MegaETH Lianchuang Shuyao: "Ten thousand years is too long" for Ethereum, we only seize the day | Conversation with projects on the RootData List

Interview: Mensh, ChainCatcher

Guest: Shuyao, co-founder of MegaETH

Author: Mensh, ChainCatcher

Editor 's note: During Devcon in Bangkok, the Web3 asset data platform RootData and ChainCatcher jointly held the "DeInsight 2024" annual summit, and officially released " RootData: 2024 Web3 Industry Development Research Report and Annual List" (click the link to view the full report and list).

This report provides a detailed analysis and interpretation of the development characteristics of the Web3 venture capital market in 2024, and releases the RootData List 2024. This list is the second annual selection launched by RootData after its first release in 2023. The results of the list are being watched by more entrepreneurs, investors, LPs and general Crypto enthusiasts.

RootData List 2024 covers five lists, specifically: Top50 projects (TGE has been completed), Top50 projects (TGE has not been carried out), Crypto VC Top 50 investment institutions, Top 10 angel investors, and Top 20 best CEOs.

ChainCatcher will publish a series of articles, talk to projects and institutions on the RootData List 2024, look for builders who have gone through bulls and bears, and track the latest trends in Web3.

MegaETH, the project on the list of today 's dialogue, was selected into RootData List's 2024 list of "Top50 Projects (Pre-TGE)".

On December 13, Mega Labs, the developer of the real-time blockchain MegaETH, raised US$10 million on the famous angel investment platform Echo, and all its shares were snatched up within 50 seconds.

As the first Ethereum “ real-time” blockchain , MegaETH acquired a number of industry insiders such as Vitalik Buterin, Joseph Lubin, Sreeram Kannan, and well-known VCs such as Dragonfly, Figment Capital, Robot Ventures, and Big Brain Holdings in June this year. investment. This time MegaETH gave up the opportunity to raise funds from VCs at a higher valuation. MegaETH Lianchuang Shuyao revealed to ChainCatcher that the new round of financing maintains the same valuation of hundreds of millions of dollars as the June financing, aiming to open the investment window equally to every community participant.

It is MegaETH's consistent style to not play by the rules. When the Ethereum community was talking about longevity and AI in Zuzalu and planning for 10,000 years later, Shuyao found that no one had solved the most urgent problem at the moment, which was the lack of a chain that was fast enough and cheap enough. MegaETH chooses to be an anti-hero, to pull Ethereum out of its 10,000-year dream, and seize the day.

The most pragmatic ideal cultivator

Shuyao discovered the crisis of Ethereum very early. On the one hand, she saw that the user and transaction data on Solana were very impressive. On the other hand, as the global business development director of ConsenSys , she was still looking for developers for Linea. She kept receiving complaints from developers. She found that although the existing Ethereum Layer 2 solutions were technically very sexy, the actual user experience was not improved. Ethereum lacks a particularly fast and cheap chain.

At this point, Shuyao met his later partners Li Yilong and Yang Lei. Li Yilong is a Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University, specializing in low-latency data center computing , that is, accelerating the execution environment. Yang Lei holds a Ph.D. in computer science from MIT and studies decentralized systems that can seamlessly connect a particularly fast execution layer with the Ethereum consensus layer. The three hit it off and decided to build a blockchain with explosive performance , and MegaETH was born. While the Ethereum community is still thinking about the longevity of mankind in 2050, MegaETH chooses to be the pragmatic alternative. To speed things up with a centralized sorter, MegaETH rewrote the data structure.

Shuyao believes that the so-called Layer 2 function is to expand the capacity, and does not want to bear the responsibility of security and consensus. If you build a lot of sequencers, it is equivalent to doing the things of Layer 1. 2021. Vitalik proposed Rollup's ideal roadmap in a blog called "Endgame" : centralized block production + decentralized block verification to achieve effective expansion while ensuring censorship resistance. Nowadays, compared to the many Optimistic Rollup and Zero-knowledge Rollup that make a fuss about Fraud Proof, MegaETH, which uses centralized sequencer hardware expansion, seems to be the Layer 2 closest to this architecture. From a performance perspective, MegaETH is indeed the chain closest to real-time processing.

According to Shuyao, the time required for a transaction to be executed is 400 milliseconds for Solana, 265 milliseconds for Arbitrum, and 10 milliseconds for MegaETH, which will soon become 1 millisecond. Low-latency performance brings a huge difference to the user experience. For example, in DeFi, arbitrage can be done and different strategies can be used; from a gaming perspective, users can play a variety of real-time games without delay.

The MegaETH testnet is currently being prepared and is expected to be launched in early 2025. At present, nearly 20 projects have been incubated in the on-chain ecology, all of which have extremely high requirements for the performance of the chain, such as decentralized VPN Hop Network, decentralized trading platform GTE, game live broadcast platform Pump Party, etc. Shuyao said that the developers recruited by MegaETH are carefully selected. First, it is necessary to have the ambition of mass adoption and focus on new application scenarios. Second, the particularity of the application can better highlight the high-performance technical advantages of MegaETH.

