The Espresso Network serves as a foundational layer specifically engineered to deliver rapid finality and secure crosschain composability for rollups and application-specific chains. Functioning as a decentralized Layer 1 consensus protocol, it confirms rollup blocks within seconds to ensure data availability and order consistency, though it does not execute transactions directly.

This infrastructure aims to resolve blockchain fragmentation by facilitating real-time communication between different chains, which allows for unified liquidity and smooth interoperability for payments and other crosschain operations.

Built on original R&D focused on creating the quickest possible decentralized transaction confirmation protocol, Espresso’s technology includes HotShot, an open source proof-of-stake consensus protocol derived from HotStuff, and verifiable information dispersal (VID) to achieve scalable data availability. At present, the network supports throughput of 5+ MB/s with finality occurring in seconds. The team has planned upgrades for 2026 that target 25 MB/s throughput and subsecond finality.

Espresso Systems, a global collective of researchers, designers, and developers, originally built the Espresso Network. The project has secured approximately $60 million in funding from prominent crypto and technology investors such as Polychain Capital, Sequoia Capital, Electric Capital, Greylock Partners, and a16z.

Once a chain or rollup connects to Espresso, its sequencer immediately publishes new blocks to the network. To keep a uniform record of these blocks, Espresso validators employ HotShot, a custom Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus protocol. This process allows validators to verify transaction ordering and confirm blocks within seconds.

A restriction at the protocol level guarantees that only blocks confirmed by Espresso will settle on any Layer 1 (like Ethereum) linked via the rollup’s bridge. By accessing state data directly from Espresso, centralized exchanges, interoperability protocols, applications, and other chains can utilize this real-time information. This removes the need to depend on centralized sequencers or wait for slow settlement times.

• Achieves transaction confirmation in seconds using HotShot consensus, compared to the 12+ minutes required for Ethereum L1 finality
• Offers scalable data availability through Verifiable Information Dispersal, a method that encodes block data into erasure-coded chunks distributed across nodes to ensure recoverability
• Remains agnostic to virtual machines and stacks, currently supporting rollups constructed with Cartesi’s Linux-based system, OP Stack, and Arbitrum Nitro
• Maintains compatibility with Ethereum L1 settlement while offering quicker finality
• Relies on a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism and is secured by the $ESP token