What is Caldera (ERA)

I. Project Introduction

1. What Is Caldera?

Caldera ($ERA) specializes in building high-performance, customizable, and application-specific Layer 2 blockchains. These custom-built blockchains (Caldera Chains) offer high throughput, low latency, and customizable features for optimizing the performance and user experience of decentralized applications, with the ability to process hundreds of transactions per second and sub-second confirmation times. Caldera makes it possible for anyone to launch and operate their own dedicated, high-performance Layer 2 rollup on blockchain.

2. How Does Caldera Work?

Its architecture consists of two core components: the Rollup Engine and the Metalayer. 1) Rollup Engine is developed by Constellation Labs Inc., the first contributor to the Caldera protocol. It is a modular operating system for launching high-performance, customized chains on blockchains and frameworks such as Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, and ZKsync. Using the Rollup Engine, applications can build tailored chains on Caldera. 2) Metalayer is Caldera's cross-chain interoperability framework that enables rapid asset listings and cross-chain execution. It aims to transform how rollups interact with other chains, providing a smooth, secure, and efficient platform for cross-chain operations. Metalayer automatically connects each chain to a network, so all chains can access shared liquidity and intent-based secure bridging through this interoperability protocol. This effectively turns fragmented networks into a unified on-chain internet.

Currently, the support supports over 50 rollups, with a TVL exceeding $400 million, more than 865 million transactions processed, and 28 million unique wallet addresses served.

3. Who Founded Caldera?

Glenn Kennedy: Head of the Caldera Foundation, Managing Director at Leeward Management Limited, Bachelor of Laws from the University of Manitoba.

Matthew Katz: Co-founder & CEO, previously a software engineering intern at Warp, Skiff, A Thinking Ape, and Apple, and Co-director at TreeHacks.

Parker Jou: Co-founder & CTO, machine learning research intern at Waymo, and software engineering intern at NVIDIA and Samsung Electronics. He graduated with a degree in Computer Science from Stanford University.

Jake Nyquist: Head of Protocol, previously co-founder of the NFT-native options protocol Hook, founder of Hook Art, product engineer at Fin, software engineering intern at Airbnb, Facebook, and eBay Inc. He graduated with a degree in Computer Science from Rice University.

Regynald Augustin: Product Engineer Lead, founder of the NFT-native options protocol Hook, former engineer at Dispo, ML engineer at Twitter, SDE intern at Amazon, and IBM Extreme Blue intern.

Funding (according to publicly available information):

- On July 24, 2024, according to The Block, Web3 infrastructure platform Caldera raised $15 million in a Series A round led by Founders Fund, with participation from Dragonfly, Sequoia Capital, Arkstream Capital, Lattice, and others. This brings Caldera's total funding to $25 million, with $10 million raised last year.

- As reported on February 14, 2023, Caldera, a "rollup-as-a-service" platform, announced that it had raised $9 million across two funding rounds, led by Sequoia Capital and Dragonfly, respectively, with contributions from Neo, 1kx, and Ethereal Ventures, as well as angel investors from Web2 and Web3.

4. Caldera Tokenomics

$ERA has a total supply of 1 billion tokens. The token allocation and unlock schedule are as follows:

Early Backers & Investors: 32.075%, 15% unlocked after a 1-year lockup, with the rest unlocked linearly over the next 24 months.

Community Treasury: 21%, 60,000,000 ERA unlocked at TGE, with the remaining unlocked linearly over the next 48 months.

Foundation: 14.94%, 48,500,000 ERA unlocked initially, 7,050,000 tokens unlocked after a 3-month lockup, with the remaining tokens unlocked linearly for the 45 months thereafter.

Core Team: 14.75%, 15% unlocks after a 1-year lockup, with the rest unlocked linearly over the next 24 months.

R&D: 10.235%, 29.1% unlocked at the third month anniversary of the TGE, with the remaining unlocked linearly over 48 months.

Airdrop: 7%

5. Token Utility

$ERA is the native token of the Caldera ecosystem, serving as the primary asset for gas fees, staking, and governance. Its core utilities include: 1) Omnichain Gas: $ERA functions as the standard gas token for all operations on the Metalayer. Any cross-chain transactions and data propagations initiated on the Metalayer incur fees denominated in $ERA. 2) Staking and Security: Validators stake $ERA to secure the network and validate cross-chain messages. Nodes' participation and influence in the decentralized validator network are proportional to their staked amount. This security model will extend to purpose-built subnets in the future, such as those dedicated to generating zero-knowledge proofs. 3) $ERA holders can directly participate in on-chain governance, influence major decisions, and take part in the top-level decision-making of the Caldera Foundation.

II. Token Information

III. Related Links