With the growth of Ethereum’s rollup-centric roadmap, the rise of modular blockchains, and the popularity of non-EVM networks like Solana, there are now hundreds of onchain ecosystems. Each of these networks hosts unique applications and numerous "long-tail" native assets, from protocol governance tokens to community memecoins, that are essential to their local economies.
However, these long-tail assets are often isolated, trapped on the chains where they were created. This asset isolation severely limits a token's reach and utility. It creates a challenge for token issuers, who struggle to expand their token’s presence into new ecosystems, and a poor experience for users, who must navigate complex and insecure third-party bridges.
Today, Caldera introduces our solution for asset isolation: Metatoken, a new protocol built on the Metalayer. Metatoken establishes a new standard for multichain assets, allowing any token to be universally portable across multiple chains with the same contract address on every network, all while the issuer remains in control.
Token portability represents a massive opportunity. Bringing thousands of emerging assets to every market creates unprecedented liquidity flows across the Internet of Chains. For Caldera, more Metatokens lead to greater ecosystem value accrual through increased transaction volume, cross-chain activity, and expanded liquidity across our ecosystem of rollups.
How Metatoken Unlocks Onchain Assets
While the Metalayer’s intent-based bridging is the premier solution for major assets like stablecoins and Ether, Metatoken brings assets to caldera rollups that — unlike stables, ETH, or custom gas tokens — don't exist there natively. For tokens like protocol governance tokens or community memecoins that lack deployments on every chain, Metatoken establishes a new standard. It transforms a localized asset into a truly interoperable one with a unified supply, designed to exist across many networks simultaneously.
Metatoken streamlines deployment through the Metalayer’s infrastructure. Alternative protocols typically involve complex multi-party agreements and extended setup periods, while Metatoken’s integrated approach reduces both time-to-market and operational complexity.
The process behind a Metatoken transfer is a system of accounting that uses a lock-and-mint mechanism. When an existing asset is moved from its home chain (Chain A), it is locked in a secure hub contract. A message is then sent via the Metalayer to a destination chain (Chain B), authorizing the minting of an equal number of 1:1 backed, wrapped tokens.
To move the asset to a third network (Chain C), the wrapped version on Chain B is burned, and a new message authorizes a mint on Chain C. The process reverses when returning to the home chain: the wrapped token is burned on its current chain, and a final message unlocks the original, native token from the hub contract on Chain A.
This architecture offers several key advantages for both token issuers and users:
Unified Supply: Asset issuers can manage a single, global token supply, eliminating the confusion of multiple, unofficial wrapped versions.
Capital Efficiency: Direct transfers eliminate the need for liquidity pools for the bridging process itself, resulting in no slippage for users and avoiding the operational complexity of managing or rebalancing collateral across multiple chains.
Expanded Network Effects: Projects can quickly extend their native tokens to new and growing ecosystems to integrate with new applications and capture user attention.
This model establishes Metatoken as a standard for asset portability, allowing a token to access liquidity and applications on any connected network, rather than attempting to manage liquidity itself.
An Integrated and Secure Solution
For projects building on Caldera, Metatoken provides integrated tooling that reduces deployment costs and unlocks new economic possibilities through a suite of integrated features.
An Integrated, Cost-Effective Solution: Teams launching with the Rollup Engine receive an Included Metatoken deployment as part of the integrated stack. Traditional cross-chain token solutions typically require $100,000+ in fees and lengthy approval processes, while Metatoken is available at no additional cost for Caldera customers.
Application-Owned Security: With Metatoken, security is controlled by the asset issuer. The protocol is built on the secure messaging of the Metalayer and includes features like custom rate limits, allowing token deployers to define their own security policies.
Seamless User Experience: Metatoken supports deterministic addresses, meaning a token has the same contract address on every chain for easy verification. Cross-chain transfers confirm in seconds via the Metalayer's messaging system.
The Caldera Ecosystem Advantage
Metatoken does more than just connect two chains, it provides a framework for integrating an asset across the Caldera ecosystem. An asset deployed as a Metatoken can be easily extended to any Metalayer-connected rollup, giving the issuer control over which networks their token supports.
As more projects deploy omnichain tokens, rollups in the Caldera ecosystem gain access to diverse assets that can drive new applications and user activity. Projects benefit from expanded reach, while rollups attract users seeking access to these newly available tokens, creating mutual growth across the network.
This targeted availability enables new types of applications on Caldera rollups. Decentralized exchanges can now support tokens from external ecosystems as trading pairs or collateral, expanding beyond assets that exist natively on their chain. DeFi protocols can integrate governance tokens from other networks, enabling cross-chain yield farming and lending markets that weren’t previously possible.
For token issuers, Metatoken provides access to rollups where their assets don’t yet exist, opening new user bases and user cases. A memecoin community can expand to gaming-focused rollups, while a DeFi protocol can bring its governance token to specialized financial chains where it can serve as collateral in new applications.
Metatoken in Action: Early Adopter Case Studies
Several projects have deployed Metatoken to address distinct multichain challenges. Each implementation demonstrates how the protocol solves specific problems around asset fragmentation and cross-chain utility.
B3 - A Universal Currency for a Gaming Ecosystem
B3 operates a horizontally-scaled gaming ecosystem where individual games like PRIME and InfiniGods run on dedicated rollups. Each game generates its own native assets and rewards, but players need to move value between games seamlessly. Without an omnichain token, players would face complex bridging every time they wanted to use rewards from one game in another.
Using Metatoken, B3's native $B3 token serves as a universal currency across all gaming chains in their ecosystem. Players can earn $B3 in one game and instantly use it in another without traditional bridge delays, creating the seamless "game cartridge" experience B3 designed for.
Intuition - Universal Reach for a Protocol's Native Token
Intuition is building a token-curated knowledge graph designed to function as a "shared memory layer" for crypto. While its core protocol state lives on a dedicated Caldera-powered appchain, its native $TRUST token needed to be accessible everywhere users make attestations.
Metatoken solves this critical piece of Intuition's architecture. Using Metatoken, $TRUST maintains the same contract address across all major blockchains, allowing seamless integration with applications on any Metalayer-connected network.
Building the Internet of Chains
A multichain future requires more than just connected chains, it requires portable assets. An asset confined to a single blockchain is like a currency trapped within one country’s borders, its reach is isolated and its potential is limited.
Metatoken is the critical infrastructure that makes assets portable, enabling issuers to extend their tokens to new ecosystems for any reason, whether it's to reach a larger community, access higher throughput, or form new business partnerships. The impact of this extends beyond crypto. For real-world applications like cross-border settlement, Metatoken provides a framework to move value as freely as data on the internet, removing the intermediaries, fees, and delays common in traditional finance.
The Rollup Engine deploys the chains. The Metalayer provides interoperability. Metatoken makes native assets universally portable. Together, these components establish the foundation for a new economic model where onchain value flows as freely as data on the internet. As more projects choose Metatoken for their tokens' multichain strategy, the collective value of the entire Caldera ecosystem grows, benefiting the Internet of Chains.
Ready to make your token omnichain? Asset issuers and teams building on Caldera can get in touch to begin the deployment process today.
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 this expands the product suite and market size that Caldera is tackling.
