How Caldera is Becoming The Distribution Channel for Modular Infra

Transcript

Caldera has just announced the metal layer we've talked a lot about how we see Ras providers as the modular vending machine where Builders can go in and pick and choose which service they want which modular infra Parts they want to build their rollup with in today's pl we talked about the state of Rass whether or not it's going to be quantized down to zero the mod your vending machine idea Matt's thoughts on shared sequencing and where the module ecosystem goes from here as well as some of the general sentiment around building new rollups and launching new block space whether or not we have too much block space and more this is our second time having that on the show it was absolute pleasure hope you guys enjoy and let's Dive Right In after a quick word from our sponsors [Music]

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cy. that's cy. to learn more about building your own app chain today welcome back to the rollup today we have of the podcast with our friend Matt from Caldera have some interesting topics today for us it's like think about this idea of a Ras provider being a vending machine for the modular blockchain parts and also going to understand the business model of Ras uh how it's progressed and kind of where Matt se's is going and more robs and Brussels already looking forward to ECC by the time this is out be after ECC so I'm sure all of us hopefully won't be too sick but Matt looking forward to seeing you there as well and welcome in

man yeah thank you for having me yeah sh I think we did up uh last one maybe almost a year ago or a little bit less than a year ago and a lot it's kind of changed then for those of our audience who are new to Cera I would love to just kind of have a brief overview of your role and kind of your view of what Caldera is and kind of why Ras is an important component to the maer stack yeah for sure so I'm Matt uh Co founder CEO of Caldera um I'm an engineer by training though so that means I kind of have a hand in everything right everything from go to market to building to supporting a lot of the the builders that are working on Caldera um in short I like to think of Caldera as like the kind of way to build

modular blockchains um uh you put it really well Andy when you called it kind of like a vending machine um basically we are the infrastructure platform layer for like everything in the modular stack so if you're like a developer and you want to build a blockchain on the modular stack there are all these different components you know there's obviously rollup framework itself right op arbitrum ZK sync polygon cdk there's the da layer right Celestia igen nuff um right ail uh you might look inh sequencing layers now chain abstraction uh layers Etc we're basically the aggregator over all of these pieces of infrastructure that people uh use in the modular stack so you know a team will come to us they're pretty confident that

they want to build a modular blockchain oftentimes they don't they know you know the properties of what they want and we kind of help them get there so we tend to ingest um teams at you know a fairly early stage of development they're like we want to do modular stuff and then we help them choose the stack we help them choose the da layer we help them design their blockchain uh and then we eventually launch uh and uh help them scale with that blockchain so um in some sense you can think of us as like you know half uh you know like a the a us kind of platform layer for blockchains uh and then and then also like half uh you know I don't know what to call like like guides into the modular ecosystem uh in general the modular Shepherd or with with the recent modular mullet

conversation you're like a barber shaping cutting up the modular mullet haircuts for people and you got you guys are in a pretty unique position because you see like you're at like this the center of how all these pieces connect and so I'm curious you know we've we've talked about the fragmentation problem at at length on the rollup and so you know I'm curious what is from your more nuanced perspective what what are some of the problems from connecting all of these tools together because it's not just easy to to kind of have all this connective tissue that pulls everything together makes it really easy and smooth what has been your experience uh across you know 50 plus rollups that I've launched on Caldera um what has been your experience trying to connect all

these modular components together yeah so uh you know you mentioned fragmentation I I think there's kind of like you know there's two types of fragmentation here one is more on the the sort of technical side when you're building an individual rup and then one is like on the ecosystem you know more broadly and and they are you know somewhat connected um but you know first of all like the the whole you know point of mod uh you know modular modularis uh is choice and like that's really really good for users and Builders um it's very annoying right for for us because it means right you have like an N squared problem of like you know you need to integrate every stack with every da layer eventually right like that's that's the vision um and then you know integrate that with other you know

sequencing layers and so there uh is just a lot of work in making sure all of that works um to the degree that you know that it needs to um of course you know we' we've come so far in the last like year or so in the you know in the modular space but everything is very nent um it's it's unclear about like where the you know the boundaries should be like who like who should take point on Alda should that be the creators of the stack like an optimism or arbitrum should that be the Alda provider should it be a Ras currently it's sort of like a a multi-way dance to to get those Integrations done um and so that is like generally one of the the tricky things about building modular um and it's one of the things that we like to like

abstract away from our users so it's it's kind of like partially it's annoying but it's also kind of like a moat for the company like we've done it all before we're the one putting in a lot of the engineering resources here to make sure everything works so that we abstract that away from our users um but you do get some fragmentation here across uh different standards right you know you will have like every rollup that that launches might have a slightly different config right Nitro stack with nuff op stack with igen OP stack with plasma ZK with you know uh it's its own validium scheme and so you see a lot of uh fragmentation on how people are designing their chains um and I think that uh you know that kind of flows into

