What’s behind Celo’s pivot to Ethereum?

Celo’s layer-2 will aim for a summer 2024 testnet

article-image

Celo Network and Adobe Stock modified by Blockworks

share

After nine months of deliberation, the developers behind Celo have chosen OP Stack as the infrastructure for the project’s migration to Ethereum. 

In a Monday forum post, cLabs, which is the software company behind Celo, said it would be putting the OP Stack migration up for a community vote. If successful, the layer-2 would be set to go to testnet in summer 2024. 

CLabs first said it would migrate to a layer-2 in July 2023.

Celo and Optimism’s native tokens were both up roughly 5% amid a mostly flat day in crypto markets, according to CoinGecko.

Read more: ‘Carbon-negative’ Celo to ‘return home’ to Ethereum as layer-2

Celo’s layer-1 went to mainnet on Earth Day 2020 with a focus on global financial inclusivity and environmental health. CLabs raised $30 million from a16z and Polychain in 2019 to develop the project. It closed another $20 million round in 2021.

The layer-1 was Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible, meaning Ethereum smart contracts could run on Celo. 

Celo implemented EIP-1559 slightly differently than Ethereum implemented the proposal, and the cost of staying compatible with Ethereum ended up being “quite great,” cLabs Chief Technology Officer Marek Olszewski said Monday on an X space

Celo’s GitHub shows users paid a base gas fee and tip for transactions like with Ethereum’s EIP-1559, but small modifications were made. For instance, base fees were paid to Celo’s community fund rather than being burned like on Ethereum.

“We’ve been really laser-focused on being extremely Ethereum aligned, having learned lessons before,” Olszewski added when discussing why Celo picked the OP Stack.

CLabs hopes that Celo’s layer-2 will aim to preserve certain features of the layer-1 like one-block finality, which helps transactions settle quickly and prevents chain rollbacks or re-orgs — even if Ethereum itself re-orgs. Some lesser-used features may disappear with the migration, Olszewski said. 

Read more: Worldcoin teases ‘World Chain’ layer-2

Besides Optimism, Celo also considered building its layer-2 with tech stacks from Arbitrum, Polygon or zkSync.

Should the migration go through, Optimism will add another notable client to its so-called Superchain of layer-2s, which typically pay Optimism 2.5% in revenue sharing. Coinbase used the OP Stack to launch Base, and last week, Sam Altman-backed Worldcoin said its layer-2 would be built with the OP Stack.

The author of cLabs’ proposal wrote that the OP Stack is “becoming an open standard” for layer-2s, and building in the Superchain could lead to “positive-sum partnerships” with other chains built using the tech stack.


Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.

Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the On the Margin newsletter.

The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.

Tags

Upcoming Events

Salt Lake City, UT

MON - TUES, OCT. 7 - 8, 2024

Blockworks and Bankless in collaboration with buidlbox are excited to announce the second installment of the Permissionless Hackathon – taking place October 7-8 in Salt Lake City, Utah. We’ve partnered with buidlbox to bring together the brightest minds in crypto for […]

Salt Lake City, UT

WED - FRI, OCTOBER 9 - 11, 2024

Permissionless is a conference for founders, application developers, and users. Come meet the next generation of people building and using crypto.

recent research

Flashnote Template (3).png

Research

MetaDAO offers a platform for DAOs to engage in futarchy, using conditional markets and profit incentives for improved decision-making. Conditional markets allow market participants to speculate on whether or not the passage of a proposal will increase a token’s market value. By crowdsourcing information from market actors, DAOs can utilize futarchy to identify decisions that will be most beneficial for their token’s market price. MetaDAO as an organization is explicitly engaged in decision-making on the criteria that market participants believe a decision will be accretive to the price of the META token.

article-image

Meanwhile, Euler returns with a V2 launch of its lending protocol

article-image

Two bitcoin mining-focused companies introduce new leaders to their director boards as they prep for the segment’s evolution

article-image

A fund co-founded by Alan Howard’s son and 10T veterans launched alongside a generalist fund with Notation Capital co-founder Nick Chirls as a general partner

article-image

Making sense of the jobs report that didn’t necessarily clear up what size of rate cut the Fed could opt for

article-image

Plus, India really showed out for Colosseum’s Radar hackathon

article-image

The offering, which launched in October 2023, had gathered just $21 million in assets