TL;DR

• We raised a $15 million Series A (led by Founders Fund) to build the Metalayer — a unified rollup ecosystem for Ethereum.

• The Metalayer will serve as the omnichain, all-purpose abstraction layer for Ethereum rollups, unifying disparate ecosystems and streamlining the developer experience by enabling unparalleled rollup connectivity and novel cross-rollup applications. 

• Mint your first NFT on the Metalayer and experience how user experience on web3 is about to change forever.

It all started with a challenge. We were enthralled by blockchain technology and its potential to change everything on the internet, but saw that it was hampered by terrible performance. We recognized pretty early on that just attempting to make a single faster blockchain wasn’t the best solution. To truly reach web-scale on Ethereum, we would need to scale horizontally.

So in 2022, we launched Caldera. With our platform, projects could deploy a rollup with a single click, without an engineering team. We took care of deployment, customization, ongoing maintenance, and security, so projects could focus on building their vision. 

Today, Caldera is one of the fastest growing rollup ecosystems in the world. We’ve empowered web3 teams to customize and launch over 60 high-performance rollups across a number of app categories, and projects have free reign to launch their rollup on Optimism, Arbitrum, ZKsync, and Polygon stacks.  

At present, the Caldera ecosystem comprises 1.7 million unique wallets holding over $800 million in TVL, with more than 60 million completed transactions. Some notable chains in our ecosystem include Manta Pacific, inEVM by Injective, ApeChain, Treasure, Plume Network, Towns, Kinto, RARI Chain, and Zero Network by Zerion. 

But even though these rollups are helping to scale Ethereum, the rollup frameworks they are built on are still fragmented, with isolated liquidity and disparate communities. It’s clear that there is a massive opportunity to bridge these siloed ecosystems and create a unified layer for rollups across different frameworks.

Meet the Metalayer.

We’re thrilled to share that we raised a $15 million Series A to build a truly unified rollup ecosystem for Ethereum. Led by Founders Fund, with participation from Dragonfly, Sequoia Capital, Arkstream Capital, Lattice, and others, this latest round brings Caldera’s total capital raised to $25 million. 

We are on a mission to unify the Ethereum ecosystem by providing seamless connectivity between various rollup frameworks, so that they all benefit from the network effects and enjoy greater efficiency, security, and scalability. 

In the early 2000s, the internet faced its own challenge: a lack of connectivity between networks, systems, and protocols. This fragmentation threatened to limit the internet's growth and potential. 

Today, Ethereum stands at a similar juncture. Moving funds between rollups via the Ethereum L1 is expensive and slow. Infrastructure like bridges and oracles are still forced to treat each chain as an island. And users that want to meaningfully participate as network operators or validators find it challenging to do so across multiple ecosystems. 

The Metalayer will serve as the omnichain, all-purpose abstraction layer for Ethereum rollups, aiming to unify these disparate ecosystems by enabling unparalleled rollup connectivity and streamlining the developer experience. With a unified rollup ecosystem, developers 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. 

To provide a sneak peek into what the user experience of web3 dApps built on the Metalayer may look like, our team has put together an NFT mint. Visit metalayer.caldera.xyz to mint your first NFT on the Caldera Metalayer.

Caldera's platform enables the launch of infinite rollups, enabling Ethereum to reach web-scale. The Metalayer is the final step in powering a world of millions of unified rollups. We’re committed to this mission, and we are thankful to have the support of leading investors from across the web3 landscape. 

We’ll be sharing more information about the Metalayer in the coming weeks and months. In the meantime, you can stay up-to-date with Caldera by following us on X.  

About Caldera

Caldera is one of the fastest-growing rollup ecosystems on Ethereum, empowering web3 teams to launch high-performance, customizable, application-specific rollups. Leading EVM chains like Manta, Apechain, Kinto, Injective, RARI Chain and Zero Network by Zerion use our industry-leading rollups-as-a-service platform and enjoy unified connectivity with rollups across all leading frameworks.

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