the general fragmentation across the ecosystem like you know go back a year and there were many people we talked to that that like had the general thesis that like maybe the op stack would just win you know rollups in general like there will be new technical designs for rollups but everyone all of these teams that are like wanting to build app chains maybe there will be you know the op stack or maybe just the op and arbitrum stack that will like own that category that's you know I think we we always thought that was unlikely to be true and and as we're seeing in the ecosystem that's that's not true and so that means we do have significant you know fragmentation across the ecosystem just in terms of the types of rollups

and that also means that uh a lot of the solutions that people might have come up with to really unify those rollups are are only partial Solutions right so like the op super chain is incredible technology um I think it's unlikely that any arbitrum stack chains are going to be able to join the OPC you know super chain of course and so there'll be a lot of great you know interoperability properties within that sort of cluster um but you know we're still seeing fragmentation across multiple different clusters of rollups um and there isn't really a great solution uh to that um currently um though a lot of people are working on it yeah there's been this like kind of uh back and forth between synchronous composability and as

synchronous composability um between these roll up clusters um and to kind of anticipate what what you might say I'm curious if you agree with this um you know I anticipate seeing synchronous composability inside these clusters everyone on the super chain will have the same sequencer everyone in arbitrum orbit will have the same sequencer but then uh coordinating between clusters might take some chain abstraction or interoperability solutions that use intents and and other Solutions to communicate asynchronously and so when you're building for rollups that may appear in these different clusters or maybe in the same cluster how does that change your model for what you may suggest to a project you know whether or

not they're going to be part of some existing cluster or part of something entirely new and maybe even Sovereign yeah um so I think this is maybe kind of the hottest take that we as a company have um but we've we've always been fairly bearish on the idea of like wide spread like highly you know available like uh synchronous comp composability in any like real form across blockchains um it's a much harder problem uh like you mentioned right you you might need to do something along the lines of like a shared sequencer and then if you're doing a shared sequencer there are other performance uh you know uh reasons you know like you are going to kind of take a performance hit because you you now are sharing a sequencer with a bunch of

other chains um and there there are probably you know in like project out like a decade from now you can probably design these things you know in such a way where that performance hit is is lessened and you have more flexibility but like this is something where I feel like it's it's always been kind of like one you know it's always been like one year away for for quite some time and we think it's just like a much uh you know more long-term problem and and as you mentioned right for a lot of the protocols uh we're working with let's say someone's like building like a DEX and they want to you know bridge in tokens from many other chains like even if there exists some really strong uh synchronous interoperability protocol uh like you mentioned it's not like it it's going to likely be like double opt In

from from both chains right the source chain and the destination chain and you can't guarantee they know it's it's hard enough to make predictions about your own architectur as of blockchain many years from now it's very hard to guarantee that you know if you want to bridge in from optimism and arbitrum that both of them might be part of the same synchronous composability uh protocol so for us like when we advise teams um um we tell them you know generally try to uh operate under an asynchronous model um we haven't really seen any projects that require like highly synchronous composability I think it you know from an academic standpoint it's very easy to come up with problems that would require this but from a practical standpoint there are always

ways to work around it like the internet itself uh you know operates you know basically on on an asynchronous model and like you know as a society we've been able to to you know use that to great effect and so generally that the teams we work with we advise them if you want like the widest reach you you have to design around asynchronicity gotcha yeah I think that's the that's the angle that uh vitalic took as well I think um in one of his recent blog posts and ex responses um and and I think like the shared sequencing people may have different views or may have like a different way of thinking about it um which kind of brings me to a question like would you a little bit different uh kind of uh train of thought but why why

couldn't I just spin up a Caldera and and just charge less or just have the same Tech stack and just do things cheaper and then the next company does it and does it cheaper like why is launching rollups not just going to end up being like a zero Revenue thing and just like something that is like like uh commoditized completely yeah that's a really good question and that's I think B basically you know in our 2 and 1 half year history as a company every time we've spoken to a VC they ask that question and it's a it's a very fair question um so you're used to answering it then exactly exactly um it's it's a really fair question because you know what is

