Espresso’s Initial Community Offering has closed with overwhelming support from our community. $4 million worth of $ESP tokens were allocated for the sale on Kaito's Capital Launchpad, but we received requests for significantly more, demonstrating strong conviction among a broad set of community members in Espresso's mission to build rollup-native infrastructure with the speed and security to support our multi-chain future.

Because the offering was oversubscribed, the first-come first-served (FCFS) round has been cancelled.

The sale being oversubscribed also means we had to decide how to allocate the available tokens among those who pledged. We awarded allocations by taking into account various factors, such as time of pledge, ownership of an NFT from Espresso’s genesis collection, “The Composables,” and thought leadership around rollups, L2s, and Ethereum. We aimed to balance these factors between recognizing existing believers and bringing in new high-quality community members.

For those who participated in the sale, read on to learn how we plan to recognize your early support and further reward your long-term thinking.

Sale Details and Long-Term Focus

Espresso is a project built on long-term principles. As a base layer for rollups, Espresso provides rollups with fast finality, enhanced security, decentralized sequencing, and data availability—while remaining compatible with any choice of execution environment, settlement layer (Ethereum, Espresso itself, or even another L1), or use case. Chains that integrate benefit from seamless interoperability with other Espresso chains.

We're building towards a future in which the Espresso base layer serves as the foundation for thousands of connected, customized chains supporting billions of users.

We want token holders aligned with that vision, and with genuine conviction in the Espresso Network’s potential to fulfill it. We designed the deal terms for our Kaito sale with that in mind.

The token sale featured an unlock schedule that restricts the transfer and sale of 50% of participants’ tokens for one year, with the remainder unlocking over the following year. We recognize these terms are restrictive (though still less restrictive than the terms all “insider” service providers of the Espresso Foundation, including all investors and team members of Espresso Systems, are subject to), but we deliberately structured them that way to align with builders and believers in Espresso’s future potential rather than short-term speculators.

The demand for this sale, despite these restrictions, confirms we've involved the right community members, those who understand that meaningful infrastructure takes time to build and compound in value.

Recognizing Those with Conviction

To recognize these community members with conviction, the Espresso Foundation’s board has approved a plan to reserve an additional portion of the initial total supply of $ESP to be distributed as an airdrop to those who pledged in the community offering.

A flat amount of 25,000 ESP tokens will be granted to each community member who pledged any amount of capital to the sale (even if they didn’t receive the allocation they requested). These will be unlocked at the time of token launch. On top of this, all participating community members will receive an additional airdrop of tokens equal to 33% of their pledged amount, also unlocked at the time of token launch.

As an example, a participant who pledged $10,000 in the offering, but received an allocation of $7,000, should expect to receive 62,825 tokens (corresponding to the $7,000 investment) plus an additional drop of 54,916 tokens (25,000 ESP plus one-third of their pledged amount of 89,750 ESP). The surprise drop of 54,916 ESP would be fully unlocked at time of token launch, whereas the 89,750 ESP would follow the original unlock schedule specified.

Moreover, owners of The Composables NFT who participated in the offering will receive an additional 10% of the tokens they pledged for, unlocked at launch. In this case, the number of NFTs a participant owned did not play a factor: all NFT holders received 10% of their pledged amount regardless of the number of NFTs they owned.

If you own a Composables NFT but didn't participate in the sale, don't worry—we intend to recognize participants in our genesis NFT collection in other ways.

These additional benefits reflect our commitment to those who backed Espresso during this foundational moment, and our belief that the most valuable community members are those aligned with our long-term mission.

Looking Ahead

We would like to thank the Kaito team for their trust in us as the first project to launch on the Capital Launchpad. We're sure Espresso will be the first of many high-quality projects to come.

The success of our initial token sale marks the beginning of our plans to involve our community in building the infrastructure for tomorrow's internet.

For those who missed this sale, don't lose heart. As the Espresso Network continues to scale with major rollup integrations (Celo and ApeChain coming soon), proof-of-stake consensus, and a push toward subsecond finality, we'll be creating more opportunities for our community (especially holders of The Composables NFT collection) to participate in and benefit from this growth.

We understand that the lockup terms were challenging for some community members, and we’re working with the Kaito team to explore the possibility of a "second-chance" offering with different mechanics.

We're committed to continually growing our community and creating additional ways to get involved. Expect further announcements about more opportunities, token distributions, tokenomics, and governance participation.

We're building something real for the long term, and we want the most committed members of our community to be part of that journey.