MegaETH, a high-performance blockchain built to make Ethereum applications feel nearly instant, debuted its public mainnet Monday, entering an ecosystem mired in a fundamental debate over how Ethereum should scale.

The project, which had pitched itself as a layer-2 “real-time blockchain” targeting more than 100,000 transactions per second (tps), would make onchain interactions feel closer to traditional web apps than today’s crypto networks. Ethereum works at less than 30 tps, according to Token Terminal.

The release caps a rapid rise that has drawn both technical curiosity and major financial backing. The project’s development arm, MegaLabs, raised a $20 million seed round in 2024 led by Dragonfly. Last October, it announced a $450 million oversubscribed token sale backed by some of the most recognizable names in crypto, including Ethereum co-founders Vitalik Buterin and Joe Lubin. The sale was one of the largest crypto fundraises of that year.

The native token, MEGA, which underpins the network’s economics, is not fully unlocked at launch. According to the team, token distribution and utility will roll out gradually, with certain unlocks tied to network usage milestones.

MegaETH’s debut comes as Ethereum’s long-standing scaling roadmap is being examined, particularly by Buterin. For years, the second-largest blockchain by market cap relied on layer-2 networks, offchain systems that batch transactions and settle them back on the base layer, to handle most of the ecosystem’s growth.

But in recent discussions, Buterin has suggested that Ethereum may need to invest more heavily in scaling the layer-1 network to reduce fragmentation and simplify the user experience.

Those comments have ignited debate across the ecosystem. Supporters of layer 2s argue that the so-called rollups remain essential and already deliver meaningful performance gains. Critics say an overreliance on them has scattered liquidity and users across dozens of networks. MegaETH’s high-speed, low-latency design lands squarely in the middle of that argument, betting that there is still strong demand for chains that push performance far beyond current norms.

Read more: MegaETH Raises $450M in Oversubscribed Token Sale Backed by Ethereum Founders