Espresso Systems Secures Series B Funding to Unite Ethereum and Beyond
We’re excited to announce a16z as lead investor in our $28M Series B financing round
In 2021, we saw the first layer-2 rollups launch on Ethereum with the mission to scale Ethereum by moving computation and execution of transactions offchain to relieve congestion on the L1. Rollups have succeeded in that respect, improving user experience by increasing the speed and volume of transactions the system can process — but they’ve done so at great cost.
Rollups share the L1 as a settlement layer, but have built siloed execution environments that rely on centralized components and have fragmented Ethereum’s users, developers, and liquidity.
At Espresso, we’re dedicated to counteracting this trend and bringing seamless interoperability to the Ethereum ecosystem and beyond, without compromising on decentralization or scale. To that end, we’ve built Espresso, a credibly neutral coordination layer and transaction-ordering marketplace that provides participating rollups with a shared source of truth that enables cross-rollup interactions for their users, lowers their operational costs, and helps them achieve decentralization without sacrificing performance.
Ethereum is a protocol for human coordination, and Espresso is obsessed with safeguarding that vision.
Fresh capital to fuel Espresso’s mission
We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve raised $28 million in our Series B funding round. a16z crypto led the round, and was joined by Polygon, Taiko, o1Labs, StarkWare, Offchain Labs, and core contributors and strategic investors from over 30 notable ecosystem projects — spanning rollups, L2 infrastructure, interoperability, and more.
We’re excited to work closely with these innovative partners, who are equally motivated to empower rollups and unite the Ethereum ecosystem without compromising on scale or performance.
This additional funding will help us continue product development, meaningfully invest in the broader rollup ecosystem, and set the stage for the community to ultimately operate and govern Espresso as a fully decentralized, credibly neutral public good for all L2s, from based rollups to validiums. We’ll be hiring aggressively to build out our team and expand our efforts. If you are a builder wanting to support the dream of a united Ethereum, please get in touch with us.
Reuniting Ethereum with the Espresso Network
As a coordination layer, Espresso consists of two components: the Espresso Network and the Espresso Marketplace.
The Espresso Network is a credibly neutral, decentralized network powered by a purpose-built consensus protocol that provides rollups regardless of tech stack with fast finality on proposed blocks, enabling cross-rollup interoperability and ensuring they don’t need to compromise on speed or user experience. This finality will be economically backed by both Espresso Network stakeholders and Ethereum restakers, and provides assurances to users that their transactions will be finalized on the L1.
Beyond coordination: Espresso Marketplace empowers rollups to generate revenue and achieve decentralization
But Espresso is more than just a coordination layer to facilitate interoperability between rollups — it also features the Espresso Marketplace, where rollups can sell their block-building rights to proposers, including L1 validators. Proposers can also bid on multiple rollup blocks to become shared proposers for multiple rollups at once, creating the conditions for atomic interoperability between those ecosystems. Anyone can participate in this marketplace, including L1 proposers and rollup DAO-appointed sequencers.
Rollups that want the interoperability benefits of the Espresso Network but maintain their centralized sequencer are not required to use the Espresso Marketplace.
Overall, we are building Espresso to be a one-stop solution for rollups to increase utility for their users through improved safety, liveness, and interoperability, while being compensated for the value they create and maintaining their sovereignty and autonomy.
This is an exhilarating time to build and innovate on Ethereum. We remain committed to Ethereum’s rollup-centric roadmap, and are more enthusiastic than ever about its ability to bring real users on-chain. We’re so grateful for the support we’ve received from our investors, partners, and the broader community. Onwards!
