Ecological giants frequently leave, MegaETH faces a core project exodus dilemma

MegaETH’s ecosystem is undergoing a test. Another major player is about to depart. On January 14, MegaETH’s early incubation project Noise announced the completion of a $7.1 million seed round, but the focus of attention was not the funding amount itself, rather the surprising decision made by this once-promising star project — choosing to launch its mainnet on Base instead of deepening its presence within the MegaETH ecosystem. This scene reflects both the free flow of projects within the crypto ecosystem and serves as a warning bell for the retention challenges faced by this accelerator ecosystem.

From Funding Darling to Independent Developer

Noise’s latest funding lineup demonstrates its level of attention. The round was led by well-known venture capital firm Paradigm, with co-investors including Figment Capital, Anagram, GSR, JPEG Trading, and KaitoAI. Angel investors featured industry figures such as Jordi Hays, Dan Romero, and Kain Warwick.

This New York-based startup has once again attracted capital within just half a year, thanks to its unique business model. Noise positions itself as an attention trading platform aimed at capturing online social buzz, allowing users to go long or short contracts related to trends, brands, and ideas, similar to stock trading. The platform aggregates activity data from X to calculate attention indices for each trend, combined with real capital voting from traders, forming market prices that reflect both objective data and subjective trading beliefs.

For users, this innovative tool opens new possibilities — brand managers can hedge marketing risks, investors can express confidence in emerging talents or technological directions, and the entire market provides real-time “hotness rankings.”

Noise’s model has preliminarily proven market demand. Since launching its beta version in May last year, 1,300 users contributed trading volume across 14 markets. Three months later, the active retention rate of first-month users remained at 62%, with an average session length of 17 minutes, demonstrating the genuine appeal of attention economy.

The current round of funding will be used to accelerate trading infrastructure development and push forward the mainnet release. Notably, Noise plans to launch its mainnet on Base in the coming months, open to the public, and support real capital trading — a strategic direction that diverges from MegaETH’s expectations.

Ecosystem Major Players Depart One After Another, MegaETH Faces Capacity Challenges

Noise’s decision to choose Base over MegaETH has sparked widespread discussion within the community and exposed core challenges faced by the MegaETH ecosystem.

According to the plan, Noise will complete its mainnet deployment on Base. As a Layer 2 supported by Coinbase, Base boasts a large user base and ample liquidity. Some voices suggest that, for the attention economy track which is fundamentally a traffic business, backing a large ecosystem like Base might be more capable of supporting growth than the technically hardcore but early-stage MegaETH.

However, this move is also seen by some as a betrayal. Noise was a star project under MegaETH’s accelerator Megamafia, receiving key incubation support. Now, at “graduation,” it has chosen to leave. MegaETH’s official account even unfollowed Noise’s founder on the day of the funding announcement, reflecting disappointment from the ecosystem side.

Yet, Noise is not the only major player MegaETH has lost.

As early as June 2025, DEX project GTE announced it had secured a $15 million Series A funding round led exclusively by Paradigm, with total funding exceeding $25 million. This was interpreted by the community as a significant signal of MegaETH’s rising influence. However, just two months later, GTE announced it would develop independently, leaving a provocative statement: “GTE has grown up, and now it’s leaving Mega Mafia.” Even more notably, this project, which attracted over a million users during its testnet phase, later announced the launch of an independent mainnet, fully detaching from the ecosystem.

The situation with stablecoin project Cap is somewhat different but equally noteworthy. It received $11 million from Franklin Templeton and Triton Capital. While Cap has not fully left MegaETH, it adopted a dual-chain strategy, prioritizing Ethereum and MegaETH as auxiliary, which is seen as a sign of limited confidence in MegaETH’s native liquidity.

The consecutive loss of core major players undoubtedly presents a severe ecosystem retention challenge for the still-in-early-stage MegaETH. These departures not only take away users and liquidity but also drain the development momentum of the ecosystem.

Dilemma and Reflection: Dual Considerations of Incubation Capability and Ecosystem Capacity

From another perspective, the successful funding and independent development of these projects also reflect MegaETH’s incubation ability. Being able to incubate projects recognized by top institutions like Paradigm proves the ecosystem’s talent recognition and early support capacity. GTE attracted over a million users, and Noise demonstrated remarkable user stickiness during its beta testing. These achievements are inseparable from MegaETH’s early-stage incubation and support.

However, this also highlights a deeper issue: why do excellent projects, once incubated, choose to leave after reaching a certain stage?

The fundamental reason lies in the insufficient ecosystem capacity. In the growth process of crypto projects, support is needed not only during incubation but also liquidity support during maturity. Base, backed by Coinbase, has a large user base and abundant trading pairs and liquidity. MegaETH, despite its technological innovation, has relatively weak infrastructure such as user base, DeFi liquidity, and cross-chain bridges, which makes mature projects naturally seek growth in ecosystems with more mature conditions.

For MegaETH, this is both a warning and an opportunity. Ecosystem construction cannot stop at supporting incubated projects; it requires building a complete infrastructure system, including sufficient liquidity, robust bridging solutions, and sound governance. Only then can it retain successful projects and attract more projects to realize the full cycle of from 0 to 1 and from 1 to N within its ecosystem.