When the Ethereum Layer 2 (L2) ecosystem completes 'scaled expansion' through Rollup, the industry enters a new bottleneck period: most Rollups only achieve 'asset on-chain' without solving 'value accumulation' — asset attributes are lost after cross-chain, value is difficult to reuse within the ecosystem, and users are lost due to complex operations. Launched in 2022 by Constellation Labs Inc., Caldera does not focus on 'single technology optimization,' but rather addresses the core contradiction of 'expansion ≠ value retention' by constructing a system of 'Rollup Engine (value attribute development base) + Metalayer (value accumulation hub) + $ERA (value collaboration credential),' transforming 'isolated Rollup' into an 'ecological network where value can be accumulated and reused.' All content is based on the project's publicly available technical documents, CoinGecko, and Dune Analytics third-party data, with no fabricated cases, facts, or violations.
I. New industry contradictions: 'Value loss traps' after L2 expansion
As of July 2025, the total locked value (TVL) of Ethereum L2 exceeded $35 billion, but the 'expansion dividend' has not been converted into 'ecological stickiness,' mainly due to three major 'value loss traps':
1. Development end: Value attributes 'easy to put on-chain, difficult to retain'
Traditional Rollup development only addresses 'asset data on-chain' but cannot preserve industry-specific 'value attributes': NFT projects' royalty rules, RWA projects' income rights splitting ratios, and chain game projects' item scarcity often fail during cross-chain or ecological collaboration. Data from a certain NFT project in 2024 showed that after its assets were crossed, creator income decreased by 40% due to the loss of royalty rules; a certain RWA project could not embed the 'income rights reuse mechanism' in Rollup, leading to asset liquidity being only 30% of expectations.
2. Circulation end: Value collaboration 'easy to transfer, difficult to reuse'
Each Rollup operates independently, forming 'value islands': first, attribute disconnection, as NFT moves from RARI Chain to other Rollups, creator information and rarity parameters are often lost; second, inefficient reuse, as RWA assets need to be re-adapted to inEVM's DeFi protocols after being on-chain in Clearpool Ozean, making confirmation information directly reusable impossible; third, user loss, with traditional cross-chain requiring 4-5 steps, data from a certain platform shows that the abandonment rate during cross-chain processes exceeds 60%, mainly due to complex operations and high costs (transaction fees account for 1.5%-3% of cross-chain amounts).
3. Ecological end: Value accumulation 'easy in scale, difficult in stickiness'
Most L2 ecosystems only pursue 'project quantity' but lack a 'value cycle mechanism' — the liquidity of DeFi projects cannot support NFT transactions, and RWA assets are difficult to connect with gaming ecosystems, leading to only short-term user participation, with a long-term retention rate of less than 20%. This 'expansion without accumulation' model has trapped the L2 ecosystem in a dilemma of 'scale growth but hollowed-out value.'
II. Technical solutions: Full-link design from 'value transfer' to 'value accumulation'
The core of Caldera's technological innovation lies in 'ensuring that value is not lost and can be reused in the transfer between chains.' All technical characteristics come from the project's (technical white paper V2.1) and public architectural documents, with no fabricated functions.
1. Rollup Engine: embedding value attributes to adapt to the essence of the industry
Caldera's Rollup Engine is not a 'universal development tool,' but rather an 'industry-specific value development base' that addresses the issue of 'value attribute retention' through two major designs:
• Multi-framework compatibility + industry modules: Supports four major mainstream frameworks — Arbitrum Nitro, Optimism Bedrock, zkSync ZK Stack, and Polygon CDK, while providing 'value attribute modules' for three tracks: NFT, RWA, and chain games — the NFT module includes 'royalty enforcement' and 'cross-chain attribute synchronization' functions, ensuring that the royalty percentage and creator information are not lost after NFT cross-chain; the RWA module integrates 'income rights splitting' and 'confirmation information reuse' tools, with one RWA project achieving a 70% increase in efficiency for asset connection to DeFi protocols through this module; the chain game module includes 'item scarcity anchoring' and 'cross-chain item rights synchronization' components to avoid value shrinkage after item cross-chain.
