Dear Celo Community,
Earlier this year, the cLabs team shared a Season Planning proposal outlining a set of technical milestones for Celo’s Layer 2 following the successful transition to Ethereum. This post serves as a retrospective on that proposal and a progress update on the outcomes delivered between July and December 2025.
We’re happy to report that all milestones outlined in the proposal were delivered within the expected timeframes, advancing Celo’s scalability, security, and modularity as planned.
Below is a milestone-by-milestone summary of what was accomplished.
Milestone Delivery Summary
Isthmus Hardfork (Q3 2025)
The Isthmus hardfork was successfully activated on Celo Mainnet, bringing the protocol in line with Ethereum’s Pectra-era changes and incorporating Holocene fault-proof improvements. This upgrade ensured continued alignment with Ethereum while laying critical groundwork for future protocol enhancements.
Status: Completed and live on Mainnet
New Sepolia-Based Testnet (Q3 2025)
A new Celo L2 testnet aligned with Ethereum’s Sepolia was launched to replace Alfajores ahead of the Holesky sunset. In parallel with standing up the core infrastructure, cLabs coordinated closely with ecosystem partners ahead of launch to ensure Celo Sepolia was fully usable from day one.
At launch, Celo Sepolia included support from partners across key categories, including:
Google Cloud – Google Faucet integration
Blockscout – Blockchain explorer
EigenDA v2 (Blazar) – Data availability
Superbridge – Bridging infrastructure
Ankr, DSRV, Forno – Node providers
Redstone – Oracle services
Talent Protocol – Web3 professional network
Prosperity Pass – Celo public-goods onchain access
This coordinated rollout enabled developers to immediately deploy, test, and integrate applications in a production-like environment, reduced ecosystem friction during the testnet transition, and established Celo Sepolia as the foundation for future protocol upgrades and partner experimentation.
Status: Fully deployed and operational
Ice Cream Hardfork- EigenDA v2 (Blazar) Integration (Q3 2025)
EigenDA v2 (Blazar) was successfully integrated into Celo Mainnet, via the ice cream hardfork, strengthening data availability guarantees and improving confirmation latency. This marked a major step forward in Celo’s modular data availability strategy and scalability roadmap.
Status: Integrated and live on Mainnet
Jello Hardfork-OP Succinct Lite Integration (Q4 2025)
OP Succinct Lite was integrated, via the Jello Hardfork, enabling ZK-powered, non-interactive fault proofs in the event of a dispute. This significantly simplifies and reduces the cost of fault resolution while preserving Ethereum security assumptions.
Status: Integrated and live on Mainnet
Espresso Exploration (Q4 2025)
An exploration of Espresso’s BFT-backed confirmation layer was completed, including technical evaluation and testnet experimentation. During this period, the cLabs and Espresso teams collaborated on how to make the integration smoother to implement. This work provided valuable insights into fast finality and crosschain confirmation models and paved the way for a faster integration in Q1 of 2026.
Status: Exploration completed
Looking Ahead
This season marked an important execution phase for Celo’s post-L2 transition roadmap. The successful delivery of all proposed milestones reflects steady progress toward a more scalable, secure, and Ethereum-aligned Layer 2, while keeping Celo’s unique focus on real-world usability and global adoption.
As we look ahead to 2026, the work completed this season provides a strong foundation for continued protocol evolution, including future discussions around fast finality, crosschain interoperability, and additional modular infrastructure.
Thank you to the community for the ongoing feedback, discussion, and collaboration throughout this season. We look forward to continuing to build together.
The cLabs Team