Caldera, a prominent rollup-as-a-service platform, is introducing its very own native token, ERA, alongside a community airdrop that marks a significant milestone in the project’s journey.
In a recent announcement on July 10, the Caldera Foundation unveiled the commencement of the pre-claim phase for the airdrop, which will allocate 7% of the total ERA token supply to early supporters and ecosystem contributors. Interested users must register through the official claims portal before the token’s public launch to secure their share of the allocation.
The ERA token is set to play a pivotal role within Caldera’s ecosystem, enabling omnichain gas payments, validator staking, and decentralized governance. It is specifically designed to fuel both the Rollup Engine, utilized for launching modular L2 chains on frameworks like Arbitrum (ARB), Optimism (OP), Base, and zkSync (ZK), as well as the Metalayer.
The Metalayer, Caldera’s interoperability protocol, serves as the link that connects all rollups into a unified network with shared liquidity and intent-based bridging. It functions as a crucial bridge between Caldera-based chains, facilitating the seamless movement of assets and data across rollups while upholding security measures.
Validators within the ecosystem will stake their ERA tokens to validate cross-chain messages and safeguard future infrastructure developments, including ZK-specific subnets. Furthermore, as the ecosystem evolves, token holders will play a key role in guiding protocol upgrades, participating in voting processes for developer grants, and electing representatives to the foundation’s governance councils.
The launch of the ERA token follows a series of major infrastructure upgrades that took place in early July, including the full implementation of the Metalayer and enhancements to the Rollup Engine. These upgrades now enable developers to manage rollups as programmable services with integrated interoperability, facilitating swift and secure bridging across more than 100 chains.
Presently, Caldera supports over 50 live rollups with a total locked value exceeding $400 million and has processed over 750 million transactions across 27 million wallet addresses. Notable partners of Caldera include Manta Pacific, ApeChain, and B3.
The Cayman Islands-based Caldera Foundation will oversee the distribution of the ERA token and spearhead the gradual decentralization of the ecosystem. The foundation’s primary objective is to foster the growth of the network while empowering the community to steer its future direction.
With the momentum building in the modular blockchain space, Caldera’s ERA token aims to serve as the coordination layer and economic engine for what it terms as the “Internet of Chains.” With the airdrop now live and the core infrastructure in place, the project is extending an invitation to users and developers to actively shape the upcoming era of scalable and composable blockchains.