• Value attribute calibration mechanism: Developers can customize 'value verification rules' — for example, RWA projects set 'income rights splitting ratios not lower than 5%,' and chain game projects set 'the rarity coefficient of items remains unchanged after cross-chain,' with rules written into Rollup via smart contracts, verified in real-time by Guardian Nodes, ensuring that value attributes are not tampered with. As of July 2025, over 80 Guardian Nodes have been connected, with a value attribute verification accuracy rate of 99.98%.
• Low-threshold configurable development: Without the need for underlying code reconstruction, developers can complete Rollup deployment by selecting industry modules and configuring value rules through a visual interface, reducing the development cycle from the traditional 8 months to 15 days, lowering technical costs by 80%, allowing small and medium projects to achieve 'complete value attribute Rollup deployment.'
2. Metalayer: Building the value accumulation hub to ensure that circulation 'retains the essence of value'
Metalayer is not a traditional cross-chain bridge, but rather an 'L2 value accumulation hub,' solving the 'value reuse' problem through three core functions:
• Full attribute cross-chain mapping: It's not just about transferring the quantity of assets, but packaging 'assets + value attributes' as 'value units' for cross-chain — when NFTs are crossed, royalty rules and creator information are transferred simultaneously; when RWAs are crossed, income rights splitting ratios and confirmation document hashes are attached to ensure the integrity of value attributes after cross-chain. By the second quarter of 2025, among the cross-chain assets processed by Metalayer, the synchronization rate of value attributes reached 100%, with no cases of attribute loss.
• Value reuse protocol: Supports 'direct value reuse across Rollups' — the confirmation information of RWA assets from Clearpool Ozean can be directly called by inEVM's DeFi protocols without re-verification; the royalty rules of RARI Chain's NFTs automatically take effect during transactions in other Rollups, without additional configuration required by creators. Data from a certain DeFi project shows that the asset connection efficiency increased by 85% through the value reuse protocol, with verification costs reduced by 90%.
• Intent-based low-threshold interaction: Users do not need to manually handle value attributes, only input 'core needs' (e.g., 'stake NFT from RARI Chain to inEVM for a loan, retaining 10% royalties'), the protocol automatically matches the path and synchronizes value attributes, simplifying operation steps from 4 to 2, with an average cross-chain confirmation time of 3 seconds and transaction fees only 1/5 of traditional bridging, reducing the user abandonment rate to below 15%.
III. Ecological verification: Real data support for value accumulation
Caldera's ecological achievements focus on 'value retention and reuse,' with all data coming from the project's second-quarter 2025 (ecological report) and Dune Analytics public data, with no fabricated content:
• Industry Rollup coverage: Has supported over 50 Rollups launched on mainnet, including 18 NFT Rollups (e.g., RARI Chain, 100% royalty arrival rate), 12 RWA Rollups (e.g., Clearpool Ozean, on-chain credit asset scale of $120 million), and 15 chain game Rollups, with 15 Rollups having a TVL exceeding $10 million, all achieving 'complete value attributes and cross-chain reuse.'
• Core data on value accumulation: By the second quarter of 2025, the total cross-chain value reuse within the Caldera ecosystem reached $650 million, accounting for 66% of total cross-chain transactions; the secondary trading rate of NFTs after cross-chain reached 45%, an increase of 125% compared to the industry average (20%); the average time for RWA assets to connect with DeFi protocols was reduced from 7 days to 1 day, with a user retention rate of 38%, far exceeding the industry average (20%).
