Professional Role and Company Overview
Matthew Katz is the CEO and Co-Founder of Caldera, a blockchain infrastructure company specializing in scaling Ethereum through rollups-as-a-service. Caldera enables developers to launch customizable, high-performance layer-2 rollup blockchains that record transactions to Ethereum, providing faster and cheaper alternatives to layer-1 solutions. Katz co-founded Caldera in 2022 after dropping out from Stanford University where he studied computer science, with focus areas including programming language theory, distributed systems, and financial technology.
Background and Expertise
Katz has a foundational background in computer science from Stanford University, where he engaged in coursework such as Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain (CS 251), Web Security (CS 253), and Applied Number Theory and Field Theory (Math 110). Before Caldera, his software engineering experience includes roles at Warp, Skiff, Fractal, and Whist. He is recognized as an early crypto adopter, having discovered Bitcoin at age 12 through early Bitcoin communities like Mt. Gox and Bitcoin Talk forums.
His early engagement as a self-described “gray hat hacker” and “script kiddie” provided him deep technical exposure to internet security and blockchain technologies, which informed his vision for scalable blockchain infrastructure.
Company Innovation and Market Position
Under Katz’s leadership:
- Caldera has gained significant market traction with over 50 modular rollups in its network, serving projects including Manta, Apechain, Kinto, Injective, RARI Chain, and Zero Network by Zerion.
- Caldera’s infrastructure powers approximately 20% of all Ethereum rollups on mainnet, supporting more than 20 chains, making it one of the largest rollup ecosystems on Ethereum by number of chains.
- The platform integrates with major rollup ecosystems such as Arbitrum, Optimism, and Polygon, offering developers configurable components to tailor chains for diverse use cases without requiring extensive engineering teams.
- Caldera’s solution addresses key industry pain points including the high cost, slow deployment, and operational risks of rollup deployment by offering a one-click launch capability, removing the need for in-house protocol developers and site reliability engineers.
Funding and Strategic Growth
Caldera has raised a total of $25 million in financing from notable investors including Founders Fund (led by Peter Thiel), Dragonfly, Sequoia Capital, Arkstream Capital, and Lattice. The $15 million Series A round announced in mid-2024 is aimed at expanding Caldera’s team (then 15 employees) and further developing “Metalayer,” an interoperability ecosystem designed to facilitate application launches across multiple blockchains seamlessly.
Katz articulated that blockchain adoption hinges on solving scalability through horizontal ecosystem scaling rather than singular faster blockchains, aligning Caldera with broader Ethereum scaling solutions emphasizing rollups as a foundational technology.
Thought Leadership and Industry Position
Katz is viewed as a visionary in blockchain scalability, frequently discussing the significance of rollups enabling broader adoption by drastically reducing transaction costs and increasing throughput. He draws parallels between rollups’ impact on blockchain adoption and how increased internet speeds unlocked new Web2 applications.
He emphasizes forthcoming challenges such as rollup interconnectivity, infrastructure orchestration, and go-to-market strategies for rollup projects as areas Caldera actively addresses internally to maintain leadership in this ecosystem.
Online Presence
- LinkedIn Profile: [linkedin.com/in/mykatz](http://www.linkedin.com/in/mykatz) (500+ professional connections)
- Public interviews and panel discussions available on YouTube provide detailed insights into Katz’s technical and strategic approach to blockchain and Caldera’s growth.
This profile indicates Matthew Katz as a highly technical founder leveraging early crypto experience, strong academic foundation, and software engineering background to lead Caldera as a key infrastructure enabler in the Ethereum rollup ecosystem, backed by prominent venture capital. The company’s innovative “rollups-as-a-service” offering targets significant pain points in blockchain scaling and developer adoption, positioning it as a critical intermediary in Ethereum’s multi-chain future.
