MegaETH Closes Mega Mafia Accelerator: Strategic Pivot or Acknowledgment of Failure?
The team behind the L2 solution MegaETH has decided to shut down the Mega Mafia accelerator after two years of operation. Project co-founder Shuyao Kong has officially confirmed that a new cohort will not be launched. During its operation, the program supported around twenty teams, which collectively raised approximately $80 million in investments.
At first glance, this decision looks like a strategic shift away from external incubation in favor of focusing on internal development. However, as Kong notes, most of the successful applications that went through the accelerator have left the MegaETH ecosystem. This is a worrying sign: if the best projects that received an initial boost see no prospects in staying within the network, it calls into question the effectiveness of the developer attraction model itself.
Situation Analysis: What Lies Behind the Decision?
On one hand, closing the accelerator could be a logical step toward maturity: instead of spreading resources across numerous startups, the MegaETH team intends to focus on building its own flagship products. On the other hand, the departure of successful teams from the ecosystem is a classic symptom of the "chicken and egg" problem, where infrastructure outpaces the development of useful applications, and developers simply use grants and support to later migrate to more liquid or popular platforms.
My professional opinion: The $80 million raised by startups from Mega Mafia is a significant amount, but it does not guarantee loyalty. Closing the accelerator is an admission that the "grow and release" model failed to retain talent. Now, MegaETH will have to prove its viability not through external programs, but through the quality of its own product and real utility for users. The L2 solutions market is too competitive to afford the luxury of losing the best teams.