Two weeks after FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November 2022, core contributors to the Espresso project published their vision for how rollups would bring economic activity onchain. While markets collapsed and many declared crypto dead, the Espresso team saw a clear future ahead.

Today, this vision is reality. Rollups secure more than $50 billion of value and support 10x the number of transactions per second seen on the Ethereum L1. Major brands and financial institutions have chosen rollups to bring their products to the world, from Sony to Robinhood to Deutsche Bank. It’s clear rollups are integral to the future internet.

But rollups continue to rely on infrastructure that wasn't designed for them, burdening them with slow settlement, fragmented liquidity, and limited interoperability.

In the three years since that first blog post laid out a vision, that’s what we’ve set out to fix. The Espresso Network was built from the ground up to provide what rollups have always needed, but never had: fast finality secured by BFT consensus, resilient & low cost data availability, seamless composability, and full compatibility with Ethereum and other settlement layers.

Now, through a partnership with Kaito, we're inviting the most committed members of our community and wider industry to join us as we build the base layer that will power thousands of connected rollups that support billions of users and trillions in transactions.

Espresso has partnered with Kaito to launch the first Initial Community Offering through the Kaito Capital Launchpad platform.

Token Sale Details

The Kaito Capital Launchpad sale offers the community the opportunity to acquire an aggregate of $4 million worth of $ESP tokens at a significant discount to the most recent implied valuation of the network.

For context, the most recent institutional round of investment into Espresso's technology occurred in early 2024, the Series B round raised by Espresso Systems. This was an equity round that included a warrant for $ESP tokens that carried an implied valuation for the network of $600 million.

All investors, employees, founders, consultants, and advisors in Espresso Systems are subject to transfer restrictions of four years on all token allocations with a one-year cliff.

Eligible interested individuals are invited to subscribe for allocation of up to 897,500 $ESP tokens. Tokens purchased through the Kaito Capital Launchpad are subject to transfer restrictions consisting of a 50% unlock at one (1) year after the token is live and a 50% linear unlock over the course of the following year. This is by design.

We are building for an enduring vision and are using this moment to align with the most enduring parts of our community.

What's Next

We have come a long way since 2022. The first rollups are now using Espresso in production, with other major rollups lined up to go live in the coming weeks; we have achieved initial latency targets under 6 seconds; and we are engineering-ready to launch permissionless proof-of-stake (coming this quarter).

But we have a long way to go. Ambitious milestones on our roadmap include:

• Subsecond finality to make onchain experiences as smooth and seamless as Web2

• Proposing to the Arbitrum DAO that Arbitrum One integrate with the Espresso Network

• Scaling our current community of developers building on Espresso from hundreds to hundreds of thousands

It's just the beginning for Espresso, as well as our plans to bring more people into the project along the way. There will be more announcements regarding the token, distributions, and further opportunities to get involved in the coming weeks.

For the steady hands among us, now is your time.

Why Kaito

We want to thank the Kaito team for making this possible. Kaito has set a new standard for what community-building and consumer-product creation in crypto should look like. The consistent revenue generation and daily active userbase of Kaito is a signal of strong product-market fit.

Kaito is not a platform for engagement farming and it is not a tool for short-term yappers. It is a paradigm shift in how any project—inside or outside of crypto—will identify and align with their smartest, most passionate, and deeply dedicated users and evangelists.

We are glad the Espresso Foundation is involved in the evolution of its product and the revolution it's leading.

Note: Participation is not available to U.S. persons and persons located in the U.S. and certain other restricted jurisdictions.