Ras you know at the the kind of like first-degree take on Ras is that Ras you're hosting other people's software for people right you're taking some open source software putting it on the cloud right like how hard could it be is there anything proprietary there um so I would say that the sort of the thing that we've found um just empirically from working in the space you know again over the last two years is that first of all rollup Stacks are very hard and tricky to run and there's a lot of like um sort of crystallized knowledge that you need in order to run these things effectively um you know we've seen some uh high-profile cases of downtime um in you know uh what's some some Ras providers

and other rollups and a lot of that comes down to um like you know needing to really be very aware of the architecture and and how everything works uh whenever you're building all across a stack like our monitoring uh system for example you know that even though that's like kind of like a web two component right you're just making sure things are Al you need to actually have like a web 3 engineer build that and someone who's familiar with rups um because uh you know finalization for example which is a big issue with rollup reliability if if you you know if you don't pay attention to it um that is like an onchain system and so um there's just like a lot of those kind of pieces and those are all like pieces of proprietary software that we've built up over the years um to you know ensure

that like our rollups stay up and they stay performant and they stay live and like there's just so you you know there there's just like a you know managerie of of things kind of on that front that does give us like a technical mode and um uh you know increases like you know improves the customer experience and that's something like if you were a new entrant into the space um and we we have been seeing some of them uh some new entrance like that's going to take a while for for them to learn um and you know for that reason like we're still able to I think uh close generally like most of the deals uh that that we see just because like other people come to us and they they say that you know most other Ras providers that they might have

checked out they don't take all the boxes um because they I think they just haven't spent as much time as we have um you know working with these Stacks um so that's like how things kind of currently uh currently are um and that's led to a lot of solid what what we like to call kind of like pseudo Network effects like just like trust um you know having more customers means more people trust us which means it's easier for us to work with infrastructure providers we can provide a standard interface to a layer zero or like a third web it makes it easier for those folks to kind of join our platform and then so uh we have a really great flywheel there from like the business side um on uh you know on on just generally like increasing the size uh of our ecosystem and connecting

you know different types of Partners um you know alongside you know that we're also working on um some models to really allow you know the chains that we're that we're launching to collaborate and and like interoperate um I think one of the most kind of strategic positions we're in uh as as you guys mentioned like we have 50 plus teams we're working with close to 20 Main Nets at this point and for us the fact that we're sequencing all those chains we're intimately uh familiar with the infrastructure that all those chains are running on um that gives us a really great position to like build additional Solutions on top of what we currently have um to like improve the the user and customer experience on those chains yeah and and you mentioned earlier also that

your competency is your Mo which I've heard other projects say and I think that that's particularly important um thing that really can't be commoditized um and then once you once you do achieve that social flywheel that you mentioned through repeat customers and referral customers you're able to continue that that flywheel and then eventually now alluding to some of the potential Network effects coming down the line uh sound sound really really exciting um and so kind of like looking a little bit broader here about and you know you guys have already done a bunch of work in the space helping to build build these rollups and and uh connecting them with with customers and users I'm thinking a

little bit more broadly about kind of like what you see out there like do you think and I know you're in the business and I granted I I I realize that you might be biased here but like do you think we're at a point of saturation where we have too many rollups like there's The Tweak going around like oh boy another rollup you know it's like another AWS app right but like that's not really what's going on here so I'm curious from your perspective do you do you think we've hit a point of saturation and you know if I do have a followup here but I'm curious just generally like have you have you seen that in the space yeah I think I think that's a that's a very uh it's a very interesting question um I would say I

think we're at a point of saturation for thinking that you can you know launch a random L2 run like a maybe like a blast style campaign right run like a grow yield farming campaign and then launch it like a you know3 billion fdv um right like that Playbook I think has a fair bit of of saturation um like and I think for good reason that the market has like less and less appetite for that as it's become easier and easier uh I think I would be surprised if anything different uh you know occurred um that said I don't think you can take that and extrapolate in extrapolate that into like General saturation on the concept

of of like l2s right as you mentioned people make the analogy between l2s and AWS like launching an AWS box it's like it's an imperfect analogy but you know what l2s are ultimately is like they're a technology they're a way of achieving certain goals and like as long as those goals themselves are valuable to projects and enable them to do interesting things like you know I don't think uh l2s you know are going to stop being deployed um at least from our perspective you know as a company like looking at our CRM for example like you know it hasn't gone down if anything like the amount of deals were closing the amount of interest in rollups the amount of new customers that are entering our pipeline um has been pretty kind of you know monotonically

increasing um over the course of the company's life cycle and like that it hasn't slowed down over the past three months despite the fact like the market has certainly gone slower and there are fewer you know launches and stuff happening um so like in general um I think the the really great thing about this quote unquote you know saturation is is it's going to force a lot of teams to innovate both like the technical and the application Level uh but um yeah I'm I'm still very very bullish on a lot of the folks who are coming into our pipeline uh because they are using l2s for like truly kind of Novel applications yeah exactly for novel applications they're probably not launching general purpose l2s right or are they is there still a strong demand to like launch a a general purpose L2

and compete even if it's optimistic or ZK like is there still a lot of demand for that because I feel like that that trend is like slowing while the app chain or app rollup trend is accelerating yeah I would I would say that's definitely true we're seeing a lot more app rollups now than we did before um and again like I think we we expected this because there was a a huge opportunity to launch like truly general you know general purpose l2s for some time as the you know uh eth Community transition towards a rollup Centric uh road map now you know as that space has gotten filled out um people are going to move on to the the next thing um we are still seeing some demand for what I would say is like general

