cLabs Proposes Migrating Celo to an Ethereum L2 leveraging the OP Stack

Four years ago today, Earth Day 2020, Celo mainnet launched via the community after 2.5 years in the making, with a mission to create the conditions of prosperity for all. Today, with 369M+ transactions and over 1,000 projects in more than 150 countries, the Celo ecosystem is thriving as Web3’s home of regenerative finance (ReFi) and a leader in real-world assets (RWAs), notably stablecoins such as Celo-native USDC, USDT, and various Mento local currencies. To mark the network’s milestone occasion, core contributors at cLabs propose migrating Celo from a mobile-first, EVM-compatible Layer 1 to an Ethereum Layer 2 (“CEL2”) leveraging OP Stack, the modular and open-source blueprint for highly scalable and interoperable blockchains that power Optimism’s Superchain, including L2s like Base, OP Mainnet, World Chain, Zora, and more. This proposal follows an eight-month evaluation and testing process by cLabs, following its original proposal last summer during EthCC in Paris (July 2023), to transition Celo to an L2 as one of the first L1s amidst a rapidly developing landscape of Ethereum scaling solutions. A community-wide indicative temperature check vote on whether the L2 migration should proceed soon followed and unanimously passed, officially commencing the development of Celo’s Layer 2. After, the Gingerbread Hardfork (September 2023) was also successfully implemented to remove infrequently used features and precompiles in preparation for the L2 migration. By building on the OP Stack, Celo’s Ethereum L2 will maintain key features of Celo’s L1 to optimize payments for the real world, including: > Decreasing block time to 2s from 5s, and increasing total throughput by 50% > Maintaining 1-block finality > Continuation of multiple ERC-20 tokens as gas currencies (e.g., Celo-native USDT and USDC) > The ability to send money to a phone number, email address, or other social identifier via SocialConnect > Maintaining low gas fees to ensure greater accessibility and adoption of crypto around the world > Higher security bridging to Ethereum for users who want to move assets > Continuing Celo’s commitment to Ultragreen Money Multiple criteria were considered throughout cLabs’ evaluation and testing process with community involvement, following proposals by Polygon Chain Development Kit (CDK), zkSync’s ZK Stack, Arbitrum Orbit L2 CDK, and OP Stack. This included time to production, Ethereum alignment, and positive-sum growth opportunities. Building with the OP Stack enables the most direct path to deploying an L2 with relatively few changes to support Celo’s unique features and without compromising Celo community needs; it is also battle-tested with multiple chains in production and compatible with other stacks, such as Polygon’s Type 1 ZK Solution. cLabs will aim to build CEL2 with the OP Stack following a forthcoming community vote, with testnet deployment anticipated as early as Summer 2024. With this move, Celo is also taking initial steps towards becoming a part of the Superchain where its developers and community can contribute to and benefit from a deep ecosystem of builders, users, and public goods infrastructure.