Shuyao said: "I'm not going to sell them (project parties) a chain, I'm going to sell them a dream. This dream is that they will become very successful entrepreneurs and build a protocol, which will definitely make 1 billion US dollars." " She also proudly mentioned that compared to MegaETH, its ecological projects have raised nearly 23 million US dollars, and it should be the first chain whose on-chain projects have raised more money than the chain.

Always community first, true cyberpunk

On December 13, Mega Labs received US$10 million in financing for Echo, which is the largest financing since Echo launched its beta version in April. According to The Block, this round of financing attracted about 3,200 investors from 94 countries, with the average check amount per investor being $3,140. During the open subscription period, the Echo platform and the Base chain used by the exchange were almost paralyzed.

Speaking of the reason why he chose to raise funds from Echo instead of looking for VC, Shuyao explained that MegaETH will always be "community first." "The previous model of raising a high-end round from VC and then selling it to retail investors is over. That old model made Leek work hard every day in Discord, which I think is very unfair. The fairest way to the community is to come directly As my investor, no matter you are a whale or a small shrimp, the price is so low. I will give everyone the same allocation, a few thousand dollars, and you can just come and buy it. I think this is the most cyberpunk place. .VC give me a big term Sheet (investment letter) has no additional value to me, and what is more valuable to me must be my users." She said that in the future, she may use special Crypto native methods to allow the community to participate early .

In The Block’s report, Shuyao highlighted that Hyperliquid’s recent successful token launch without venture capital involvement is evidence of the growing demand for community-driven projects. The future of blockchain lies in decentralization and fair ownership. MegaETH is committed to ensuring true community participation, following in the footsteps of Ethereum and prioritizing community ownership.

The world computer, the heroic dream of the anti-hero

There is a very interesting self-introduction on the homepage of Shuyao's Decrypt personal column——

She is from Beijing and went to study at Smith College in the United States. Because she resisted the standardization of the American dream, she chose to work in Nigeria, West Africa, for two years after graduation. There, she saw the country's poverty and corruption, witnessed the government's inactive monetary and financial policies, and discovered that poverty turned out to be man-made. It was also there that she first came into contact with someone using Bitcoin to transfer money between Africa and Europe.

In 2015, she came to the Middle East from Africa to work as a financial consultant at IBM, and later caught up with the ICO in 2017. Her experience in Africa and her belief in subverting traditional finance made her decide to enter the currency circle and became a founding employee of Consensys. She has been doing BD for more than 6 years. She mentioned: "In 2017, there was a MEME that particularly touched me, which was the world computer. I thought at the time, if Ethereum was the world computer, wouldn't everyone be Steve Jobs? This idea is very great. Because personally The computer can only make yourself stronger, but the world computer solves the problem of coordination between people. "

Nowadays, she is no longer the newcomer to the industry who is obsessed with the narrative of "disrupting traditional finance". Instead, she will ask in her blog, why is it so difficult to imagine a world where cryptocurrency can truly change the world for the better? The world is already functioning very well, what can crypto bring?

Shuyao's answer is: "It turns out that many things cannot be put on the chain. Many games or social products made by builders are still in the data inventory because the chain is not strong enough. Why is MegaETH a very revolutionary product? When you When the chain is strong enough, when you chain everything, you find that it can make you uncover A new market. This is the great thing about World Computer. It turns out that your data is stored in different databases, and they are not connected. But if we get through it, for example, go to Meituan to order something. and what you read on Xiaohongshu, etc., you can discover new Efficiency and the new Insight. Originally, people asked you what should be put on the chain. We hope to change the question to why you can’t put it on the chain? So I think this can open up a new world for everyone in this application scenario. "

From the chain to the operating system, bring good products to users

Speaking of the future roadmap, Shuyao said: "We have never regarded ourselves as a chain company. We are actually making an operating system, with chains and some API infrastructure projects on the operating system to help developers be more flexible. Good development, the front-end to obtain traffic, and the chain are our first steps. After that, we will expand the ecosystem or products around the chain. " According to reports, the MegaETH team is very Crypto-native, and everyone is experienced in Web3 products. user.

Conclusion

Shuyao believes that World Computer allows "small people to do big things, like you and me. I am an entrepreneur and you are a storyteller. World Computer allows us to gain an audience and everyone can discover new continents." What MegaETH is doing now is taking a step further in this direction.

Note:

Zuzalu, an experimental "mobile urban community" conceived by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. From March 25 to May 23, 2023, the community gathered at Zuzalu to have an in-depth discussion on issues such as immortality, public goods, zero-knowledge proofs, artificial intelligence, and the network state.

Echo, an angel investment platform, was founded by famous cryptocurrency trader Jorden Fish (known as "Cobie").