MegaETH to Shut Down ‘Mega Mafia’ Accelerator After Two Years

MegaETH, an Ethereum scalability project, is shutting down its in-house accelerator program, Mega Mafia, after two years.

MegaETH founder Shuyao Kong announced the decision on X on July 16, according to crypto media outlet The Block. He wrote that Mega Mafia had been successful in many ways, but the premise behind the program was no longer valid.

Mega Mafia was created to identify and support teams building new applications on the MegaETH platform. Across two cohorts, the program backed about 20 teams, which went on to raise a combined $80 million in funding from pre-seed through Series A.

But little of that success flowed back to MegaETH, Kong wrote. He added that most of the projects the program helped incubate are no longer developing alongside the company.

Several of Mega Mafia’s best-known projects have since moved to other platforms. Global Token Exchange, or GTE, said it would build its own chain. Social-media attention market platform Noise launched on Base after raising $7.1 million in a seed round led by Paradigm. HelloTrade chose Monad, while some projects including Avon and Valhalla are effectively no longer operating.

Kong also said MegaETH did not ask the startups it backed for equity stakes or governance rights. He said he wanted teams to genuinely share MegaETH’s vision and believe in its technology.

Instead of launching a third Mega Mafia cohort, MegaETH will shift to building its own applications. Kong said the accelerator amounted to an indirect bet on other teams’ results, while in-house apps would let MegaETH build direct relationships with end users and take full responsibility for the outcome.