‘Absolute Cinema’: MegaETH’s Stablecoin Pre-Deposit Turns Into a Live On-Chain Rollercoaster

MegaETH’s much-anticipated pre-deposit event for its USDm stablecoin turned into a surprisingly chaotic Tuesday, as the team struggled to manage outages, shifting deposit caps, and an unexpected multisig execution that reopened deposits ahead of schedule.

What was framed as a clean, first-come opportunity for early users became a fast-moving sequence of technical hiccups and real-time decision-making, prompting MegaETH to walk back plans for a $1 billion expansion and offer an exit option for anyone who wants out.

Outages and a near-instant sellout

The pre-deposit window was scheduled to open at 9:00 a.m. ET with a $250 million cap, but things went sideways almost immediately. MegaETH’s third-party bridge provider went down just as the event began, leaving users locked out for almost an hour.

When access finally returned, the entire allocation filled in under three minutes, setting off a scramble within the team to accommodate the flood of demand.

MegaETH quickly announced it would raise the cap to $1 billion to give more users a chance to participate on day one. But that decision triggered a new sequence of problems.

Blockchain analyst olimpio posted a timeline showing that the multisig transaction meant to increase the cap had been queued with a 4-of-4 signature threshold rather than the intended 3-of-4.

Because of that configuration, the transaction became executable by anyone, and a MegaETH contributor executed it roughly 34 minutes before the team planned to relaunch the bridge.

That early execution reopened deposits unexpectedly, and capital began pouring in again. Deposits passed $400 million almost immediately, forcing the team to scramble to reset the cap, first to $400 million, which was already exceeded, then to $500 million.

After issuing and canceling transactions on the multisig, MegaETH eventually locked the cap at $500 million, which users reached soon after.

The aftermath

For a short time, a second $1 billion cap-increase transaction reappeared in the multisig queue, but MegaETH ultimately reversed course.

By late morning, the team announced it would not pursue the expanded cap after all, citing “unexpected issues throughout the process.” It also committed to adding a withdrawal option for anyone who no longer wants to participate given the turbulence.

Olimpio summarized the morning as “pure cinema,” walking through the timeline from the site crash to the rapid fill, the cap increase announcement, the accidental early execution, and the multiple attempts to reset limits.

The MegaETH team echoed the sentiment in its own update: “Apologies for the turbulence. We’ll be sharing a retro shortly.”

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