Imagine Real World Assets (RWA) like private credit, real estate, and treasuries joining DeFi with ease, freeing trillions in value locked within TradFi’s slow, illiquid, and siloed systems. Traditional finance holds vast wealth, yet its inefficiencies and restricted access stifle opportunity. RWA tokenization offers a way forward by turning physical and financial assets into digital tokens onchain, promising more transparent processes, openness, and wider reach. Experts estimate tokenized assets could grow to $50 billion by the end of 2025, with a potential $16 trillion market by 2030. Still, onboarding RWAs into DeFi today faces obstacles, including yield sharing, user onboarding, regulatory hurdles, and asset fluidity.
Clearpool, a key player in institutional DeFi credit, spotted these issues and created Ozean, a Layer 2 blockchain built on the OP Stack within the Optimism Superchain. Ozean serves as the "Home for RWA Yield," directly addressing the barriers to RWA adoption. With Caldera’s Rollup Engine as its foundation, Ozean goes beyond a single chain to form a full ecosystem, linking TradFi and DeFi. This case study shows how Clearpool used Caldera’s adaptable tools to launch Ozean, setting the stage for RWAs to thrive onchain.
Ozean: Developing the Primary RWA Yield Ecosystem
Clearpool, already a leader in the institutional DeFi credit space, identified the limitations preventing RWAs from reaching their full potential onchain. While the promise of bringing assets like private credit, real estate, and treasuries into DeFi is considerable, users and institutions still face significant hurdles. End users often miss out on the underlying yield generated by RWAs backing stablecoins or other tokens.
Complex onboarding, wallet management, and navigating disparate protocols deter mainstream and institutional adoption. Integrating necessary KYC/AML checks without compromising DeFi's permissionless nature or creating isolated systems remains difficult. Additionally, RWA specific issues like illiquidity, long lock up periods, restricted access primarily for accredited investors, concentration risk in single asset products, and opaque risk assessment affect existing RWA DeFi solutions.
Ozean was developed as the direct answer to these problems - a dedicated L2 designed from the ground up as the "Home for RWAs," bridging the gap between traditional finance and DeFi. Its architecture and growing ecosystem provide the essential infrastructure for bringing the TradFi world fully onchain. Ozean introduces several main features to achieve this vision.
At its core, Ozean features USDX, its native stablecoin issued by the licensed custodian Hex Trust and fully backed 1:1 by reserves like short term T Bills held at Tier 1 institutions. Users can lock USDX to receive ozUSD, a yield bearing stablecoin that automatically rebases in their wallet, directly distributing the underlying risk free rate yield to holders. This mechanism bypasses the complexity of external yield farming protocols, offering a simple, transparent way to earn native yield. Ozean also addresses UX friction through its native wallet infrastructure featuring account abstraction. This allows for a "Web2 like" experience, masking blockchain complexities and streamlining user interactions for easier adoption.
Recognizing the needs of institutions, Ozean incorporates an optional unified compliance layer. This allows protocols built on Ozean to set their own KYC/AML requirements, represented via decentralized IDs, while enabling permissioned and permissionless activities to coexist and interoperate on the same chain. This feature is important for institutional comfort and broad participation.
Beyond foundational chain features, Ozean is building a developing ecosystem, Ozean Port, the first RWA Exchange Traded Pool. This onchain vault infrastructure functions like an ETF, pooling diverse RWAs such as private credit and securities backed tokens via partner Dinari, with liquid yield bearing assets like T bills and SyrupUSDC via partner Maple Finance. Port directly addresses RWA illiquidity, offers permissionless access to previously restricted assets, improves diversification, and provides transparent risk assessment through partners like Synnax and Credora Network. Governance of Port rests with $CPOOL token holders, ensuring community alignment. Supporting this is the Oxygen (O2) Liquidity Layer, a native function providing a unified basket of assets for swaps, lending, and collateral, improving on chain liquidity and composability.