purpose or vertical specific l2s but the teams that are launching those I think they have real reason to be bullish on themselves like they have an existent very strong Community or an existent app that um you know quite reasonbly they think will lead to like very very strong distribution or they have an extremely strong like geographical Focus um and like some sort of natural advantage in distribution to those areas and so I think we'll see a lot more chains like that um but if you're like a new team that's trying to launch a chain uh and you don't have any of those advantages yeah there are very few teams like that uh anymore who are trying to coent is solving the longterm data availability

problem where a lot of the data availability Prov iders today in the modular space when you post data to them they actually only hold that data for about 12 to 16 days and then it's basically they can go into an archive note or often times it's just kind of put away into the abyss and what coaling is trying to do is build this long-term data availability solution which can plug into some of these modular data availability providers and provide this longer term Perpetual data solution so what we try to think of this as is when you post transaction data onto Celestial or Veil or any of these mod da Solutions or even ethereum coal is able to provide a longterm data storage and data

availability platform for that data after the time period blockchains are Billboards not databases and you know we need these providers in the space to be able to kind of hold on to the longterm data that is provided from these providers and these blockchain State this is where coent comes in they just had a nice Rebrand check them out on Twitter as well as the website thank you for being here hope you enjoy the rest of the show Everclear is pioneering the clearing layer the clearing layer can almost be thought of as splitwise when you go on a trip with friends but for the blockchain what I mean by that is when users are sending cross chain messages there's often times fillers and solvers who have balances left on

different chains that they need to rebalance and reset their positions this is where every comes in ever is pioneering a collaborative approach to the chain abstraction future and they are willing to work with interoperability Partners solvers and other providers in the space to build a interoperable and chain abstraction fature check out Everclear at ever clear.org and welcome back to the rollup okay so if you're speaking with uh a prospective rollup company out there and they're looking to get into this business and maybe they have an existing business I was singing on the plane over here about two examples I think would go really well on blockchain which are zel for obvious reasons payments and then

the second was Carfax which is like information that is attributable to each you know vehicle and is very identifiable and so information transfer for that reason and so if you were kind of looking at that you know what would you suggest to using those companies as an example you know what would you suggest if they were coming in and they weren't sure about what blockchain to use where to go if they W if they were to launch an app chain or on a general purpose at a high level what are some of the guidance and rails that you would suggest for companies that are kind of like first coming to the space but have an existing business in in general yeah so I I guess like the it's it's interesting you give those two examples

um because we we have been starting to have more conversations with what I would call more kind of like institutional or bigger players the sales process there is obviously much much much different than working with more crypto native companies um I think like but for those those companies with existing businesses they're probably looking to to bring you know huge amounts of data and really large scale you know workloads to the blockchain you know oftentimes if they're coming to us it's because they've already done testing on other chains and they' found that using a general purpose chain just doesn't work um so oftentimes we don't need to convince them of that fact you know they'll say you know we tried to test this on XYZ blockchains test net and we totally saturated it gas prices

are super high um or they've like done the math already um and you know have come to that conclusion if for some reason they haven't like that's typically where we'll start um just because like that is kind of like the the easiest wave from the top of the funnel to eliminate um you know all the obvious things that you you can't go with um for those you know for those workflows so if it's like a Carfax or something like you know let's let's take a look at like all the data that we need to put on chain and think through what data availability layers could actually reasonbly support that in a cost effective way um and then you know going down from there um a lot of it is is very um a lot of it's kind of like very like

Vibes based I would say for lack of a better term like when we typically work with uh with teams in the crypto space and they ask which stack to use we'll go through the technicals as often the case that multiple Stacks um fit you know their technical requirements and so then it becom comes a question of like alignment future road map Etc like do you want to make a bet on the op community and the op super chain do you want to make a bet on the ZK sync uh elastic chain Vision do you want to make a bet on arbitrum and everything they're doing with clusters and bold and like uh the other stuff that that's being developed in the ecosystem um and so that's like the way that we typically kind of position this um if you're a larger player there's also the kind of

question of like you know do you even do you want to position this how how you want to position this as a blockchain thing like do you want to be very public about your collaboration with us and with let's say like an arbitrum right in some cases the answer is yes right like we weren't at all part of this deal but we've seen like Robin Hood and arbitrum collaborating and right they've obviously both been extremely public about that that fact but there are other companies who for various reasons they might want to uh you know do this as kind of like a a trial like we we actually were working with a company a while ago that want to trial this but they wanted to absolutely make sure that nobody knew they were using blockchain um for like the first six months and then they would go live and say taada