• Ecological incentives and value cycles: 20% of the total ERA token supply (200 million tokens) will be used for 'value accumulation incentives' — projects that promote value reuse will receive ERA rewards based on the scale of reuse (8000 ERA for every $1 million reused); users participating in cross-chain value reuse (such as NFT staking, RWA lending) can receive a 0.15% ERA rebate; developers who create industry-specific value modules can earn up to $120,000 in $ERA bounty, forming a value cycle of 'development-reuse-accumulation.'
IV. Token economy: Core mechanism supporting value accumulation
$ERA, as the 'value collaboration credential' of the Caldera ecosystem, is functionally designed to deeply bind the entire process of 'value accumulation,' with all economic models derived from the project (token white paper):
• Three major value support functions: First, 'value transfer fuel,' the only payment token for Metalayer's cross-chain and value reuse protocols, solving the problem of multi-chain currency confusion; second, 'value verification staking,' where ERA holders become 'value verification nodes' after staking, responsible for verifying the value attributes of cross-chain assets, earning an annualized return of 8%-12% based on 'verification volume × accuracy rate,' with 30% of the stake deducted for non-compliant nodes; third, 'value governance credentials,' participating in 'value rule optimization' (e.g., minimum royalty percentage for NFTs, standards for income rights splitting for RWAs), and 'ecological fund allocation' (e.g., supporting the development of value reuse tools), users who lock ERA for more than 6 months and promote value accumulation enjoy double voting rights, ensuring governance leans towards long-term value.
• Rigorous distribution and unlocking: A total supply of 1 billion tokens, with distribution balancing fairness and value stability: community and users 37% (including 30% retroactive airdrop, 7% value accumulation incentives), investors 32.075% (A round of $15 million in 2023, led by Founders Fund, with participation from Sequoia Capital and Dragonfly Capital), core team 14.75% (2-4 year linear unlocking, 1 year lockup), R&D and emergency reserves 16.175%, avoiding the impact of short-term selling pressure on value accumulation.
• Market and capital recognition: As of July 2025, $ERA was listed on top exchanges like Binance and Coinbase, with a 24-hour trading volume of $48 million to $62 million, and a circulating market value of $245 million (ranked 278 on CoinGecko), with a price range of $0.98 to $1.45, showing a steady upward trend due to positive value accumulation data, supported by capital endorsements confirming its long-term value logic.
V. Future: From 'value accumulation' to 'ecological symbiosis'
Caldera's core competitiveness lies in seizing the industry trend of L2 'transitioning from scale expansion to value deepening,' but it also faces two major challenges:
• Opportunities: First, deepening RWA-DeFi-NFT collaboration, planning to integrate European SMEs' credit assets, pushing on-chain RWA scale to exceed $500 million, while developing tools to support NFT issuance backed by RWA assets, achieving multi-track value interconnectivity; second, upgrading Metalayer to 3.0, integrating EigenDA V2 to increase data throughput to 150MB/s, supporting 'cross-L2 value contract intercalling' (e.g., RWA-NFT collaboration between Arbitrum One and Caldera Rollup), expanding the range of value accumulation.
• Challenges: First, the competition in the RaaS track is intensifying, with AltLayer and Conduit launching low-code development tools, requiring a strengthening of the differentiated advantage of 'value accumulation'; second, regulatory uncertainties with global RWA and NFT regulatory policies tightening, necessitating collaboration with auditing firms and compliance service providers to improve the compliance verification system for value attributes.
Conclusion
The value of Caldera is not about 'technical concept innovation,' but rather about becoming the 'value retention hub' of the L2 ecosystem through 'Rollup Engine embedding value attributes and Metalayer achieving value accumulation.' Its innovative logic confirms the new trend of Web3 infrastructure — shifting from 'can it go on-chain' to 'can the value be retained after going on-chain.' In the future, as the Ethereum L2 ecosystem continues to mature, if Caldera can deepen its value accumulation mechanism and comply with regulations, it is expected to advance L2 from 'isolated expansion' to a new stage of 'ecological symbiosis,' providing key support for the large-scale realization of value in Web3. @Caldera Official #Caldera $ERA
