When "everyone can issue chains," what is truly scarce is turning multiple chains into a single network

It's hard to ignore a change over the past two years: chains are no longer "heavy asset projects for a few teams," but increasingly resemble a product form. For many applications, public chains are like retail spaces in a shopping mall—crowded but expensive, with rules not set by you; while dedicated Rollups are more like self-built online stores, where decoration, flow, settlement, and membership systems can be tailored to the business. Thus, Rollup-as-a-Service (RaaS) has taken off: encapsulating the technical complexity of "launching a chain," allowing teams to focus back on growth, experience, and business models.

Prosperity is real prosperity. More and more chains are emerging, and "on-chain experiences" are starting to resemble internet products rather than technical demos: lower gas fees, smoother interactions, and modular configurations that better fit business needs. However, when you map these new chains from a macro perspective, the problems also become clear—more chains lead to a more fragmented world; the more specialized the chains, the more painful cross-chain interactions become. The most common frustration in a multi-chain era is not insufficient throughput, but rather "I'm clearly using the same ecosystem, yet it feels like exchanging currency, applying for visas, and buying SIM cards in different countries."

The Dilemma Behind Prosperity

Fragmentation first appears at the asset layer. When a token exists on different networks, it can become several "versions": native, wrapped, or "proof version" that has been bridged. For ordinary users, this means they immediately have to make choices— which one is the real one, why do assets with the same name have different prices, which pool is deeper, and whether they can sell it smoothly; often, you just want to transfer money for a moment, but first, you have to learn to recognize contracts, bridges, and routes. For applications, it’s even more troublesome: the same recharge entry may need to accommodate various asset forms, and the same withdrawal process must handle cross-chain delays and failure rollbacks, with customer service and risk control constantly explaining, "This is not that version, so you can't use it directly." These issues may seem trivial, but they can directly block new users at the door.

Next comes the fracture at the liquidity layer: each chain has its own pool, incentive system, market-making, and routing, resulting in a situation where everything is often "not deep enough." You will see some everyday awkwardness: the same transaction has almost no slippage on chain A but is significantly more expensive on chain B; the price difference for buying and selling the same coin on different chains increases; users are forced to switch networks back and forth to save a little cost and find the best path. Worse still is the cross-chain experience itself: many steps, long waits, and high failure costs; once any step gets stuck, it shifts from "I want to experience an application" to "I'm dealing with a bunch of processes." These seemingly scattered problems essentially all drag down the same issue: chains can proliferate, but as long as the processes of depositing, exchanging, and crossing chains remain cumbersome, growth will be consumed by experiential friction. It is precisely because this resistance is sufficiently real that the next step for multi-chain is not "to accelerate chain launches," but to make cross-chain and onboarding a default smooth experience.

The Solution is Not to Launch More Chains, but to Create a "Connection Layer"

The ultimate outcome of multi-chain is likely not a "super single chain" swallowing all scenarios, but an interconnected ecosystem composed of numerous specialized chains that feels like a whole in terms of experience. The reason is straightforward: users, project parties, and even institutions are often more willing to pay for "smoothly moving funds to where they need to go" than for "a little more block space." Whoever can make cross-chain circulation, asset arrival, and liquidity support feel more like a default capability of the internet is more likely to capture greater value in the multi-chain era.

Thus, what is truly scarce in the multi-chain world is not "one more chain," but a connection layer that allows multi-chain to be used like a single chain: users should have to make as few choices as possible, without repeatedly confirming asset versions, switching networks back and forth, or studying routes; applications should have to do as little redundant work as possible, without writing a separate adaptation for each chain or maintaining multiple asset mappings and liquidity guidance. Ultimately, it aims to reduce the most common losses in the multi-chain era: the trust costs arising from inconsistent information, transaction friction caused by fragmented liquidity, and the dropout rates due to excessive cross-chain steps. There can be many chains, but users can only accommodate one set of "default usage," and the connection layer's job is to compress complexity to the backend, keeping the frontend experience simple, certain, and predictable. Caldera does just that, with its "connection layer" corresponding to Metalayer: allowing new chains to connect to a larger network of funds and users from the very beginning, rather than being isolated.

