Most L2 tokens have boring utility: "Governance". Throw that word around in a crypto conference and the room will rapidly clear out of degens faster than a James Wynn trade liquidation. There are many research papers doing mathematical gymnastics trying to justify the existence of governance tokens in an L2 ecosystem. But the reality on the ground is that "governance" as a utility is mostly just a bunch of fucking theatre. And there is about as much real value accrued to L2 governance tokens now as an Ansem shitcoin shill. Governance tokens really have zero real utility other than as a financial vehicle to raise money from suckers. It's all just the projects giving the old wink-wink wink let's tape on some 'utility' to a token that has no right to actually exist, so they don't spend 3 years in court fighting the "you're a Security" charges the SEC lays on. Even if there is some theoretical value to governance tokens, the actual "governance" is theatre because the foundation/team owns the majority of the tokens, and whatever public 'vote' is just Rahul and Ivan sybil voting with the 2000 team wallets. Governance tokens suck. Layer 2 tokens suck. But $MEGA is reaaaaallly interesting. I have never seen a blockchain token like this. MAKE ETH (LAYER 2 TOKENS) GREAT AGAIN @megaeth_labs is actually bringing something completely new to the table with how $MEGA slots into the ecosystem. It's fundamentally tied to how the chain scales, and the more growth brings a flywheel of more demand for $MEGA. I don't think most have caught on to how this change can disrupt how infra tokens accrue value. It's so disruptive that if this entirely works, it's going to rewrite the playbook on how we use and value blockchain tokens. ALL ABOUT PROXIMITY MARKET PLACES The token MEGA is actually highly vital to how the chain incentivizes the server infra (operators) to maximize efficiency (yield) while creating a transparent marketplace for colocation. This is the first L2 where value accrual comes to the token from real organic demand that scales with the networth growth rather than just speculation. There is an entire new asset class being defined and created here (Collocation) via the Proximity Markets, which transparently allows bidders to stake $MEGA, while offering the best quality infra to gain access to the lowest latency speeds for apps and services utilizing the chain. The Sequencer (basically the node that picks the next transaction to execute) follows the daylight, shifting between geos around the world. And this creates an entire ecosystem of parties who can build applications and services around that sequencer's geo. Why? Because the applications that execute closest to the Sequencer (i.e., on the same physical servers) will have the lowest latency. This means they will be the first to get that transaction through. Giving priority access to the Sequencer as it rotates between different geographies is what MegaETH team is calling "Proximity Markets". And this is a game changer because it drives real demand for the MEGA token (staking more MEGA gives you better, more reliable access to lower latency). Sounds complicated, but in reality, it means applications, like PERP DEXs, where high-value transactions demand the absolute lowest latencies to execute with accuracy, would be vying for the fastest 'slots' in each geo location. What's the value of colocation at different geos? Well, we are going to find out. We can theorize that high-value applications (PERP DEXes) would be willing to pay TOP dollar for the fastest speeds, given the monetary value of eliminating the front-running risk. This has never been a publicly bidable market, let alone a decentralized and fair one. MegaETH is creating this market and putting it on the chain. To access this, bidders who stake the most $MEGA (other variables are taken into account, such as quality of infra, reputation history, app users count) get a shot at the fastest slots. GAS GETS CHEAPER As for the actual gas fees (eth) for the layer two, there's some real innovation there. I won't go into the deep details here, but the chain is going to take stable coin yield backed by real assets deployed on the chain and use that yield to subsidize gas. So as the chain scales in users, gas will actually trend cheaper. This is contrary to the general L2 where gas prices only increase as the network grows to the point that the gas prices begin to cripple the network growth. Overall, some really exciting stuff. I'm looking forward to seeing what else the team is going to reveal. Maybe, just maybe, it might actually be possible to Make Eth Great Again.