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MEGA, the organization behind the Ethereum layer-2 network MegaETH, has cut 20% of its staff, co-founder Shuyao Kong said in a Nov. 13 post on X, as Cointelegraph reported. The departing employees worked on the project’s blockchain, wallet, ecosystem support and communications.
The reduction follows months of restructuring and a pivot toward artificial intelligence products on the MegaETH network. crypto.news reported that the cuts came days after the MegaETH Foundation adopted the new name MEGA and committed $30 million to product development, beginning with an AI inference market.
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Key facts
- MEGA reduced its workforce by 20%, and co-founder Shuyao Kong did not disclose the number of employees affected, the date of the layoffs, or a breakdown by team.
- The foundation announced its rebrand to MEGA on Nov. 10, alongside a $30 million commitment from its existing treasury to build products on MegaETH, crypto.news reported.
- Co-founders Yilong Li and Lei Yang authored a November white paper outlining a proposed inference market that would let users source AI services from competing providers and checks on which models are used and how data is handled.
- Kong said MEGA plans to launch a public inference market in December; details on its operation, providers and models are being held until launch.
- Kong said founders, early employees and the core engineering team remain committed to the organization.
What Kong said about the departures
Kong framed the change as bringing in new capabilities and reorganizing teams, and noted that the departing staff had helped build MEGA from its earliest days. She thanked them and offered to introduce them to prospective employers, according to crypto.news. The blockchain’s name is unchanged: MEGA’s website continues to list MegaETH as its blockchain division and describes MOSS as an account layer offering one wallet across applications with programmable permissions for people and AI agents.
In the white paper published by MEGA, Li and Yang describe a problem for unfamiliar suppliers: a cheaper inference service may not win customers who cannot establish which model is being run or how their data is handled. Their proposed “Purified Intelligence” approach treats inference as interchangeable across providers, which the paper presents as a way for more suppliers to compete for demand. Kong told The Block that details of the marketplace were being held until launch. All new products are intended to run on MegaETH, supported by planned network upgrades.
The earlier pivot away from the accelerator
The AI push follows a shift toward building applications in-house. In July, crypto.news reported that MegaETH was closing its accelerator after two Mega Mafia cohorts backed roughly 20 teams that collectively raised $80 million, with Kong saying most of the successful projects were no longer building on MegaETH. At the time she said resources would go toward first-party consumer products and applications designed around capabilities the team considered specific to MegaETH.
MegaETH launched its token on April 30 after 10 ecosystem applications met a first performance milestone, with a fixed supply of 10 billion MEGA and 53.3% allocated to performance-based staking rewards. In May, the foundation activated a stablecoin-funded buyback program, completing a first purchase with net income from USDm’s issuer through April 30.
Why it matters
The layoffs show a layer-2 project trading headcount for a product line it has not yet shipped, and they land only days after the foundation rebranded and pledged treasury funds to AI. For holders and builders, the question is whether the December inference market can draw users to MegaETH rather than to rival chains, particularly after several accelerator-backed teams chose other networks. Kong presented the cuts as a capabilities change rather than a funding emergency.
What to watch
The December launch of the public inference market is the next concrete milestone, and with it MEGA is expected to disclose which providers and models the marketplace will offer. The planned network upgrades meant to support the inference product are the other data point to track.
Reported by Cointelegraph.
Sources: Cointelegraph, crypto.news