Espresso accelerates its 'rollup-specialized base layer'... launches ESP and announces shift to permissionless PoS

The Espresso Foundation said on the 12th (local time) that it has launched the ESP token and transitioned the network to a permissionless Proof-of-Stake (PoS) system.

Alongside the ESP token launch, the foundation announced that the Espresso Network has moved to a permissionless PoS model in which anyone can participate as a validator. The transition is aimed at strengthening network security and decentralization in response to rising demand driven by the proliferation of rollups.

The Espresso Network, billed as the first base layer designed for rollups, opened network participation fully after finalizing more than 65 million blocks across nine integrated chains over the past year—including ApeChain, RARI Chain, Rufus, and Molten Network—following its mainnet launch in November 2024.

Additional integrations are scheduled for 2026 with Celo, Morph, Katana, Gate Layer, and LitVM, among others. LitVM plans to introduce a dual-settlement structure that settles simultaneously on Ethereum and Litecoin.

The foundation pointed to “finality delays” as a key factor behind liquidity fragmentation, manual bridging, and delayed withdrawals seen during the rollup expansion. While Ethereum takes more than 12 minutes to reach transaction finality, bottlenecks emerge in cross-chain interactions as each rollup is separated into an independent execution environment.

Ben Fisch, CEO and co-founder of Espresso Systems (and a professor of computer science at Yale University), said, “Espresso is a base layer designed from the ground up to support thousands of interoperable rollups,” adding, “Fast finality is not a nice-to-have for rollups—it is a core requirement for turning isolated chains into a unified, composable ecosystem.”

The Espresso Network, based on a Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus protocol, finalizes rollup blocks in an average of six seconds. In its internal devnet, it has achieved around two-second finality, and it is targeting sub-one-second latency in 2026. The foundation said it aims to enable a structure in which thousands of rollups interact as if they were a single chain.

Real-world use cases are also emerging. NFT marketplace Rarible used Espresso to implement one-click cross-chain payments between ApeChain and RARI Chain, resulting in more than 31,000 NFT mints. Other applications, including Mint, subsequently used the same structure to conduct cross-chain minting.

The foundation said, “This structure can scale into internet-scale infrastructure capable of accommodating not only crypto-native projects but also existing Web2 applications.” The strategy is to support large-scale commercial services by maintaining rollups’ customization and speed while securing cross-chain interoperability and near-instant finality.

ESP is a utility token for network participation and can contribute to network security through staking. Total supply is 3.59 billion tokens, of which 10% was allocated to a community airdrop for early contributors. Those tokens were fully unlocked on the day.