$MEGA, the developer behind Ethereum scaling network MegaETH, has cut 20% of its staff as it prepares to launch an artificial intelligence marketplace in December.
Co-founder Shuyao Kong announced the layoffs Friday without disclosing how many positions were lost, saying the cuts affected staff working on the blockchain, wallet and ecosystem. The founders and core engineering team remain.
“We realized that staying a chain-only company felt wrong and would have meant ignoring the biggest opportunity in front of us,” Kong wrote on social media earlier in the week.
The restructuring follows the MegaETH Foundation’s rebrand as $MEGA and a $30 million commitment from its treasury to build products on the network, starting with AI services.
Meanwhile, activity on MegaETH has weakened. Total value locked in its decentralized finance ecosystem is currently $8.8 million, down from a peak above $240 million, according to DeFiLlama data. The layer-2 network, initially designed to make blockchain-based applications such as trading and games faster, saw its token fall by more than 70% this year, according to CoinDesk data.
$MEGA plans to launch a marketplace where customers can purchase access to AI models from competing providers. Its white paper proposes ways for buyers to verify which models are being used and reserve computing capacity at agreed prices, although the company has not confirmed which features will be available at launch.
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