It’s time to lay the cards on the table.
Over the past few months, developers behind the Celo blockchain have been evaluating technical proposals from teams that could provide technology as the project migrates to a new layer 2 network on top of Ethereum.
Competing for the mandate are some of the biggest players in the blockchain industry, who are behind the most prominent layer 2 networks in existence: Optimism, Polygon, zkSync, Arbitrum, all eager to share technological blueprints with new chain builders hoping to attract more critical mass for their mini-ecosystems and software offerings, known as ‘stacks’.
In a blog post on Thursday, Tim Moreton, CEO of cLabs, the leading developer behind Celo, wrote that “as we conclude the technical assessments, we are moving on to evaluating the non-technical dimensions described in the framework.” Translation? Let’s talk about the terms.
“This is different from evaluating published software,” Moreton wrote. “It is more difficult to predict exactly how quickly we can complete this, especially as the candidate stacks are actively putting together their economic terms and incentive programs.”
The details of terms like revenue sharing can be key factors for builders of new layer 2 networks. Arbitrum, the largest layer 2 network in terms of TVL, announced last week that users of its ‘Expansion Program’ must ‘immediately transfer 10% of net revenue from the protocol’ to the Arbitrum Foundation, subject to its terms of use.
Moreton did not provide a specific timetable for when a final recommendation might come, writing: “We are working as quickly as we can to get a comprehensive proposal that we are confident in.”
Blockchain version of “The Bachelorette”
Celo is a smaller blockchain, ranking 26th based on the crucial metric of total value locked, or TVL, of $116 million; for comparison, #1 Ethereum has $30.6 billion. But as the major Ethereum Layer-2 networks race to establish themselves as early leaders in the rapidly changing space, their pursuit of Celo has taken on outsized marketing importance – a kind of beauty pageant, the blockchain industry’s version of The Bachelorette.
“Each of the candidate projects is a great achievement with strong roadmaps, supported by strong teams and communities, and all are moving forward quickly,” Moreton wrote. ‘We’re trying to find the best stack for Celo’s needs, not the best stack.”
One thing that stands out about Moreton’s post is how hard the different teams appear to be working to bring Celo on board, providing test networks, hands-on technical assistance and access to top executives.
Optimism developers provided the cLabs team with an “internal OP Stack-based testnet, which made the team very familiar with the codebase,” Moreton said.
Polygon executives provided “deep technical expertise,” along with two testnets.
Alex Gluchowski, co-founder of Matter Labs, a developer behind the zkSync project, participated in a Celo community call and wrote an “enlightening post, giving his thoughts on the exercise of applying the proposed framework to the zkSync Stack & zkSync,” said Moreton.
“It was a pleasure working with the zkSync team,” he wrote. “They showed remarkable proactivity, organizing meetings, sharing their 2024 roadmap and having detailed technical discussions with our engineers.”
As for Arbitrum, “we were able to gather a lot of information from public sources and documentation and run the stack locally,” Moreton wrote, but “we also had the opportunity to ask questions of the Arbitrum team in our shared chats and conversations. “