Bankless: Can MegaETH unlock new use cases for cryptocurrencies?

Author: David C, Bankless; Translator: Deng Tong, Golden Finance

MegaETH's Soul NFT community fundraising for Fluffles has quickly become the hottest topic on crypto Twitter since its launch, but the much-hyped Vitalik-backed L2 has attracted a lot of attention in recent months after it received $20 million in venture capital and an oversubscribed $10 million round on the Echo community fundraising platform.

While its community-centric fundraising approach is a positive push for traditional venture capital-backed models, MegaETH's main selling point is to provide millisecond block confirmations without compromising security, achieving what it calls a "real-time" blockchain - an on-chain experience that feels like using a traditional web2 server.

Let's take a look at the internals of MegaETH and how early builders can do things at such a fast speed.

Who is behind MegaETH?

MegaETH’s core development team, MegaLabs, has had to push the boundaries in multiple aspects of blockchain R&D to achieve MegaETH’s goals. The project relies on specialized node setups, optimized block production, and other overall performance upgrades to build a next-generation system. What does all of this actually mean? Let’s take a closer look.

Specialized Nodes

MegaETH uses four different node types with varying hardware requirements to achieve fast, efficient block production. First, a single sequencer quickly organizes transactions and produces new blocks every 1-10 milliseconds, so confirmations are nearly instant. Replica nodes only receive the results of these transactions, making their job easier and allowing them to run on simpler hardware. Full nodes recheck every transaction, providing people with strong security guarantees. Meanwhile, prover nodes process cryptographic proofs in the background, so the main network can continue to run quickly without the burden of the work required to complete these jobs.

Optimizing Blocks

As mentioned above, MegaETH targets block times in milliseconds. It also adjusts the number of transactions it can fit in each block based on how fast different nodes of the network are working. It also charges extra fees for operations that update the network state more frequently, which helps avoid slowdowns during peak usage—a problem that often plagues other EVM-based blockchains. By combining ultra-fast blocks, flexible gas management, and a two-step finality approach (Ethereum confirms everything in the background), MegaETH should theoretically be reliable and efficient even under heavy demand.

Improving Performance Across the Board

MegaETH didn’t just speed up one part of the EVM, it overhauled all of it. The chain offloads big data tasks to EigenDA, letting a single sorter focus on keeping up speed instead of dealing with storage limitations. It also uses methods like parallel indexing to manage tens of thousands of transactions per second. While many blockchains run into trouble if they optimize one part and ignore others, resulting in delays in data synchronization or transaction confirmations, MegaETH aims to keep the entire process live, an ambitious task that traders will soon be able to judge for themselves in a testnet.

Improvements

Finally, MegaETH organizes data in a novel way to process transactions at such a high rate. It keeps key information in memory rather than on slower disk storage, making it possible to read or write data almost instantly. After each batch of transactions, the sequencer sends only the changes (rather than the full transaction history) to other nodes, so they don't have to redo all the work themselves. MegaETH has also improved the way it records account balances and other network details, avoiding the slowdowns that often occur when blockchains update their data structures too frequently. All in all, this allows MegaETH to achieve 100,000 transactions per second while still producing a block every few milliseconds.

Five Projects Built on MegaETH

The speed pursued by MegaETH will not only make the crypto applications we are familiar with smoother and enhance their usage experience, but also aims to open up a new design space for applications that require instant and scalable on-chain interactions. Here are five upcoming projects on MegaETH that demonstrate the advantages of the chain.

Euphoria

Euphoria intends to reimagine derivatives trading as a fun, social and easy-to-understand transaction.

Rather than forcing people to learn complex financial instruments, Euphoria launches "click trading" where users can predict price movements with just a quick click, and presents everything through a game-like user interface designed specifically for mobile devices. The experience is designed to be inherently social and gamified, with features such as chat, point systems, and rewards that can turn trading into a friendly competition. With the fast finality of MegaETH, Euphoria can provide real-time price updates, instant payments, and a fun, efficiency-driven atmosphere reminiscent of social media platforms such as TikTok.

