At the heart of SoloChain's design is a powerful alternative to conventional token distribution: Transaction Mining.
The original vision of Web3 is rooted in creating more fair and transparent financial systems. As the industry matures, there is a continuous pursuit for improved token launch and distribution models that promote long-term ecosystem growth and user alignment. While existing methods like airdrops and private sales have served their purpose, the industry is actively seeking new ways to solve the challenges of equitable access and sustainable end-user participation. This leaves builders with a very important - how can a network bootstrap a healthy economy driven by genuine contribution rather than short-term speculative incentives?
SoloChain, an innovative Layer 2 built on the OP Stack and launched with Caldera’s Rollup Engine, is pioneering an answer. By building a custom rollup focused on a new economic model, SoloChain is creating an ecosystem where rewards are tied directly to user contribution. It serves as a powerful case study in how dedicated appchains can be used to engineer entirely new economic incentive structures, moving beyond the limitations of general-purpose networks.
Reinventing Incentives with Transaction and DePIN Mining
The concept of Transaction Mining is a throwback to the original ethos of Bitcoin, where work equals reward, but it has been democratized for any user. Instead of requiring powerful hardware, SoloChain rewards participants with its native utility token simply for submitting on-chain transactions. This approach directly incentivizes network activity, ensuring that the platform’s growth is driven by the users who are actively engaging with it.
This model provides the foundation for mining.fun, SoloChain’s platform for equitable project launches. Unlike speculative launchpads that can foster a casino-like environment, mining.fun allows new projects to distribute tokens through transparent mining curves. For projects across the Caldera ecosystem, this presents a compelling alternative for building committed communities from day one. Builders are invited to explore this new launch model, which is currently live and accessible on the SoloChain testnet.
This innovation arrives as the DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks) sector transforms from a niche experiment into one of crypto's fastest-growing verticals. As highlighted in Messari’s 2024 State of DePIN report, the sector already commands a market cap of over $50 billion across more than 350 projects, with upwards of $500 million in annualized revenue. SoloChain is built to capitalize on this momentum, providing the specialized infrastructure for this new generation of tokenized real-world assets to thrive.
SoloChain layers its transaction mining with a sophisticated DePIN Mining framework. Users can stake both the native Solo token and tokenized DePIN assets, such as representations of physical GPU or CPU power, to help verify the network and earn boosted rewards. This approach reframes the conversation around Real World Assets (RWAs). While traditional RWAs like real estate or bonds rely on institutional intermediaries, DePIN assets represent a new, more crypto-native class of RWAs - permissionless, programmable, and already integrated into blockchain ecosystems today.
SoloChain’s vision extends to AI Agent Orchestration, where intelligent, autonomous agents will eventually manage and optimize mining activities for users and allocate DePIN resources across the network. This forward-thinking approach aims to reduce complexity and maximize efficiency, creating a self-regulating and adaptive network.
Why SoloChain Needed a Custom Appchain
SoloChain’s ambitious model, with its unique economic primitives, could not have been built on a general-purpose L2. A shared network environment comes with inherent constraints that would have compromised its core functionality:
Deep Protocol Customization: Implementing transaction mining as a native, chain-level feature requires deep control over the execution environment. A dedicated appchain allowed the SoloChain team to embed this logic directly into the protocol, something impossible on a network where they do not control the core code.
Economic Sovereignty: A custom rollup gives SoloChain full sovereignty over its economic model. It can fine-tune its fee structure and incentive mechanisms to support the transaction mining system and ensure the long-term sustainability of the network, capturing value to fund future development like its AI orchestration layer.
An Optimized, Uncongested Environment: By operating on its own dedicated chain, SoloChain ensures that its resource-intensive processes, especially the future AI-driven resource allocation, will not have to compete for blockspace with unrelated DeFi or NFT activity. This guarantees the performance and reliability needed for its core functions.
Caldera’s Role: The Engine for Economic Innovation
To bring its vision to life, SoloChain required an infrastructure partner that could provide the flexibility of a custom rollup without the immense overhead of building from scratch. Caldera’s platform delivered the ideal solution.
Thortilla, Head of Ecosystem at SoloChain, shared, “One thing I’m sure of is that the future is modular, and we chose Caldera because their infrastructure and tooling are well ahead of the curve for Ethereum rollups. Their modular stack and hands-on support made them the clear choice as we build SoloChain into the home for Transaction and Agentic DePIN mining."
Caldera empowered SoloChain in several key ways:
Turnkey Rollup Deployment: Caldera’s Rollup Engine provided a fully managed, production-ready OP Stack rollup. This handled the underlying complexities of running a sequencer, batching transactions, and settling to Ethereum, freeing the SoloChain team to focus entirely on developing its groundbreaking mining and AI models.
Seamless Superchain Integration: By choosing to launch an OP Stack chain with Caldera, SoloChain was instantly integrated into the growing Optimism Superchain ecosystem, benefiting from its shared standards and vision for interoperability.
Future-Proofed with The Metalayer: While SoloChain benefits from native Superchain connectivity, Caldera’s Metalayer offers the next evolution in its growth. The Metalayer will provide seamless, intent-based interoperability with the entire network of Caldera-launched rollups, including those built on different frameworks like Arbitrum Orbit and ZK Stack. This means tokenized DePIN assets on SoloChain can achieve liquidity and utility across a much broader ecosystem, creating a powerful network effect.
Building the Future of Sustainable Onchain Economies
SoloChain demonstrates a shift in how Web3 networks can be bootstrapped and sustained. By successfully deploying their complex economic model on a Caldera-powered testnet, it has created a blueprint for a future where value is distributed based on meaningful contribution, not speculation. This approach fosters stronger, more aligned communities and enables the sustainable growth of decentralized ecosystems.
As more projects seek to build novel onchain systems, the need for specialized, performant, and customizable infrastructure will only grow. Caldera provides the foundational platform for these pioneers to build the future. To launch your own dedicated rollup and join the interconnected internet of chains, visit our deployment page and explore what’s possible with Caldera.
About Caldera
Caldera is one of the fastest-growing rollup ecosystems on Ethereum, empowering web3 teams to launch high-performance, customizable, application-specific rollups. Dozens of leading EVM chains, including Manta, Apechain, Kinto, Injective, RARI Chain and Zero Network by Zerion, use our trusted Rollup-as-a-Service platform to enjoy unified connectivity with rollups across all leading frameworks.
