Hyperlane powers the Metalayer, a new cross-chain framework for unifying rollups built on Caldera. With Hyperlane’s open framework, chains and applications across the Metalayer get fast cross-chain messaging and an integrated settlement layer to support a fully-interoperable experience.

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The Journey To The Metalayer

Caldera has made it easy for teams to launch customizable, high-performance rollups across a variety of rollup stacks today. However, these rollup stacks are built with different design choices- whether it’s how they process transactions, settle data, or connect across chains.

By working with rollup teams on a daily basis over the last few years, the Caldera team has had a front-row seat to the challenges and limitations that a fragmented rollup ecosystem creates. Incompatibility between different rollups makes it harder to attract new users, liquidity, and to connect to other chains. As a result, this makes the cross-chain experience complex and unpleasant for both developers and users.

Caldera recognized that users demand fast, easy bridging, but developers first need the tooling and resources to be able to support this experience at scale. Rollups need to be part of a broader interconnected network to thrive. And so, Caldera set out to unify its growing rollup ecosystem, and the Metalayer was born.

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The Metalayer

The Metalayer brings together Caldera’s rollups into a single, cohesive layer where assets and data move freely across chains. These rollups share key infrastructure and resources for interoperability to enable a smooth and efficient cross-chain experience for both users and developers.

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Who Benefits From The Metalayer

The Metalayer makes it easier for builders to build the products their users want, without managing their own cross-chain infrastructure and integrations. Everyone benefits from the Metalayer as a result:

• Chains: Once live, Caldera rollups will be automatically integrated into the Metalayer and benefit from the power of its combined network effects. When a new chain launches on the Caldera, it will be connected to all other Metalayer rollups from day one.
• Applications: Application developers can build powerful cross-chain apps regardless of the underlying rollup stack.
• Users: Users can easily travel across chains with simple intents, knowing the Metalayer works to deliver the best possible execution and lowest possible rates for cross-chain transfers and swaps.

Caldera recognized that to support their vision, they needed to make it as easy as possible for any rollup to join the Metalayer — and open, permissionless interoperability was the easiest and most efficient way to do this scale. Naturally, this led them to Hyperlane.

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How Hyperlane Empowers The Metalayer

The Hyperlane framework is at the heart of the Metalayer, providing two simple but critical functions: fast cross-chain messaging and settlement.

Cross-Chain Messaging

• Chains and applications across the Metalayer can communicate with one another in seconds using Hyperlane’s fast cross-chain messaging. This messaging integration enables a wide range of use cases, from cross-chain governance to real-time data querying. UNI token holders from different chains can use cross-chain messaging to vote on a Uniswap DAO proposal on Ethereum. A day trader can use cross-chain messaging to retrieve the price of ETH on 5 different chains and find the best rate to make a trade.

Settlement

• The Hyperlane framework also powers settlement across the Metalayer. Users can easily bridge across different rollups by expressing intents. which are routed by the Metalayer’s Intents Engine. After solvers fill users’ intents, they can settle their transactions quickly and efficiently using the Metalayer’s setttlement layer.

Interoperability For Everyone

Supporting an initiative as ambitious as the Metalayer requires having the right infrastructure rails in place. Built for developers by developers, Hyperlane’s framework is open, permissionless, and flexible, making it a perfect fit for the Metalayer:

• Permissionless: Anyone can deploy a rollup on Caldera in a few clicks, and automatically get day-one interoperability with 100+ rollups as part of the Metalayer. No need to write new code or talk to BD teams.
• Open-source: Hyperlane’s code is fully open-source, ensuring Metalayer rollups avoid vendor lock-in. Rollups maintain complete control over their infrastructure and can customize their cross-chain verification mechanisms, which chains they would like to connect to, and more. Being open-source also ensures Metalayer rollups can easily verify the infrastructure they rely on, instead of blindly trusting an interoperability provider to have their best interests in mind.
• Future-proof: Thanks to how modular the Hyperlane framework is, Metalayer rollups can easily upgrade their interoperability stack as needs evolve, without sacrificing any connectivity to other rollups.

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What’s Ahead?

The Metalayer is currently in audit as Caldera prepares for its mainnet launch. In the next 3 months, the Metalayer will support all Caldera rollups along with major networks including ZkSync Era, OP Mainnet, Base, Arbitrum One, and Ethereum.

The Metalayer is set to become one of, if not the largest, cross-chain networks around. Hyperlane’s flexible and permissionless framework makes it easy to scale the Metalayer and support Caldera’s vision to build 10,000 rollups on Ethereum.

• Interested in learning more about the Metalayer? Read the docs.
• Interested in building on the Metalayer? Reach out to Caldera.

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More about Hyperlane

Hyperlane is the open interoperability framework. It empowers developers to connect anywhere onchain and build applications that can easily and securely communicate between multiple blockchains. Importantly, Hyperlane is fully open-source and always permissionless to build with.

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