everyone like you know you're actually using a blockchain under the hood um and use that as a way to like gain gain trust with with their users this is a gaming um ecosystem project that you know was very worry about how blockchain was was being um kind of perceived in the space at the time um so I mean that that was like a bit of a tangent but like basically it's it's very specific deal deal to deal um start with the technicals then move on to kind of like you know Community alignment how you want to position this and then kind of like from those both of those uh threads we're typically able to make a pretty strong suggestion yeah that's cool I I uh I didn't really think too much on that note like I think that was a good point Rob were like okay so there's

actually companies coming out from outside of the crypto space wanting to build rollups to to me just like I was like okay there's a lot of application builders that want to come and launch their own chain but I mean it's more powerful to have have people that are outside of space come in but yeah like you said it's a it's a harder sales cycle there's a different sales cycle really um which is you know it's good it's good that that you can take that business on as well yeah I think um our our our philosophy around like selling into these companies has evolved over time um but uh it's it's always it it's it's kind of like of those things like Enterprise crypto adoption everybody

knows when it really happens it's going to be huge it's going to be like one of the biggest drivers of like net inflows into the crypto space maybe like in in history um and like of it seems like you know every cycle there it it like seems like it might happen and then it sort of happens but but you know not really um and so there's like a bit of a delicate balance for a team like ours where we know that the most reliable customers are crypto native projects we know that you know if like a great onchain game comes to us and they say we were going to you know we want to build a modular blockchain they're going to see that through the project won't get can or anything like you know they'll eventually launch and and we can it's a lot easier for us to like estimate how

impactful that'll be to our ecosystem with a lot of them more Enterprise things it's a lot more you know tentative and uh you know there's a bit of a gamble but we know like I think there will come a point in time where those types of applications make the bulk of activity on Caldera it just you know uh we don't know when yeah' be cool like to talk more about kind of your some some of the downfalls you've seen with Ras and uh just kind of uh challenges you've had to face as well as how you kind of are building to face those challenges and to kind of make a better product and grow a ecosystem for Calder in a sense uh but real quick I can't help but ask I keep putting this idea out into the ether of like the ma stack is not just three parts it's

expanding to a ton of different um areas things like uh provs and like sequence shared sequencers and like interoperability providers out of the box and um ZK co-processors and these various infr parts um like is this going to happen and like is this part of what Builders could eventually select on a Caldera build your own rollup type of interface like how do you see these parts of blockchains of like this majra stack expanding you know am I on the right train of thought here and is this going to happen like on Cal yeah you're totally on the right train of thought um and all of the things that you mentioned

are things that we're seeing and we're evaluating now um now that we've become more active on the ZK side so you mentioned right provs it could be centralized proving systems decentralized proving systems uh there's also been this new trend of decentralized proof verification networks which initially seems um you know uh you know honestly it seems a little silly right because ZK proves the costly part is often proving not verifying but if you like do the math um for like a ZK app chain proving can become uh very you know proh prohibitively expensive um and so you know decentralized kind of verification networks are I think going to make a huge impact in this space um yeah and then all the way up to more application

Level things like yeah interop chain abstraction Etc um I think you know our our view is that all of these things um are part of the modular ecosystem um you know some I I imagine someone will have an issue with that definition they might say that you know modular is all the things encased by what was typically like if you imagine the quote unquote monolithic blockchain right like the salana node um what what does that entail right it has sequencing it has da Etc it doesn't necessarily have like interoperability built into it and so certainly some people will say you know modularis is taking all the components of an existing blockchain node um and then you know

modularizing them uh in which case something like you know a layer zero wouldn't be part of but you know for all practical purposes like when we're speaking to users they care about yeah what the what the kind of default standard interrupt provider is just as much as the da layer so for us and from a product perspective yeah we want to offer that that choice like right now we've been focused on that uh I would say that tighter ver uh you know version of modularity Da sequencing execution um but uh you know we like on our dashboard we do eventually want to you know have the user press button when they're deploying they get layer zero or hyper lane or both uh you know automatically deployed to the chain um and so yeah that that's all definitely

you know part of the the vision for the future nice yeah it's cool yeah I see it as well um because then if we can get that then like that the chain wouldn't have to go to hyperlane to like get set up or go to their docks or or kind of do anything as well as layer zero or they would just kind of like permissionless click and like something would have to happen underneath but it it would would kind of do that integration for them um and I think that's how we truly scale these networks is like if Ras is a vending machine for all these uh you know infra players then then like let's make it a vending machine where like I can actually go and get whatever snack I want I can go get whatever part of the

puzzle that that I want um and so so yeah that to me is like particularly important I think for uh the long-term sustainability of these infra uh players and like the growth of their ecosystem having like like if I'm a if if I'm a proof verification layer for example and like I should be able to have a a integration spun up without me ever even like knowing about it or seeing it until like it's done and like I I think that's like a big part of the crypto EAS yeah I think that's a really good point um and it's uh I think it it's taken some time uh just on the technical level for a lot of teams to adapt to that and so I think we're going to see a lot of

