MEGA, the organization behind Ethereum layer-2 network MegaETH, has reduced its workforce by 20% following several months of restructuring. Co-founder Shuyao Kong disclosed the reduction on November 13, saying the departing employees had worked on the chain, wallet, ecosystem support and communications. She said the founders, early employees and core engineering team remain committed to the organization. MEGA did not publish its total headcount, the number of people affected or the dates on which the departures took place. Without a base headcount, the percentage cannot be converted into a verified number of departures.

The staff reduction follows a broader restructuring

Kong described the reduction as an outcome of reorganizing teams and bringing together new capabilities as MEGA moved in a new direction. Her statement did not say that the layoffs were required to finance the organization's artificial-intelligence program, and the timing of individual departures remains unclear. That distinction matters because the disclosure arrived days after a strategic expansion, but does not establish a direct causal link between the two decisions.

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MEGA is expanding beyond network development

The MegaETH Foundation rebranded as MEGA on November 10 and said it would develop products that run on the MegaETH network, beginning with an AI inference market. The organization committed $30 million from its existing treasury to the product program, according to reporting by The Block, rather than announcing a new financing round. MEGA said the layer-2 network remains a general-purpose blockchain and that planned technical improvements, including faster finality, are intended to support the new services.

A public inference market is planned for December

Kong said MEGA expects to open its inference market to the public in December 2026, although the organization has not identified participating model providers, published commercial terms or explained the precise role of the MEGA token. Inference is the process of running a trained AI model to generate an output. MEGA's proposal aims to help buyers compare providers that may offer similar models at different prices but do not have the same reputation, performance record or data-handling policies.

The whitepaper focuses on verifiability and trust

A November whitepaper by MEGA co-founders Yilong Li and Lei Yang calls the approach “Purified Intelligence.” It argues that cheaper compute does not automatically become usable supply when customers cannot verify which model is being served or how their data will be handled. The paper discusses model fingerprinting, trusted execution environments and cryptographic proofs as possible evidence for model authenticity, while treating privacy and security as separate requirements. It presents a design direction rather than a production specification or a guarantee that providers will become interchangeable.

Execution details remain the next test

Cointelegraph independently reported the 20% reduction and noted that Kong did not disclose the absolute number of jobs affected. The organization now has two near-term questions to answer: how the December marketplace will work and how its expanded product mandate will affect continued development of MegaETH. The workforce announcement confirms that the operating structure has changed, while the whitepaper and treasury commitment show where MEGA intends to invest. Adoption, provider participation, pricing and the use of the network's token remain unverified until the product launches and the organization publishes operational details. The December release should provide the first public evidence of whether the proposed market has attracted suppliers and customers.

Sources

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