Crypto Journalist
Amin Ayan
Crypto Journalist
Amin Ayan
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Ethereum Layer-2 project MegaETH said it will refund all funds raised through its Pre-Deposit Bridge after operational failures disrupted the launch of its native stablecoin, USDm.
Key Takeaways:
- MegaETH will refund all USDm pre-deposits after admitting operational failures during the launch.
- A misconfigured multisig transaction triggered an early reopening that sent deposits past $400 million.
- Refunds are pending a smart-contract audit, with a new USDC-USDm bridge planned before mainnet beta.
The announcement came on Thursday in a post on X, where the team admitted missteps during the rollout.
“Execution was sloppy and expectations weren’t aligned with our goal of preloading collateral to guarantee 1:1 USDm conversion at mainnet,” MegaETH wrote.
MegaETH’s USDm Pre-Deposit Launch Stalls After Bridge Outage
MegaETH opened pre-deposits for USDm on Tuesday with an initial $250 million limit. The launch, however, encountered repeated disruptions from the start.
A technical problem with a third-party bridge provider rendered the service inaccessible for about an hour, while users waited for deposits to resume.
Once the platform came back online, the $250 million threshold was reached within minutes. The team then announced it would raise the deposit cap to $1 billion. That decision quickly complicated matters.
During the process of increasing the cap, a multisignature transaction that controls the contract parameters was incorrectly configured.
Instead of requiring three out of four approvals, the transaction was set to require all four signatures.
That error allowed an external party to execute the queued transaction nearly 34 minutes before the bridge was officially meant to reopen.
As a result, deposits resumed earlier than planned and quickly surpassed $400 million.
MegaETH attempted to contain the situation by reducing the cap to $400 million, then later lifting it to $500 million. The project ultimately scrapped plans to expand the limit to $1 billion entirely.
Following the incident, MegaETH confirmed that it will return all funds to participants. The refund contract is currently under audit, with repayments set to begin shortly after the review is completed.
“Depositor contributions will not be forgotten,” the team said.
Looking ahead, MegaETH plans to reopen its conversion bridge between USDC and USDm ahead of its Frontier mainnet release, which will serve as the network’s beta phase.
The goal, the team said, is to establish stable liquidity before a wider rollout.
MegaETH Pitches 100,000 TPS Layer-2
MegaETH is an Ethereum Layer-2 network designed to improve transaction speed and reduce costs for blockchain applications, positioning itself alongside platforms like Base, Polygon, and Arbitrum.
While Ethereum processes about 30 transactions per second, MegaETH claims a theoretical capacity of up to 100,000 TPS, with sub-millisecond latency and fees below $0.01.
The project uses a proof-of-stake model with a performance-based system to calculate staking rewards.
Holders who stake MEGA tokens will also take part in governance through a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), allowing them to vote on future changes.
Both the DAO and the full staking framework are expected to launch 12 to 18 months after mainnet goes live.