like a big explosion of that sort of model um in the next cycle um or I guess like the current cycle um because for a long time you didn't really need to do that right if you're in like a a chain link or something you know not to pick on them like it's okay having a very Enterprise uh sort of sales motion for integrating chains because there's Max like three new three like legitimate new chains launching every quarter let's say um now that's no longer the case and so for um basically every yeah everything on the stack explorers interop Etc I I'm seeing like the integration process become a lot leaner um and I think very very soon a lot of these uh Proctors will will move towards a more automated model then it'll be really easy for us

to integrate that into our automated model um so it's all it's all going to happen very soon yeah I I got a a similar question and so I at a high level I think your answer would remain the same that you know eventually will get automated uh speaking about the interop uh providers I'm curious more you know because when all of these applications are deployed on their own VM or or evm or like a single VM everything is easy right you just integrate that um but now with app chains we're going into multiple different virtual machines so I'm curious like if that is the difficulty of connecting different virtual machines together you know what is the bottleneck I is the ver VMS the bottleneck or is it

something else and if if it is VMS you know how are you guys uh kind of connected to all these different VMS which ones are you connected to and generally how do you see this this explosion of of new VMS playing out for now we have been very focused on the evm um though it's a little bit of a misconception that the evm itself is a single like unified VM right in fact oftentimes basically every different stack has a slightly different implementation of the evm and they can all still be evm uh equivalent but um you can't necessarily make the same assumptions across all all VMS um and so that's certainly part of the part of the problem um the nice thing about all

these evm equivalent chains is that um you know they they all you know still fundamentally follow the same uh kind of pattern and structure for right sending a transaction sending a message doing a function call um I think as the number of VMS increase we will need to see some standardization uh there I actually think layer zero um well I'm not sure if that should be the de facto like standard for the entire space you can tell they've spent a lot of time making sure that their protocol can be expanded uh to salana and you know uh you know probably in the future move and uh all these other VMS like their messaging protocols not very it doesn't rely on on anything inherent to the to the VM um

and so when we're thinking about solutions for like cross rollup interoperability that of course needs to be a given like yeah you're you're not going to have true crossr interoperability unless you have a messaging protocol that is uh you know adaptable to all different VMS in a relatively straightforward way um and so that's certainly part of the problem um and then uh yeah you know another you know bottleneck uh that you alluded to as well is just like right now it's not there's not a super clear way uh for in infrastructure providers to really build multi-chain um when they go multi-chain what that really means is like they are

making separate deployments on separate chains um it's not like a true you know multi-chain approach um you know take a look at uh again like this is literally true of of every single infrastructure provider all across the stack but look at if you want to make like a a nois safe deployment on one chain what does that entail it means spinning up an entire copy of the entire nosis safe system um the back end the front end everything you know the contracts for that specific chain uh right and that's true of oracles that's true of a lot of interrup providers Etc um and so one of the things that that we're really focused on here as well is given you know we're not necessarily working with like every single type of chain we're going to be evm uh or like evm Plus for for quite some time um providing a

stronger like unified uh developer interface to eventually hopefully allow these infrastructure providers to say like we're going to build on all Caldera chains and have like a single unified entry point um to allow them to do that uh and then if we can accomplish that first of all we solve a lot of problems for these infrastructure Fighters they don't need to like spin up separate servers and you know a new devops team or something for every every uh chain that they're launching on um and it also put a lot of value to our customers and their users and that we can instantly you know hopefully enable um you know new chains to have like the top uh infra um already basically predeployment Etc but we're trying to think about this

more as like an ecosystem of chains within the Caldera uh Network or the kind of this this uh connectivity layer and basically we have this idea of like okay we can put these all together uh the network effects that each get are are stronger from from each other and as more and more are added it be it kind of grows together uh yeah maybe talk us through kind of how you're how you're envisioning the next step for Caldera and just for you know kind of why you think that this is important for Ras providers as a whole yeah um yeah I'll I'll maybe tackle that kind of in in the the backwards order um I think that like this is really important for Ras

providers because uh we are in some sense uh you know the ones that are enabling a lot of this fragmentation to happen um we uh you know we're the we're the ones that are helping all these new chains be launched and while I think that's generally a very you know net positive for the ethereum ecosystem like there are ux hurdles and and developer experience hurdles uh that that those you know uh that this approach creates and so make you know it's pretty inherent into like the long-term sustainability of this business and the etherium rollup Centric road map in general um for us to also work on tackling these issues um because I think you know if we just assume someone else

is is going to do it first of all not you know not a great foundation for for the business but also you know us as a Ras provider like we're actually in a really strategic position to tackle some of these issues because like you know the Cera team I think might be like one of if you know maybe two or three teams in the entire world who has experienced running op arbitrum CK sync and polygon cdk stacks and is familiar with the inner workings of of all of them um and as well you know uh from our users perspectives like we have experience operating all these Stacks right we're doing sequencing for all of these rollups they're all on a sort of single unified uh piece of cloud infrastructure with the same security assumptions

