MegaETH Token Sale Breaks Records, But Was It Rigged?

Ethereum Layer-2 project MegaETH has drawn over $1 billion in commitments for its MEGA token public sale as demand surges ahead of the auction’s close.

Yet, the enthusiasm has been tempered by concerns over fairness after blockchain analytics platform Bubblemaps flagged potential Sybil activity in the sale.

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Surging Interest in the MegaETH MEGA Token Sale

For context, MegaETH is an EVM-compatible blockchain. It presents itself as the first real-time blockchain with sub-millisecond latency and throughput surpassing 100,000 transactions per second.

On October 27, the network opened its public sale through the Sonar platform. The offering includes 500 million MEGA tokens, or 5% of the total supply. The initial fully diluted valuation started at $1 million and is capped at $999 million.

Furthermore, MegaETH’s English auction allows participants to bid within limits. Bids range from $2,650 to a maximum of $186,282 per person. Notably, the sale drew massive attention and was oversubscribed in just 5 minutes.

Arkham Intelligence reported that 819 wallets committed the maximum amount of $186,282 in the first two hours. This rapid response demonstrated strong market interest.

“The MegaETH public sale has been open for 2 hours so far – it is already oversubscribed by more than 5x. 819 addresses committed the max amount, sending $186,282 USDT to MegaETH’s sale address,” Arkham posted on October 27.

With only a few hours until the auction’s close, the latest data showed that total commitments have reached $1.18 billion. According to a community-run dashboard, over 46,000 users have contributed to the sale with an average bid of around $25,500.

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Distribution data highlighted that 70.6% of participants bid under $10,000, while 7.1% hit the maximum. Notably, just 5.8% of bidders, or 2,686 users, chose to lock their tokens for one year, comprising 10.3% of total committed value.

Sybil Tactics and Whale Manipulation Cloud MegaETH’s Record Sale

Amid the huge interest, Bubblemaps detected Sybil activity on October 28. In a detailed thread on X, the blockchain analytics firm pointed out that over 20 entities used multiple wallets to bypass the bid limit.

“It appears some wallets tried to break the rules. We found ~20 entities using multiple connected wallets to pledge more than the $186k limit,” the post read.

Bubblemaps highlighted wallet 0x9f5c as one of the clearest examples of rule-breaking. According to their analysis, the wallet was funded from Kraken and then split the funds across three new wallets. Together, these four wallets pledged roughly $600,000, three times more than the official maximum allocation per person.

In a follow-up post, Bubblemaps identified the wallet that allegedly “rigged” the presale. It traced over $5 million in investments to a single participant who used more than 20 linked addresses.

Data showed that in February, wallet 0x5D8 distributed 159 ETH across 159 newly created wallets, and later received 0.02 ETH from seven additional wallets. Notably, 19 of the 159 wallets and all seven of the senders went on to participate in the MegaETH auction, each committing the maximum permitted amount.

“These 26 wallets pledged ~$5 million to the MEGA presale, 26x the allowed allocation. We’d be happy to work with the MegaETH team to help identify as many of these wallets as possible,” Bubblemaps stated.

While auctions aim to balance price discovery and access, they are still vulnerable to coordination and capital concentration. The incident highlights the growing need for stricter verification and transparency standards in major token launches.