Ethereum layer-2 network MegaETH has scheduled its mainnet debut for Feb. 9 following a week-long “global stress test” designed to confirm the high-performance chain is ready for public deployment.
After the network handled peak throughput of around 35,000 transactions per second during the seven-day test, MegaETH co-founder and chief technology officer Lei Yang celebrated the milestone on X, calling it “the fastest* EVM chain ever.”
The test saw MegaETH grant select users access to the mainnet to trial latency-sensitive applications, while developers simultaneously stress-tested the network behind the scenes.
During the exercise, the chain processed roughly 10.7 billion transactions from Web3 games such as Smasher, Crossy Fluffle, and Stomp.gg. One participant, Moonrock Capital founder and managing partner Simon Dedic, said the applications performed seamlessly in real time.
“No latency. No congestion. No degraded UX like you get on almost every other chain. Just apps that work, smoothly, in real time,” Dedic said, adding that it was “wild” MegaETH had already handled more transactions in a few days than Ethereum has in nearly 11 years—without sacrificing user experience.
“I don’t know about you, but this is what I want my onchain future to feel like.”
The 10.7 billion transactions recorded during the stress test came just shy of the MegaETH team’s 11 billion-transaction goal.
MegaETH claims sub-millisecond latency and throughput capacity exceeding 100,000 TPS, positioning the network as a potential frontrunner among the fastest blockchains in the industry. In earlier trials, the chain reportedly peaked at 47,000 TPS before sustaining roughly 35,000 TPS during the latest stress testing. That said, real-world performance is likely to be significantly lower once the network is live.
Comparable high-throughput chains, such as Solana, advertise a theoretical maximum of around 65,000 TPS, but in practice average closer to 3,400 TPS, according to Token Terminal data.
The project is backed by Ethereum co-founders Vitalik Buterin and Joe Lubin, alongside crypto venture firms including Dragonfly Capital, Figment Capital, and Big Brain Holdings.
Token sale setbacks
MegaETH’s path to mainnet has not been without challenges. In November, the team conducted a pre-deposit sale designed to bootstrap liquidity and allocate future tokens ahead of launch, rather than holding a traditional public token sale.
The initiative raised $500 million, but the funds were later returned after a series of technical and operational issues, including system misconfigurations, a multisignature transaction error, and know-your-customer (KYC) problems.