across all of them and so that puts us in a really strategic position to like look at these problems and and try to find a solution um what that means in practice and you know one of the key areas of our research right now uh is um is building out um solutions to allow both uh our rollups to interoperate and message each other uh and also for external services like I mentioned these these uh um you know offchain infr providers to basically message uh the rollups uh kind of all all at once um the main kind of thread here is uh is you know trying to uh on some level treat like build kind of like a state machine over all of the rollups that

that we're running and allow programs to like run against that state machine rather than uh you know having to deploy to every rollups State machine um separately and so when we're thinking about a solution like this we're not trying to uh you know obviate or compete with any existing interrupt protocols or any existing um uh you know standards that are being built like the super chain or elastic chains Etc um you know our users first of all want to be a part of those systems and we we don't want to prevent them from being a part of those systems and also like you know we we think that all of those systems are like really a NE good uh for ethereum um but oftentimes they are themselves very

siloed and so we want to you know uh optimally be kind of like the bridge for all the rups in our ecosystem to be able to communicate and interoperate with each other you know across Stacks across different da layers and eventually potentially like across different VMS as you mentioned welcome aboard on our journey into the singularity this is the endgame road map for fra and frax the new L2 out of the frax ecosystem that is totally based on fra fractal scaling fractal is a modular L2 blockchain built by fra with modular and fractal scaling in mind fractal scaling is based on the mandal BR set of fractal images and it explains how l2s become l3s and the

entire app chain life cycle goes through its Evolution the frax ecosystem is made of some of the top builders in the space and has stemmed from its OG days of the frax stable coin it is now in the LST space the LRT space and this fraxel L2 joins the existing Suite of fra products including fra Swap and frax lend you can see frax faery the bridge to go from any chain arbitrum optimism or main net into the fra main net Bridge your tokens and bring your FRA asset into the fractal ecosystem join today to get the best out

of fraxel you are still early join today take part in our Expedition into the singularity yeah yeah exactly yeah I mean yeah every little uh thing that you change you know different Da One RS using a veil one using Celestia then then the there there becomes complexities there it scales out you know exponentially with new VMS and things but um when when I'm thinking about putting these together so I'm thinking about like I'm a builder I'm coming to Caldera I'm not just coming to Caldera to build a rollup and to be like have a chain like like I'm joining the Caldera ecosystem like why would I why do I why would I care to join the Caldera

ecosystem like what what is in it for me that Caldera provides me as a builder that I can't really get elsewhere in this kind of vision yeah so um to to kind of uh go down the same thread you know people like to talk about like sovereignty when it comes to to blockchains um so in my view it's sort of like joining like a you know like a multinational Alliance right as like a Sovereign Nation um when people want to launch a blockchain they want to do it you know for a variety of reasons but some combination of like control sovereignty um customizations like you know build being able to build a community um like and those things are all still true if you're joining like a

a network of networks right like an ecosystem of rollups but I think you know what you want as like uh especially like a nent rollup that's launching is you still want to be part of some community and some ecosystem um you want to be able to uh interoperate natively with assets from other chains you want access to other rups communities you want your users to uh not be siloed themselves and you know be able to um uh you know to to move assets around and utilize applications on on other chains while still you know kind of viewing your chain as as home and uh you know this will also I think allow for increased specialization uh between rollups right like let's say you're building a gaming rollup you would

rather maybe honestly not have to deploy a DEX onto that chain um you would want access to other people who are building dexes on top of rollups and maybe options trading and per trading Etc um so uh I think it you know taking the the sort of country metaphor uh you know all the way to the end right you want those sort of like bilateral trade agreements with with other countries you want kind of code defense agreements with other countries um and I think the same is true for blockchains like it doesn't it doesn't you know uh limit uh a chain sovereignty to be able to work with other chains and and being able to develop that kind of like natural alignment being able to say from day one when you launch your chain you now have

like a set of like friendly chains that you can interoperate with uh and work with very closely um I think it's just going to be like a huge uh net good for a lot of the people who are are launching chains um and I think the nice thing about what we're building from an ecosystem perspective is that we have amazing diversity in types of applications and communities that are building on Caldera and also technical diversity um and so we're not really tied to any one standard or any one stack uh we're going to be able to grow this ecosystem this community um across you know hopefully an infinite and arbitrary number of stacks and da layers and sequencing networks Etc and hopefully we're going to be able to help all of those uh Downstream communities

