The AI app economy is exploding. Consumer AI apps are hitting $1M MRR in under 7 months and seventeen-year-old founders are building $35M ARR businesses in 12 months. These are real, revenue-generating businesses scaling faster than anything we've seen in previous tech cycles.
But these builders are locked out of traditional venture funding. Their apps don't fit the "scale fast, exit fast" model VCs optimize for. Meanwhile, everyday users who want to invest early in these breakout apps have no way to participate in their upside.
Sequoia and top funds have made this clear across cloud, mobile, and now AI: the app layer is where value accrues. Yet there's no infrastructure enabling capital formation for this asset class. Builders can't access funding beyond traditional VC. Users can't own a piece of the AI apps they use daily. That changes today.
Capx is launching its mainnet on Caldera as a dedicated Ethereum Layer 2 built on the Arbitrum Nitro stack using Caldera's Rollup Engine, delivering the capital formation layer the AI app ecosystem needs.
Building the Capital Formation Layer for AI Apps
Capx provides the economic and infrastructure rails the AI app economy needs to thrive. The protocol transforms revenue-generating AI apps into investable assets through three integrated layers:
Capx SuperApp functions as an App Store meets Robinhood interface where users can discover, use, and invest in consumer AI apps. This separates legitimate revenue-generating apps from memecoin noise through curation focused on actual business metrics.
Capx Chain delivers an optimized Ethereum L2 for app tokenization and trading. Every deployed app receives its own ERC-20 token through the automated Token Factory, with 1 billion fixed-supply tokens distributed across builders, ecosystem treasury, liquidity pools, and early users. These tokens trade against $CAPX on a native DEX, creating instant liquidity and price discovery based on app performance.
Capx Cloud provides $450M-secured decentralized hosting via Symbiotic restaking. This eliminates keyman risk: the threat that a developer could walk away with the codebase and userbase, leaving investors with nothing. By deploying apps on neutral, decentralized infrastructure, Capx protects both users and investors.
The protocol has already demonstrated significant traction during its testnet phase, processing over 100 million transactions across more than 450,000 wallet addresses, with a community of 500,000+ users spanning 95 countries. This proven infrastructure now transitions to mainnet, ready to scale the AI app economy.
$CAPX powers every layer as the native gas token, creating a unified economic system where builders access democratized funding, users capture upside from day one, and AI apps become a liquid, tradable asset class.
The market opportunity is massive. The AI app sector has seen 37x revenue growth in two years with several sector leading applications hitting over $1M ARR in just months. As these apps reach critical mass, the infrastructure for capital formation becomes essential.
Why AI Apps Need a Dedicated Appchain
Consumer AI apps have unique requirements that general-purpose chains can't support. Apps generating millions in MRR need predictable costs, instant token liquidity, and infrastructure optimized for their business model. A dedicated appchain was essential for three reasons:
Optimized for App Economics. Capx Chain provides blockspace specifically designed for app tokenization and trading. Transaction costs stay predictable even as trading volume scales, ensuring the economics work for both $10K MRR apps and $10M MRR apps.
Deep Protocol Customization. The Token Factory creates instant investability for every deployed app. A built-in AMM provides liquidity against $CAPX from day one. Custom execution environments support both EVM (Solidity) and WASM (Rust, C++) smart contracts through Arbitrum Stylus, enabling sophisticated app-specific logic.
Economic Sovereignty. Full control over the chain's economic model allows Capx to capture value from app activity (token launches, trading fees, transaction volume) and reinvest it into ecosystem growth, ensuring long-term sustainability as the app economy scales.
How Caldera Powers Capx's Vision
Capx partnered with Caldera to provide production-grade infrastructure optimized for app tokenization and trading at scale:
Production-Ready Arbitrum Nitro Infrastructure. Caldera's Rollup Engine delivered a fully managed Arbitrum Nitro rollup with Celestia for data availability, handling sequencing, transaction batching, and settlement to Ethereum. This combination drastically reduces transaction costs while maintaining Ethereum's security guarantees, making high-frequency app trading economically feasible. The infrastructure freed the Capx team to focus on building their app marketplace and tokenization infrastructure rather than managing blockchain operations.
Universal Connectivity Through the Metalayer. Through Caldera's Metalayer, Capx Chain connects to Base, BNB Chain, and the growing Caldera ecosystem. App tokens flow freely across chains, allowing users to invest from any network and creating deeper liquidity pools as the market matures. The Metalayer's intent-based architecture simplifies the user experience: users express simple goals like "invest $100 in this AI app" and solvers handle the optimal execution path across chains.
Native Token Portability with Metatoken. Through Caldera's Metatoken protocol, $CAPX achieves universal portability across all Metalayer-connected chains with the same contract address on every network. This integrated solution makes Capx's native token instantly accessible on Base, BNB Chain, and the entire Caldera ecosystem. AI app developers launching on Capx can also leverage Metatoken to make their app tokens omnichain, extending their reach to new ecosystems and user bases beyond Capx Chain itself.
A New Primitive for the Internet of Chains
Just as Cosmos grew stronger with each new specialized chain joining its ecosystem through IBC, or Polkadot expanded its capabilities as new parachains launched, Caldera's vision is to build an Internet of Chains where each new rollup adds unique capabilities to an interconnected network. Capx Chain's mainnet launch adds a critical missing piece: capital formation infrastructure for consumer AI apps.
Cross-Chain App Investment. A user on Base discovers a nutrition tracking AI app on the Capx SuperApp that's generating strong revenue growth. They can invest directly through a single transaction, with the Metalayer handling asset bridging and token purchase automatically. The app token remains liquid across the entire ecosystem.
Composable DeFi Integration. As AI app tokens prove their value through sustained revenue growth, DeFi protocols on other Metalayer-connected chains can integrate them as collateral, enable lending markets, or create index products that bundle top-performing app tokens. Through Metatoken, these app tokens can extend beyond Capx Chain to any connected network, transforming standalone businesses into composable financial primitives accessible across Base, BNB Chain, and beyond.
Network Effects Drive Shared Growth. As more AI apps launch on Capx and their tokens gain liquidity, the platform becomes more attractive to builders and investors alike. Users discovering high-performing apps on Capx can explore other applications in the Caldera ecosystem. Each new revenue-generating app increases the total addressable market and attracts more capital.
The Future of AI Apps is Onchain
Capx Chain's launch delivers the infrastructure the AI app economy has been waiting for: a dedicated blockchain optimized for app tokenization, trading, and capital formation, connected to the broader onchain economy through the Metalayer.
For the first time, seventeen-year-old founders building $1M MRR apps can access capital from their users, not just Sand Hill Road. And those users own a piece of the apps they help scale. AI apps become liquid, tradable assets. As the AI app market expands from billions to hundreds of billions, Capx provides the foundation this ecosystem needs to thrive.
We're proud to support pioneers like Capx building the capital formation layer for AI apps. Congratulations to the entire team on this milestone.
Ready to launch your own dedicated rollup and join the Internet of Chains? Visit our deployment page to get started.
About Caldera
Caldera is powering the next internet. Its architecture consists of two core components: the Rollup Engine and the Metalayer. The Rollup Engine is a modular operating system used to launch high-performance, custom chains on leading chains and frameworks like Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, and ZKsync. The Metalayer then automatically connects every chain into one network. Through this interoperability protocol, all chains access shared liquidity and secure, intent-based bridging that transforms fragmented networks into a unified Internet of Chains. And now with the launch of the Caldera Bridge Preview, Metatoken, and Stablecoin Module, this expands the product suite and market size that Caldera is tackling.