From "Being Able to Launch Many Chains" to "Using Them as if on One Chain"

Abstractly speaking, "connection layer" is easy to describe, but the challenge lies in real expansion actions: with each new chain, does the user path shorten, is liquidity being supported, and do participants have clear incentives and expectations? The on-chain expansion plan around $ERA is a typical case of "expansion based on user experience." Its goal is not to "put coins in more places," but to align the cross-ecosystem user experience as much as possible, minimizing user hassle. On December 4, $ERA first landed on Arbitrum: placing transaction and acquisition paths directly in the most familiar and transaction-friendly places for users (such as mainstream trading pairs on Uniswap), allowing users to buy, exchange, and participate immediately upon "launch"; on December 14, $ERA expanded to Base: entering a faster-growing, denser ecosystem while completing the "how to use, where to use" paths in local core liquidity venues (such as Aerodrome). Looking at these two steps together, the focus is not on technical details but on the expansion behavior itself: first establishing usability in networks with many users and mature transactions, then expanding reach in larger ecosystems, and trying to follow the habits users have already formed with each new chain, thus turning "multi-chain existence" into "multi-chain usability." This type of expansion can roll out faster because Metalayer's goals are clear: to reduce the "switching costs" between different networks, allowing assets and users to flow more smoothly within the ecosystem.

The interconnected incentives on the ecosystem side are also being ramped up, further turning "expansion" into "a reason to participate." For example, the Espresso Foundation publicly stated that during its TGE, it would allocate over 2% of the total supply of $ESP to the Caldera ecosystem community, and holders and stakers of $ERA will be one of the key recipient groups. Meanwhile, Espresso has also disclosed that multiple chains supported by Caldera have completed integration, including ApeChain and Molten. For users, you don't need to delve into the implementation principles; just know one signal: the collaborative network is growing, the reach of assets and applications is broadening, and incentives and scenarios are more likely to roll out.

As More Specialized Chains Emerge, "Capabilities" Also Need to Be Connected

Once assets and liquidity can flow more smoothly across ecosystems, the next step naturally turns to the "capabilities" themselves: can the specialties of different chains also be accessed and invoked more easily? Connecting multiple chains into a network superficially allows for smoother asset and liquidity flow, but fundamentally addresses a longer-term issue: future chains will become increasingly "specialized." As the barriers to launching chains are lowered, new chains no longer prove their existence by saying "I also have a chain," but rather by what unique capabilities they can offer—better suited for trading, gaming, socializing, or handling scenarios that require data confidentiality, auditing, and compliance. The more specialized chains there are, the higher the risk of fragmentation; hence the value of the connection layer will also be amplified: it must not only allow assets to flow but also ensure that these capabilities can be accessed and reused with lower friction within the network; otherwise, each specialized chain will become an "island with strong functions but difficult to use."

Following this logic, Horizen's joining of the Caldera ecosystem and its promotion of a "privacy-first" specialized chain on Base resembles filling a more scarce capability puzzle piece in this network. It targets confidential transactions and DeFi financial scenarios, using "privacy + compliance-friendly" as a product premise for application hosting; at the same time, it leverages Caldera's chain network system to place these capabilities into a context that is easier for other chains and applications to connect and reach—not creating a closed privacy chain but rather a privacy-focused appchain that can integrate into ecological collaboration. In other words, this type of cooperation brings not just "one more chain," but "an additional capability that can be amplified by the network," shifting multi-chain from merely expanding quantity to expanding usability and possibilities.

The End of Multi-Chain is Not "More Chains," but "A More Usable Network"

Looking back at this round of prosperity in RaaS, it has solved the problem of "difficulty in launching chains," but it has also brought "difficulty in using chains" to the forefront: asset versions, dispersed liquidity, and lengthy cross-chain processes ultimately consume growth. Caldera's path is actually quite clear: on one hand, it continues to lower the barriers to launching and operating chains with the Rollup Engine, enabling more teams to create specialized chains; on the other hand, it connects these chains to the same interconnected network from day one, minimizing cross-ecosystem friction; and through ecological assets and expansion actions like $ERA, it rolls up participation, incentives, and network effects.

As more "capability-oriented specialized chains" join (whether in gaming, trading, socializing, or financial scenarios like Horizen that focus on privacy and compliance), the true dividing line will not be who has more chains, but who can make these capabilities easier to access, combine, and reuse. The winner in the multi-chain era may not necessarily be the one who builds chains the fastest, but rather the one who turns multi-chain into a network and transforms complexity into a seamless experience.