as well like I think you know I like to think we've been like a huge asset to like the Celestia and Anan and near and in nil communities as well as we you know help projects build on on those uh chains and like again we're not we're not really trying to uh to like replace them but we're we're trying to create Bridges across these different um communities and and you know build build something of our of our own that you know just allows the rups that are building with us to succeed yeah definitely you really picked my interest uh and I know that that we're kind of deep in the Caldera and the vision for Ras 2.0 I guess you could call it uh but maybe this is part of the vision as well like is there a world where you could

launch Ian layer avss in a Ras setting or like like is there going to be a roll up a Ian layer AVS framework thing where like like like where I can just go and launch an ABS or or I'm not really sure how it works technically so yeah I mean I'm just speculating here yeah that's a great question um the 100% honest answer is like we've definitely thought about it as an idea um we're still we we're still seeing if like we're well positioned to do that um we like uh you know the architecture for avss is very different um from uh you know from from running rollups and so so we just want to make sure that like if we do this

that we have like a natural Advantage uh in doing it and we can actually provide the best service um candidly I think the jury's still out on that at least internally from our perspective um but it's a very the process now like what's the process now to launch an ABS do you have to like work with the igen team and like do specific way of of launching it or like is it difficult yeah so so that's my understanding um I don't I honestly don't have like I'm not the best person to ask for this um but my understanding is you you develop an ABS using uh the framework um that that igen has uh then through some process uh that gets like transmitted to operators I think that's probably a fairly kind of manual right relationship based process

at this point in time uh and then those operators who are right like these eth stakers you can go on their website and go down the list uh kind of run it as like a sidecar to their like ethereum node um I think like generally that is probably a good system um and like there are ways to improve it probably making it more automated over time but if that works it works and we're probably not going to enter the ABS hosting space um one of the kind of key insights of Ras as it is right now versus all the blockchain as a service platforms that that have you know been found in the past and haven't really found traction is that rollups are are very unique architecture where you're able to inherit decentralization

properties of an underlying blockchain without needing to actually be decentralized yourself so it's a sort of you know quasi decentralized system with strong centralized components and that's really really amenable to a cloud hosting platform product like ours um I think with like abss the the actual uh sales pitch is a little bit different where you get decentralization more easily um which I think isn't as uh uh you know like we we have like less of a role to play in in a system like that that where it actually makes it really easy to decentralize chains um in the same way like we haven't really touched like Cosmos SDK tenderman style chains uh because the the real thing that that

solves is like or the the real issue there is like the coordination problem of getting validators on on your chain rather than the technical problem of like actually running the validators themselves and I think like I L AVS is like in some sense similar yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that's a business problem and you guys are in the business of solving engineering problems exactly yeah that's interesting awesome cool man um Matt I think that's about it for from us I mean um genuinely excited to kind of see this next iteration of Caldera and how this role framework and ecosystem kind of grows um yeah man any closing thoughts from from Ur yeah I the the only closing thought I would say is

stay tuned uh we've got a lot in the works um a lot of really great launches new chains coming out which I think will invigorate uh or reinvigorate the idea of like of launching uh chain and then uh you know as you alluded to a lot of uh new technical developments and new research developments that uh we'll be ready to share um you know fairly soon um and yeah as well I would just uh give uh you know tell folks to um to keep an eye on the modular ecosystem I think due to kind of recent price action um you know a lot of people have sort of lost touch with the space Maybe relative to to 3 to six months ago um but generally when people you know people say like building the be I don't really think we're in like a a crypto bear Market

currently but uh it is generally true that when the price action is is weak there are actually like a ton of Builders working on things and so uh both from us and from other people in the space um I know there's there are going to be some like really amazing things in the second half of this year uh so folks should just keep their eyes open awesome man yeah it's like a mini modular be Market based on like price action of dim and Tia and also just like not not a lot of launches recently I think people waiting so uh I think the second half of this year should be good and I I don't think that we're going to lose any conviction over over here so same for you awesome now one more question for you you uh those hats we're gonna are we

gonna see those in Brussels yeah uh I will need to check um like like we I think we should still have some remaining if so I will be able to hand them out uh to folks um our swag game has honestly not been on point uh yet um that that's also something that people should stay tuned for as we've been working on I love how you guys have been able to Brand a a shape like you guys have capitalized on the trapezoid Which yeah you know resembles a volcano right and I I actually I did some research when and and Caldera is like the base of the volcano as I trapezoid looks like volcano and yeah really like how you guys put that together yeah I appreciate

that it was uh it was a you know it was a journey you know you pay a designer $10,000 and then you you end up with a regular trapezoid right but like uh he he made he made that point as well like I think it's it's such a cool shape um you know makes sense for what we're doing being kind of like you know foundational uh to the modular space hopefully um and uh yeah nobody nobody uses it so hopefully the trapezoid becomes synonymous with Cera worldwide pretty soon I hope you can uh you guys can own this vending machine thing as well this is this is fresh off the top of the head today all right man thank you man cheers cool thanks guys see you soon