Caldera Acquires Hook to Accelerate Product Development and Build the Metalayer, Ethereum’s Largest Rollup Ecosystem

[PRESS RELEASE – San Francisco, United States, November 14th, 2024]

The strategic acquisition brings Hook’s team and insights as a former customer into Caldera’s one-click rollup platform, advancing product development.

Constellation Labs d/b/a Caldera, a leading rollups-as-a-service provider, today announced its strategic acquisition of Hook, the development team behind the sunset Hook Odyssey protocol, a perpetual futures rollup focused on memecoins and NFTs. The acquisition enhances Caldera’s product offerings for Ethereum rollups and ability to provide comprehensive infrastructure solutions for Web3 developers and enterprises.

The combination of Hook’s experienced engineering team with Caldera’s established infrastructure platform will accelerate product and engineering initiatives. Additionally, as a former customer of Caldera and an early adopter of rollup technology, the Hook team will provide valuable insight to current and future partners in the Caldera ecosystem.

“We’re thrilled to welcome Jake, Regy, and the Hook team to Caldera,” said Matthew Katz, CEO and Co-Founder of Caldera. “Not only are they some of the most talented product builders I have ever met, but Hook has real-world experience as users of our products, which they’ll be able to leverage in developing new tools for our customers.”

“We’ve collaborated closely with Caldera over the past year, and joining forces now feels like a natural next step. Caldera’s strong position in the market gives us a powerful platform to work towards scaling Ethereum and delivering trustless, permissionless applications to a wider audience,” said Jake Nyquist, CEO of Hook.

The addition of the Hook team brings Caldera’s headcount to 20, spread across the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Caldera’s $15 million Series A fundraise led by Peter Thiel’s Founder Fund prompted this acquisition, reflecting its continued growth and commitment to building robust, developer-focused rollup infrastructure.

In connection with the acquisition, the former Hook team will also help develop the metalayer, for which Caldera is an early contributor. Amid discussions of the Ethereum ecosystem becoming overly fragmented, the Metalayer is designed to bring together Ethereum rollups, fostering interoperability, resource sharing, and enhanced coordination across Optimistic and ZK frameworks. By creating a cohesive layer for rollups to connect while retaining their unique attributes, the Metalayer seeks to unify Ethereum’s scaling ecosystem. With this acquisition, Caldera is better positioned to support the Caldera Foundation, which stewards the protocol, in the development of the infrastructure necessary to make the Metalayer a reality, expediting The Foundation’s mission to support Ethereum’s growth into a truly interconnected, internet-scale blockchain.

About Caldera 

Constellation Labs d/b/a Caldera is one of the fastest-growing rollup ecosystems on Ethereum, empowering Web3 teams to launch high-performance, customizable, application-specific rollups. With over 50 modular rollups in its network, Caldera powers an ecosystem of unified rollups that share collective network effects and enjoy greater efficiency, scalability, and security. Leading Caldera chains like Manta, Apechain, Kinto, Injective, RARI Chain and Zero Network by Zerion benefit from its dedicated support for builders and robust coordination mechanisms. Caldera is also assisting the Caldera Foundation with the development of the Metalayer, the connective tissue between rollups on the Optimism, Arbitrum, Polygon, and ZK stacks. As the unifying layer for rollups utilizing different frameworks, the Metalayer enables unparalleled connectivity while streamlining the developer experience, making it possible for Ethereum to be truly web-scale. Caldera has raised $25 million from leading investors, including Founders Fund, Dragonfly, Sequoia Capital, and Lattice.

For more information, users can visit Caldera’s website.