We’re coming out of stealth - it’s time to get excited.

Trading has long been designed to feel serious, complex and intense. But it isn’t.

Today, that changes.

Introducing Euphoria - Making Trading an Experience.

— Euphoria (@Euphoria_fi) January 13, 2025

Sweep

Sweep transforms live entertainment into an interactive experience where viewers can make real-time predictions about streamers and live events.

Whether betting on who will “win the map” or how many kills a streamer might get, the platform supports instant live predictions, allowing users to place and settle bets in minutes, increasing engagement on streams. Due to the fast pace of play, these predictions need to be settled quickly to be possible. This is where MegaETH’s millisecond block times come into play, improving upon the current Web 2 rails that currently power Sweep.

The future of entertainment isn’t just about watching — it’s about living it.

That’s why we built Sweep, a way to win money by making real-time predictions on your favorite streamers and live events. No longer are you just passively watching a stream, you become part of it…

— Sweep (@trysweep) January 9, 2025

Noise

Noise hopes to capture and trade the value of attention by creating a real-time market for trending topics.

Rather than dealing with traditional supply and demand dynamics, Noise intends to use a continuous stream of data to show whether a trend is gaining or losing popularity. While few people will share these trends beyond their original post, they could transcend the crypto narrative and into real life, potentially leaving you short on energy drinks, for example. By focusing on what the world cares about most, Noise hopes to reinvent how culture is discovered, shared, and rewarded — moving us from “paying attention” to “getting paid for it.”

Unexpected use cases for cryptocurrencies have always captured attention.

The only currency that truly matters is how we spend our time.

Introducing Noise: The platform for trading trends.

— Noise (@noise_xyz) December 3, 2024

Lemonade

Lemonade wants to create a comprehensive community platform for event management, token utility, and AI-driven automation, giving organizers a single endpoint to orchestrate all stages of the community lifecycle.

By allowing event planners to tokenize check-ins, tickets, or other loyalty features using simple no-code tools, Lemonade wants to make it easier than ever to reward or engage attendees. Additionally, to manage outreach, the platform incorporates AI agents to automate tasks such as marketing, logistics, or event coordination.

Lemonade redefines how creators and communities connect, going fully on-chain Lemonade Stands on MegaETH- Lemonade redefines how creators and communities connect, providing a one-stop platform for your store, events, and community hub.

— Lemonade (@lemonade_events) January 29, 2025

Pump Party

Pump Party hopes to bring crypto to a mainstream audience with a live, interactive game show that blends a lucrative prize pool, mobile gaming, and social events.

Taking a page from popular phenomena like Mr. Beast’s massive giveaway videos, Pump Party hopes to appeal to the masses, welcoming people outside of the crypto space to join and compete for big prizes in real time. Players will be able to chat, stream, and participate simultaneously, making every game a shared community event. The entire structure is focused on entertainment first, while using the cryptocurrency rails to power behind-the-scenes efforts like payments fairly and instantly.

The average person knows nothing about crypto.

We live in a small bubble compared to the general population.

Introducing Pump Party: the first app designed to put crypto into the hands of millions of new people.

— Pump Party (@pumppartyapp) December 10, 2024

Summary

MegaETH’s vision of a “live” blockchain appears to offer hope for Ethereum’s future, while potentially opening up a new design space for cryptocurrency builders.

By relying on dedicated nodes, smart gas adjustments, and a memory-based state solution, the chain’s overhauled EVM brings an exciting upgrade to cryptocurrency’s dominant execution environment, hoping to make blockchain experiences comparable to modern web services. Additionally, MegaETH’s community focus, raised through Echo and minted through Fluffle, offers a new perspective on the stale, exclusively VC-backed model, building a broader base of supporters for MegaETH from the outset.

The chain’s novel launch and design approach appear to be influencing the projects it’s attracted early on, with early builders skewing heavily towards SocialFi and DeFi. The early diversity of applications bodes well for MegaETH’s eventful future public testnet launch, which early backers hope will also inject new capital and some much-needed better vibes into the Ethereum ecosystem as a whole.