Author: Nancy, PANews
MegaETH loses another key player in its ecosystem.
On January 14, MegaETH's early incubation project Noise announced the completion of a $7.1 million seed round financing led by Paradigm. However, the focus of this round of financing is not on the amount, but rather on Noise's unexpected decision to switch to Base instead of continuing to stay with MegaETH. The defection of this core project adds more uncertainty to the development of the MegaETH ecosystem.
Betting on the Attention Economy, Completing Seed Round Financing Led by Paradigm
Just six months later, the New York-based startup Noise has once again attracted capital interest.
On January 14, Noise officially announced the completion of a $7.1 million seed round financing. This round was led by the well-known venture capital firm Paradigm, with follow-on investments from institutions such as Figment Capital, Anagram, GSR, JPEG Trading, and KaitoAI, as well as participation from several angel investors including Jordi Hays, Dan Romero, and Kain Warwick.
The funds will primarily be used to accelerate the construction of trading infrastructure and promote the mainnet release process. Prior to this, Noise had completed pre-seed financing in July 2025 with participation from Figment Capital and Anagram.
According to official information, Noise is a trend trading platform focused on relevance, aiming to capture the people and things currently being discussed on the internet. Here, users can trade contracts related to trends, brands, and ideas just like trading stocks, going long or short. Trading activities generate prices that are not just numbers but become objective standards for measuring cultural relevance.
This pricing mechanism is derived from two signals: data and trading. Noise aggregates activity data from X (formerly Twitter) to calculate a transparent attention index for each trend, thereby measuring the heat of social interactions across the network in real-time. When users invest real money to establish positions, they are essentially voting with their funds, optimizing the quality of information that drives prices. Ultimately, Noise creates a market that combines objective data performance with subjective trader beliefs.
For users, Noise provides a new tool for quantifying trends. For example, a toy brand manager can use it to hedge against attention risks from marketing expenditures; fashion brands can discover emerging talents by observing who is rising on the charts; investors can express their strong beliefs about which AI lab is gaining the most cultural momentum. Essentially, Noise offers users a new type of daily news, turning previously vague trends into clear, tradable assets.
In the past year, the explosive growth of prediction markets has proven that binary questions can support significant economic activity. However, in market positioning, platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi offer "yes or no" options for specific dates, while Noise focuses on the real-time evolution of relevance, providing insights on "how hot is it now" and "where is this heat going," making it a complementary and alternative solution to prediction markets.
Noise's model has been preliminarily validated during the testnet phase. In the Beta version launched last May, 1,300 users contributed not only trading volume across 14 markets but also demonstrated remarkable stickiness. Three months later, the active retention rate of users from the first month still reached 62%, with an average session duration of 17 minutes, further proving the genuine demand for attention trading.
Ecosystem Projects Establishing Independence, MegaETH Faces Retention Challenges
Compared to the investment lineup and amount, Noise's decision to go independent seems to attract more market attention.
According to the plan, Noise will launch its mainnet on Base in the coming months, opening to the public for real money trading for the first time. However, this strategic shift has sparked considerable controversy within the community.
It is well known that Noise was one of the star projects heavily incubated by MegaETH's accelerator Megamafia. Yet at the time of its "graduation," Noise chose to abandon MegaETH and instead bring its funding to the Base ecosystem.
This move has been seen by many as a betrayal, facing the risk of a cold restart on the new chain, while MegaETH's official account directly unfollowed Noise's founder on the same day the financing news was announced. However, some voices argue that the attention economy track is essentially a traffic business, and compared to the technically robust but still early-stage MegaETH, the large user base and liquidity of Base may better support Noise's launch and development.
In fact, this is not the first time MegaETH has encountered a core project going solo.
As early as June 2025, the DEX GTE announced it had secured $15 million in Series A financing led exclusively by Paradigm, bringing its total financing amount to over $25 million. This news was interpreted by the community as a significant positive for the rise of the MegaETH ecosystem. However, just two months later, the plot took a sharp turn when GTE announced its "separation," leaving behind a poignant statement: "GTE has grown up and now needs to leave Mega Mafia," and subsequently announced plans to launch an independent mainnet. It is 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 $11 million in financing from institutions such as Franklin Templeton and Triton Capital. Although it has not completely detached, it has adopted a dual-chain parallel strategy of "prioritizing Ethereum, with MegaETH as support," indicating a lack of sufficient confidence in the original ecosystem's liquidity.
Losing key players undoubtedly presents a severe retention challenge for the still nascent MegaETH ecosystem. However, from another perspective, it also showcases MegaETH's capabilities, proving its incubation strength.
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