Author: Nancy, PANews
MegaETH ecosystem has lost another key member.
On January 14th, Noise, an early incubation project of MegaETH, announced the completion of a $7.1 million seed round of financing led by Paradigm. However, the focus of this round of financing was not the amount, but rather Noise's unexpected decision to move to Base instead of remaining on MegaETH. This defection of a core project has added more uncertainty to the development of the MegaETH ecosystem.
Betting on the attention economy, Paradigm led a seed round of funding.
Just six months later, Noise, a startup team from New York, has once again attracted capital investment.
On January 14, Noise officially announced the completion of a $7.1 million seed round of financing. This round was led by renowned venture capital firm Paradigm, with participation from Figment Capital, Anagram, GSR, JPEG Trading, and KaitoAI, as well as angel investors including Jordi Hays, Dan Romero, and Kain Warwick.
This funding will primarily be used to accelerate the development of trading infrastructure and expedite the mainnet launch. Prior to this, Noise completed a pre-seed funding round in July 2025 with participation from Figment Capital and Anagram.
According to its official description, Noise is a trend trading platform focused on relevance, aiming to capture the people and things currently attracting attention online. Here, users can trade contracts on trends, brands, and ideas, similar to stocks. Trading activity generates prices, which go beyond mere numbers and become an objective standard for measuring cultural relevance.
This pricing mechanism stems from two signals: data and trading. Noise aggregates activity data from X (formerly Twitter) and calculates a transparent attention index for each trend, thus measuring the real-time intensity of social interaction across the internet. When users invest real money to establish positions, they are essentially voting with their funds, optimizing the quality of information driving prices. Ultimately, Noise creates a market that combines objective data performance with subjective trader beliefs.
For users, Noise offers a new tool for quantifying trends. For example, toy brand managers can use it to hedge against attention risks associated with marketing spending; fashion brands can identify emerging talent by observing who rises to the top of the leaderboards; and investors can express their strong belief in which AI labs are gaining the most cultural momentum. Essentially, Noise provides users with a new kind of daily news, transforming previously vague trends into clear and tradable assets.
The explosive growth of prediction markets over the past year has proven that binary questions can underpin significant economic activity. However, in terms of market positioning, Polymarket and Kalshi offer "yes or no" options for specific dates, while Noise focuses on the real-time evolution of the relevance of things, providing "how hot it is now" and "where this hotness will go," making it a complement and alternative to prediction markets.
Noise's model has been initially validated during the testnet phase. In the Beta version launched last May, 1,300 users across 14 markets not only contributed trading volume but also demonstrated remarkable user engagement. Three months later, the first-month user retention rate still reached 62%, with an average single usage time of 17 minutes, further demonstrating the real demand for attention-based trading.
With ecosystem projects launching their own projects, MegaETH faces the challenge of user retention.
Compared to the investment lineup and amount, the news that Noise decided to go it alone seems to be attracting more attention from the market.
According to the plan, Noise will launch its mainnet on Base in the coming months, opening it to the public for the first time and supporting real-money transactions. However, this strategic shift has sparked considerable controversy within the community.
As is well known, Noise was once one of the star projects incubated by MegaETH's accelerator, Megamafia. However, upon "graduation," Noise chose to abandon MegaETH and instead invest in the Base ecosystem.
This move was seen by many as a betrayal and carries the risk of a cold start on a new blockchain. MegaETH officials even unfollowed the Noise founder's account on the very day the funding announcement was made. However, some argue that the attention economy is essentially a traffic business, and compared to MegaETH, which boasts strong technology but an early-stage ecosystem, Base, backed by a large user base and liquidity, might be better positioned to support Noise's launch and development.
In fact, this is not the first time MegaETH has encountered a core project going solo.
Back in June 2025, DEX GTE announced a $15 million Series A funding round led exclusively by Paradigm, bringing its total funding to over $25 million. This news was interpreted by the community as a major boon for the rise of the MegaETH ecosystem. However, just two months later, the plot took a sharp turn. GTE announced its "breakup," leaving behind the cryptic statement, "GTE has grown up and is now leaving Mega Mafia," and subsequently announced plans to launch an independent mainnet. It's worth noting that the project's testnet had attracted over a million users in just a few months.
Another stablecoin project, Cap, also gained capital recognition, completing a $11 million funding round with institutions such as Franklin Templeton and Triton Capital. Although it has not completely separated from Ethereum, it has adopted a dual-chain parallel strategy of "prioritizing Ethereum and using MegaETH as a supplement," which has been criticized for lacking sufficient confidence in the native liquidity.
The successive loss of key figures has undoubtedly brought severe challenges to the ecosystem retention of MegaETH, which is still in its early stages. However, from another perspective, this has also allowed MegaETH to flex its muscles and demonstrate its incubation capabilities.
