MegaETH Token Launch with Co-Founders Shuyao and Lei

**Bankless** (0:02)
Bankless Station, we are here with Shuyao and Lei, two of the three co-founders of MegaETH on the day of their token launch. Big day, are you guys nervous?

**Lei** (0:11)
Yeah, so we shouldn't say nervous, because when the podcast is out, it's no longer nervous, but for now, yes, it is.

**Bankless** (0:21)
Yeah, we're recording this a day and a half ahead of actual token release date, so we actually don't know what the conversation is at the time, but the quick timeline here is, you guys have done a series of private token sales, you guys did an Echo sale, you guys did an NFT sale, and so there are some token holders out there that are awaiting the TGE, and then really the thing that the MegaETH project did was it did these KPI locks. Can you just talk about the philosophy about the KPI metrics that you guys put yourself behind before we could ultimately get to this date? Why do that in the first place? And then seemingly since there is a TGE date, we've hit them.
How did we hit them? What's just the health of all the KPIs? And talk to us about just the road so far. Shuyao, I'll throw this one to you to start.

**Shuyao** (1:11)
You know, I was going to say that I'm so excited that we're finally TGE.
I think unlike most projects, right, you launch the mainnet, your TGE, kind of just get it over with and your baby is out in the public. I think for us, it's like the baby is there, but no one is able to see it. And then we're finally able to reveal the baby via this token, which I believe token is not a product. Token is part of the infrastructure. I think the TGE itself kind of marks the completeness of MegaETH as a protocol. But to answer your question directly, why did we set up these KPIs, right?
And the more often I say the word KPI, the more weird feeling I have, because they're like, just sounds so strict, but they're really celebratory milestones instead of KPIs. The idea was rather simple. I found it really odd that insiders can just get 60% or 50% of a protocol's token at launch without doing much or metrics to prove that they've done the work.
So from our perspective, it's 2026, and I've been in crypto for eight years. I think just the old game is not worth playing anymore, and we want to exercise this philosophy of building public, have the public monitor exactly what's happening with mega, and that's why we set the KPI and basically hold everyone accountable, right? And it's not just the mega core team. It's also our applications, right? We can't launch unless they launch, and if they want to get traction, they better integrate and go live on Mainnet. So that is the original philosophy of KPI, which is like, game is different. Let's do the best of our work. That's why and how we can prove mega deserve to exist. I can go deeper into how we set up the three KPIs if you want to, but I will pause here.

**Bankless** (3:06)
Yeah, the KPI that was checked, the box that was checked was the 10 apps that are live on MegaETH. To my understanding, this is 10 unique apps, not just another Aave deployment or another Uniswap deployment. So talk to me about the 10 apps. We don't have to go one by one by one, but just the philosophy of you guys actually have to choose. These apps do count.
Aave, much respect to Aave, Aave did not count. Talk to me about that philosophy.

**Shuyao** (3:35)
DeFi United, okay.
Our criteria has always been very simple, which is MegaETH brings out novel application to crypto. And unless you are really novel and it's even better that you can't exist anywhere else, then I think Mega as a protocol deserves to exist. So I will highlight some of the apps that I am personally really excited about. So we can start from Dex, right? I think since day one, we just knew that Mega is not going to create another hyperliquid. In fact, I don't think we need another hyperliquid. I think Dex also need to differentiate themselves. So we work with the world market team to create this fully on-chain Dex.
They don't have backend. The protocol is their backend and anyone can deploy from it. That's something we're really excited because it's only possible on Mega. It's a cheesy term, Omega. And then if we consider the type of world market, which is fully on-chain Dex as this right-curve app, very sophisticated, it took the team five years to build it, by the way. I'm not sure people understand how difficult it is to build a Dex. And then we also have a bunch of what I call them the left-curve apps. The left-curve apps are really the goal is to bring your order flow, is to bring novel experiences to users. And I'm sure your audience are familiar with the euphoria of the world, the hit one of the world. And by the way, even these apps are difficult to build because every single financial experience involves market makers, involves settlement, it involves user experiences that needs to feel real time. So the reason the KPI took two months to hit is precisely because it was a little hard for all of them to get together and integrate in time.