Ozean's ecosystem growth is further supported by its WaveMaker accelerator program and strategic collaborations. Partnerships with First Digital (providing access to FDUSD stablecoin and custody), Tiamonds (bringing tokenized diamonds), and Maple Finance (integrating institutional yield via SyrupUSDC into Port) show significant momentum in attracting diverse assets and institutional players. Clearpool's native token, $CPOOL, governs the Ozean chain and the Clearpool protocol, with stakers set to benefit from network activity and yield mechanisms, connecting the community with the ecosystem's success.
With its Poseidon Testnet live, Ozean is rapidly progressing towards its mainnet launch, built upon the solid foundation and institutional trust established by Clearpool.
Why Ozean Needed an Appchain
While general purpose Layer 1s and Layer 2s offer broad functionality, they often lack the specialization needed for applications like Ozean. Building Ozean required deep customization that wouldn't be feasible or efficient on a shared, general purpose network. Implementing unique, chain native mechanisms like the ozUSD auto rebasing yield system or the specific opt-in compliance layer demands control over the core protocol. Supporting complex, governance driven DeFi applications like Port, with its specific asset pooling and risk management logic, also benefits greatly from a dedicated environment.
Choosing the appchain model through Caldera provided Clearpool with several advantages. It allowed for the deep customization essential for Ozean's unique features and RWA focus. It created an optimized environment tailored to the individual characteristics of financial assets and instruments. This dedicated network enables superior UX control through tightly integrated native wallets and account abstraction features. Ozean gained sovereignty over its ruleset and economics, including directing potential future network revenue to $CPOOL stakers. This model also fostered a focused ecosystem, making it easier to build integrated programs like WaveMaker and attract specific RWA partners like Tiamonds, Maple Finance, and First Digital.
Caldera’s Role: The Engine Powering Ozean
Launching a customized, high performance Layer 2 like Ozean requires specialized infrastructure and operational expertise. Clearpool selected Caldera's platform, applying our flexible Rollup Engine to provide the technology and support needed to realize Ozean's specific design. Caldera focuses on simplifying the deployment and management of dedicated rollups.
A primary benefit Caldera offers is the ease of deploying fully customizable rollups in one click, while applications have full control over all the chain’s parameters. This flexibility extends across major frameworks, allowing teams like Clearpool to build on their preferred stack, such as Optimism's OP Stack for Ozean, or alternatively choose Arbitrum Nitro or ZKsync Era ecosystems. Beyond deployment, Caldera ensures high reliability and provides dedicated white glove support for any infrastructure needs, reducing operational burden and allowing the Clearpool team to concentrate on core product development and ecosystem growth. Jakob Kronbichler, CEO & Co-founder of Clearpool, shared, “Caldera provides the flexibility, speed, and steady foundation Ozean needs to bring RWAs onchain at scale. Their tools and team support have been vital to shaping a home for real-world yield.”
Lastly, Ozean will benefit significantly from Caldera's Metalayer, an interoperability network connecting all rollups deployed via Caldera. This provides seamless, two-way interoperability not just within the Optimism Superchain, but also with Caldera chains built on Arbitrum or ZKsync stacks. For Ozean, this means its RWA ecosystem and the liquidity within products like Port can easily connect to a wider range of DeFi applications and users across different frameworks.
Caldera’s Metalayer allows other current and future chains deployed on Caldera to quickly access the deep RWA liquidity and unique assets offered by Ozean, creating a network effect that benefits the entire Caldera ecosystem.
Ozean and Caldera: Powering the Future of RWA Yield
As RWA tokenization accelerates, Ozean stands poised to bridge TradFi and DeFi, not just by onboarding assets but by redefining how yield and liquidity flow across both worlds. With Caldera’s robust infrastructure and Metalayer connectivity, Clearpool isn’t building an isolated chain, it’s laying the groundwork for a unified RWA economy where institutions, retail users, and developers converge. The success of Port and partnerships with pioneers like Maple Finance and Dinari signals a shift: RWAs are no longer a niche experiment but a cornerstone of DeFi’s next wave. For teams ready to shape this future, Caldera’s Rollup Engine & Metalayer offer the tools to join Ozean in unlocking trillions in value today.
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 Engine to enjoy unified connectivity with rollups across all leading frameworks via the Metalayer.
