Investing in Caldera

Rollups are the most popular Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution. Many major ETH L2 platforms, like Arbitrum’s Orbit chains, Optimism’s OP Stack, and zkSync’s Hyperchains, facilitate easy rollup deployment. Rollups-as-a-Service (RaaS) providers have emerged from this trend, assisting developers in deploying and maintaining their rollups.The Caldera ecosystem now consists of 1.7 million unique wallets, holding over $800 million in TVL, and has processed more than 60 million transactions. Key chains in their ecosystem include Manta Pacific, ApeChain, Treasure, and many others.

Lower fees on L2s have driven substantial transaction growth. By the end of Q2 2024, Ethereum rollups were handling 6.4 times more transactions than the base layer. In the past year, rollup transactions have surged, now 3.7 times higher than in Q2 2023. We envision a future where blockchain scalability involves millions of rollups, all secured by and settling on Ethereum. Currently, there are over 100 publicly announced Ethereum L2s/L3s, with many more set to launch later this year. As of May 2024, Ethereum rollups secure more than $45 billion in value.

As the number of rollups increase within the EVM, the problems in the space become more apparent. Rollups become:

- Isolated from each other: rollups only have "native" interoperability via the Ethereum L1. Using the L1 for cross-rollup interoperability is expensive, and extremely slow
- Isolated from other infrastructure: building infra (for example, a bridge or oracle) for rollups currently requires maintaining several deployments, treating each chain as an island
- Isolated from their users, who cannot meaningfully participate in rollup network operations or validation

Fragmentation is the biggest challenge - and opportunity in the EVM.
Caldera's end vision is the Metalayer - a unified rollup ecosystem for Ethereum. The Metalayer is an abstraction layer on top of Ethereum rollups - it will unify liquidity, simplify UX, and seamlessly connect roll ups. This is a 100x improvement for both users and devs. With a unified rollup ecosystem, devs will be empowered to build multi-rollup applications, unlocking the design space for novel network and token designs across all rollup stacks — both ZK and optimistic.

We’re excited to support Caldera on their journey of unifying Ethereum. If you’re interested in working with their team, don’t hesitate to reach out.