MegaETH Announces ICO via Soulbound NFT Mint

MegaETH, a highly anticipated Layer 2 (L2) blockchain, is releasing its token through a new form of ICO, a soulbound NFT mint for its pioneer collection, The Fluffle.

The mint will take place on Feb. 12, with users minting 10,000 non-transferable NFTs that represent a minimum of 5% of the MegaETH token supply. 5,000 whitelist spots, which give users the right to mint, have been assigned to 80,000 eligible wallets based on various criteria. The token allocation is dynamic, reportedly designed to increase as the NFT collection evolves.

The first minting batch will be split across two days. The first will include a small selection of users with guaranteed whitelists and/or free mints, followed by the larger portion of the whitelist the next day.

The second batch of 5,000 NFTs will launch a “few months after the first” to select teams that contribute to MegaETH’s mission, referred to as “The Mega Mafia.”Given the forecasted demand, it is likely that the second day, which will have 80,000 users trying to mint, will result in a gas war, with some expecting results similar to the Otherside NFT mint by the Bored Ape Yacht Club in 2022, when Ethereum gas prices peaked at over 10,000 gwei.

MegaETH chose the NFT mint as a way to give community members meaningful allocations, as opposed to farming points for a potentially small airdrop. “A simple points program tied to an airdrop often creates perverse incentives—especially when deployed by a blockchain—driving inauthentic behavior and ‘farming,’ which raises questions about real value creation and leaves everyone dissatisfied.” read the announcement.

The Layer 2 raised $30 million in funding across multiple rounds featuring a star-studded cast of crypto investors and personalities, including Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, investor and the founder of Echo, Cobie, and Consensys CEO Joseph Lubin.

MegaETH features a performance and security-focused EVM, touting 100,000 transactions per second (TPS), sub 10-millisecond block times, and is entirely settled on Ethereum.