MegaETH sunsets Mega Mafia accelerator program, noting 'most' of its successful apps left

Ethereum scaling project MegaETH is sunsetting its flagship Mega Mafia accelerator program after two years and two cohorts, according to an X post on Thursday from core MegaETH team member Shuyao Kong.

"While it was a success in many ways, we believe that the program was built on assumptions that no longer hold," Kong said. 

The program, designed to incubate builders creating "0-to-1" and "OMEGA" applications building on MegaETH’s unique platform, supported about 20 teams that went on to raise approximately $80 million in pre-seed to Series A funding, according to Kong. 

MegaETH "hand-picked teams" that then "co-lived and co-built with the MegaETH core team," which also offered technical, managerial and market-making support, among other forms of bootstrapping. 

"In many ways, the Mega Mafia was the best incubator of this cycle. But very little of that value has trickled to Mega," Kong wrote, adding that of the projects successfully incubated, "most of those applications are no longer being built with us."

Indeed, many of the most high-profile Mega Mafia projects have decided to build elsewhere. 

Flagship MegaETH project Global Token Exchange (GTE) announced after the first Mafia program that it "has grown up" and decided to build its own chain. GTE has raised $25 million across multiple funding rounds.

Noise, a so-called social media attention market, decided to launch on Base after raising a $7.1 million seed round led by Paradigm in January 2026. HelloTrade tapped Monad, while other projects heavily backed by MegaETH like Avon and Valhalla appear to have shut down. 

Cap, a buzzy stablecoin project, launched on MegaETH in early 2026, is pursuing a multichain strategy. 

Kong noted that MegaETH did not take equity or any ownership or governance position in the startups it incubated, on the belief that it would foster genuine alignment with MegaETH’s long-term goals. 

"We wanted people to be genuinely bought into the Mega vision and the power of our technology," she said. "Our ecosystem goal going forward is to support teams building OMEGA applications, apps that are only possible on MegaETH, using our wallet infrastructure and stablecoin."

OMEGA is shorthand for projects that only make sense on MegaETH.

MegaETH mainneted in February, but tied its MEGA token launch to the performance of its Mega Mafia apps. The token launched in April after 10 MegaETH apps launched and demonstrated significant value-add to the network, among other goals. 

Rather than supporting the Mega Mafia 3.0 cohort, Kong noted MegaETH will direct energy and funding to "first-party applications," targeting consumer-grade apps.

"Where MegaMafia was indirect, betting on other teams to build value we'd eventually capture, first-party apps let us build direct relationships with end users ourselves, with all the upside and accountability that comes with owning the outcome," Kong wrote.