its new artificial intelligence business, marking a significant strategic shift for this project, which was initially built around high-speed blockchain transactions.
In a statement on November 13th, co-founder Shuyao Kong confirmed that after several months of restructuring, employees have resigned from departments including blockchain development, wallet operations, ecosystem support, and outreach.
Just three days after this announcement was made, announcing that MegaETH Foundation would be renamed MEGA and that AI would be launched in December, there was a stark contrast between layoffs and new investments.
MegaETH announced layoffs a few days after pledging to invest $30 million AI
Kong did not disclose the specific number of employees affected, nor did they explain the financial reasons for the layoffs. She confirmed that the founder, early employees, and the core engineering team are still part of the organization.
At the time of this reorganization, the Ethereum ecosystem is also undergoing broader changes, including the Ethereum Foundation laying off 20% of its staff earlier this year.
The $30 million that MEGA has committed to investing will come from its existing treasury as well as products built on the basis of MegaETH. It will first be used for AI's inference services.
Unlike the developers of the AI model, the goal of MEGA is to create a market that connects customers with competitive suppliers providing the computing power required to run trained models.
This decision comes at a time when Ethereum’s Layer 2 network is handling the majority of transactions within the broader ecosystem, and competition among scaling projects is fierce.
Why MegaETH aims to surpass blockchain infrastructure
The design goal of MegaETH is to achieve extremely fast transaction processing speeds while maintaining a connection with Ethereum's security infrastructure.
However, developers are facing increasing pressure to prove that these applications can provide a rationale for building dedicated blockchains, especially after Vitalik Buterin questioned whether the Layer 2 network should continue to compete mainly on transaction speed.
MEGA plans to launch AI, which aims to address another issue: customers are not always able to verify whether unfamiliar suppliers are indeed using the AI models they claim to use, or whether they are properly handling sensitive information.
Its November technology white paper outlines a system aimed at making the AI inference services more substitutable through cryptographic verification, privacy protection, and supplier competition.
This approach is similar to the more widespread privacy-oriented AI access trend, which involves using cryptographic tools to separate user identities from the services they use.
What will happen to the MegaETH and MEGA tokens next?
MEGA indicates that its new product will operate on the existing MegaETH blockchain, rather than replacing it.
The organization also outlined plans for faster final confirmation of transactions, sorter rotation, and further decentralization improvements, with the goal of making progress in the first quarter of 2027.
For token holders, the key question is whether the new AI business will create substantial demand for MEGA, rather than just being an expansion of the project's ambitions.
This distinction is very important, because even if developers launch new services, the cryptocurrencies that focus on AI will not automatically gain economic value.
The broader Ethereum ecosystem, including projects such as Base which also includes Coinbase, has seen its technical strategies adjusted as blockchain infrastructure evolves.
