Leading shared sequencing project Espresso Systems announced today that it has completed a $28 million Series B funding round led by a16z crypto. The company also revealed plans to evolve from a single decentralized shared sequencer into a “shared sequencing market,” allowing Rollups integrated with it to auction off their block rights.
In the emerging field of blockchain, the leading project in shared sequencing, Espresso Systems, announced on the 22nd that it has completed a $28 million Series B funding round led by Web3 venture capital giant a16z crypto. Espresso Systems is a blockchain scalability and privacy infrastructure company and the main developer of the decentralized shared sequencer Espresso. The funding round concluded in February, and the funds will be used to continue product development, invest in a wider Rollup ecosystem, and expand the Espresso team.
The official list of angel investors, contributors, and strategic investors covers well-known project teams in more than 30 tracks, including Rollups, Layer2, and modular blockchains, such as Polygon, StarkWare, Offchain Labs (developer of Arbitrum), Taiko, and EigenLayer, an Ethereum liquidity re-pledge protocol.
According to Coindesk, the latest round of funding has brought Espresso’s total funding to over $60 million, but the company did not disclose its latest valuation.
What is Espresso? Espresso, known for its shared sequencer solution, solves the two biggest obstacles to Ethereum Rollups: fragmentation and centralization, allowing applications scattered across numerous L2s to enjoy the composability they are accustomed to on Ethereum Layer1. Through the decentralized shared sequencer, multiple different Rollups can use the same shared sequencer network, allowing transactions from multiple Rollups to aggregate in a memory pool before being sorted, ensuring that there is no single role always sorting all transactions and helping to combat network censorship and single point of failure issues.
Evolution into a “shared sequencing market” Espresso is currently building a “shared sequencing market” that enables Rollups integrated with it to auction off their block rights. According to Espresso, this setup promotes interoperability among Rollups, allowing integrated Rollups to maintain sovereignty while benefiting from sequencing or pricing. Espresso Systems CEO Ben Fisch told Coindesk and The Block:
In addition, Espresso also integrates a finalization tool called HotShot, which acts as a consensus protocol for the Espresso shared sequencing ecosystem, ensuring faster transaction confirmation for all integrated Rollups. This significantly reduces the risk for cross-chain liquidity providers and enables faster bridging between Rollups.
It is understood that so far, Espresso’s technology has been integrated with popular Layer2s, including Optimism, Polygon zkEVM, and Arbitrum, through the Gibraltar testnet. The company plans to release its fifth testnet, Cappuccino, in April this year to further enhance decentralization, lay the foundation for the launch of the Espresso market, and aims to launch the mainnet by 2024.
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