MegaETH’s debut for its MEGA token has been a bumpy one. DLNews reports that the Ethereum layer 2 blockchain, which lists Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin among its early investors, launched on Thursday and began trading around 11 am London time. The token briefly surged, hitting an all-time high of $0.38, based on CoinGecko data cited by DLNews.
Then the momentum flipped. DLNews says MEGA quickly sold off, dropping roughly 55% to trade near $0.17. The same report notes that buyers from MegaETH’s October public token sale are still in profit, even after the sharp pullback.
DLNews adds that MegaETH sold tokens at a clearing price of $0.0999 each, raising just under $50 million from the public sale. It also says MegaETH sold an additional 500 million tokens through a $10 million funding round on Echo, priced at $0.02 per token. That mix of pricing and early trading pressure helps explain why the headline move looks dramatic, even if some sale participants remain up.
Investor appetite also seems to be cooling. DLNews points to a broader market slowdown since October, when the report says a structural crash triggered over $19 billion in leverage liquidations. Since then, DLNews says interest has leaned toward established assets such as Bitcoin, leaving many new launches exposed.
Launch hype meets deposits reality
MegaETH markets itself as a “real-time blockchain” with claims of over 100,000 transactions per second, DLNews reports. But the report also describes a slow start after raising substantial capital. DLNews says the project secured $30 million in venture funding and raised about $108 million in total, including near $28 million by selling NFTs and another $50 million selling tokens.
On usage, DLNews cites DefiLlama data that MegaETH has only logged $314 million in deposits to DeFi protocols since launching in February. It says Aave accounts for just over 71% of those deposits. For context, the report compares this with Ethereum hosting about $63 billion in deposits to DeFi protocols.
DLNews also frames MegaETH’s volatility as part of a wider pattern for “hyped-up” chains. It mentions Plasma, which launched its XPL token in September, then fell about 94% from a $1.68 high. It also cites Monad, whose token launched in November and is down about 43% from its early peak.
The through-line in DLNews is simple. New token launches can still be followed by fast declines when market attention fades and activity does not scale as expected.