MEGA, the entity that operates the Ethereum layer-2 network MegaETH, has reduced its workforce by 20 percent following several months of internal restructuring. Co-founder Shuyao Kong announced the changes on November 13, stating that the organization had reorganized its teams and brought in new capabilities as it shifts toward developing first-party products on the MegaETH network.

The reductions affected employees who worked on blockchain development, wallet operations, ecosystem support and communications. Many of those departing had been involved since the project's earliest stages. Kong did not disclose the total number of employees impacted or the precise timing of the departures. She confirmed that the founders, early employees and core engineering team remain fully committed to the organization and the work begun three years earlier with MegaETH.

Kong also expressed appreciation for the departing staff and offered to introduce them to potential employers. She described their contributions as foundational to the company's next phase of work.

Rebrand and $30 Million Product Commitment

The workforce announcement followed closely on a November 10 rebrand in which the MegaETH Foundation became MEGA. At the same time, the organization committed $30 million from its existing treasury to develop multiple products that will run on the MegaETH network. The blockchain itself retains the MegaETH name.

The first planned product is a public AI inference marketplace scheduled for launch in December. Inference refers to the process of running a trained AI model to generate outputs. According to a whitepaper authored by co-founders Yilong Li and Lei Yang, the marketplace aims to give users access to competing AI service providers while addressing two common concerns: whether providers actually use the models they advertise and how they handle customer data.

The proposal, sometimes referred to as Purified Intelligence, seeks to make inference services more interchangeable and transparent across providers that users might otherwise have limited reason to trust. Kong indicated that specific details on providers, models and operational mechanisms would be released at launch. Planned network upgrades are intended to support the inference product.

Earlier Strategic Shifts

The current reorganization continues a broader change in direction that began earlier in the year. In July, the project closed its Mega Mafia accelerator after supporting roughly 20 teams across two cohorts. Those teams had collectively raised about $80 million. Kong noted at the time that most successful applications developed through the program were no longer being built primarily on MegaETH, with some projects moving to other chains or pursuing multichain strategies.

Resources were redirected toward internal product development and applications designed around capabilities specific to MegaETH. The latest restructuring and product funding align with that focus on first-party offerings rather than external ecosystem support.

MEGA's MEGA token launched on April 30 with a fixed supply of 10 billion tokens, a substantial portion allocated to performance-based staking rewards. The network has also operated a stablecoin-funded buyback program using revenue from USDm. Total value locked on MegaETH has declined significantly from earlier peaks above $245 million to levels reported in the low tens of millions in recent periods.

Kong did not explicitly attribute the staff reductions to the $30 million product allocation. The changes were presented as the result of months of preparation to move the organization in a new direction, combining new capabilities with a reorganized team structure while retaining the core technical group that has supported MegaETH from the beginning.