Follow-On Funding Proposal: Funding For Remaining cLabs Celo L2 Development

Follow-On Funding Proposal: Funding For Remaining cLabs Celo L2 Development

TLDR

This proposal seeks continued funding from the Celo Community Fund to support cLabs’ efforts in building out the Celo L2 client. We are requesting a grant to cover the next 6 months of development, following the successful execution milestones in a prior grant request. The proposal includes detailed milestone updates, budget estimates, and a commitment to transparency and progress reporting.

Background

In our previous governance proposal, we outlined a 12-month plan for developing the Celo L2 client. At the community’s request, we divided this into an initial 6-month funding period, with the intention to return for additional funding after demonstrating progress and achieving key milestones. Over the past 12 months, the cLabs team has made substantial progress toward the milestones in the initial proposal, as well as additional milestones such as achieving a feature-complete codebase that is ready for audit. Given this, we are now ready to move forward with the funding request for the next phase of the L2 upgrade.

Milestone Achievements to Date

We are pleased to report that cLabs has achieved the following milestones since the first proposal:

  • L2 Transition Foundations: Completed scaffolding for L2 testnets, laying the groundwork for further development.
  • Stack Selection: Conducted a community-led evaluation process to select the most suitable L2 stack for Celo’s needs.
  • Temperature Check: facilitated a governance vote that made the final decision on the L2 stack.
  • Public Testnets: In addition to early test networks, cLabs has successfully hard-forked the Alfajores testnet twice into two long-lived public L2 testnets: Dango and Alfajores.
  • Data Availability Layer: Worked with the EigenDA and Optimism teams to develop and test high performance EigenDA support for the OP-Stack.
  • Decentralized Sequencer Design: With input from the validator community during bi-weekly validator community calls, we are leaning towards a shared sequencer partnership that offers some token economic benefits to Celo validators. Such a design could offer greater interoperability with other L2s. We have a provisional design that could work with shared sequencers such as Espresso, as well as thoughts on what an in-house standalone decentralized sequencer could look like as a backup option. Additionally, with support from the validator community, the decision was made to delay launching the decentralized sequencer until after the mainnet L2 launch.
  • Code Completion: In addition to the prior milestones, cLabs has also driven development of the L2 stack to a state of code completion, a milestone that was not included in the original 6-month grant.

Proposal Overview

This follow-on proposal outlines the work planned for the next 6 months of the Celo L2 development. The key milestones and budget estimates are as follows. Note that the first milestone is complete and included retroactively.


Milestones for the Next 6 Months

Milestone Overview Deliverables Time Estimate (Since 1st proposal)
Code Completion Achieving feature completion for the L2 stack. A feature-complete version of the L2 stack that is ready for audit. End of Month 10
Audit Work with Trail of Bits to audit the L2 codebase and fix any issues. A publicly published audit report with major and critical vulnerabilities fixed. End of Month 11
L2 Upgrade Dry Run Coordinate an upgrade of the Baklava network with the validator community. An upgraded Baklava network. If all goes well, a block height can be picked for the mainnet upgrade. End of Month 12
Mainnet Upgrade Support an upgrade of the Celo mainnet with the validator community. An upgraded Celo mainnet. End of Month 13
Decentralized Sequencer Work with leading shared sequencers in the Ethereum ecosystem to add support for shared and decentralized sequencing for the Celo network. Alternatively, develop a bespoke decentralized sequencer if the community prefers. A decentralized sequencer network live on the Celo network End of Month 16

Budget Estimates

Cost Category Details Monthly Cost
Technical Staff 7.8 FTE blockchain engineers, 1 FTE product manager, 1 engineering intern, 1 devops engineer, 1 smart contracts engineer. $192,250 USD/month
Infrastructure & Tools Google Cloud budget for testnets. $10,000 USD/month
Communications Costs One off event sponsorship for publicizing the L2 $10,000
Total Cost $202,250 USD/month + $10,000

Total Funding Request: As before, we are requesting a grant of 2,792,440 CELO, distributed in 6 equal installments of 465,406 CELO. This amount is calculated based on the CELO price at the time when the first proposal was split into two proposals.

Transparency and Accountability

As with the previous proposal, funds will be deployed into a ReleaseCelo smart contract with a vesting schedule. The contract will include a 2-month cliff, and all remaining funds will vest monthly, ensuring accountability. If cLabs does not meet its commitments, a subsequent governance proposal can revoke the contract, returning unvested funds to the Community Fund.

We commit to reporting progress at each milestone and engaging the community through forum updates and discussions.

14 Likes

I fully support This Proposal! :raised_hands:

4 Likes

GM @marek and team, thanks for making tremendous progress with CEL2. It is a no-brainer to continue to fund cLabs.

Some questions and suggestions:

  1. The price of CELO has increased significantly since the previous proposal, up to $0.655 from $0.436 (a 50% increase). From my understanding, cLabs is holding on to a significant share of the tokens it receives; nonetheless, I think it would be good to re-adjust the number of Celo requested to, for example, $0.6 per CELO or extend the duration of this proposal from 6 to, 7 or 8 months for the specified amount.
  2. The Decentralized Sequencer works seem valuable for the entire OP ecosystem. Have you tried applying for co-funding from their side? Either upfront or retroactively?
2 Likes
  1. I think these are fair call outs. I initially drafted this proposal when the price of CELO was in the 0.40s a little over a month ago and so there wasn’t much difference between the two prices.

    That said, the reason to use the price from the original proposal is a budgeting one. When cLabs split the original proposal into two, the assumption was that it was doing so to give the community more ability to claw back the funds if progress was lack laster. We were under the impression that the price was locked in and have been budgeting accordingly.

    In hindsight, we see how there could have been ambiguity here, and we want to address this. We think your idea of extending the duration is a good one and can extend the term to 8 months (ie 8 distributions of 349,055 CELO per month with a 2 month cliff).

  2. That’s a great idea. I think once the sequencer work is live, we could apply for retroactive funding, which of course is not guaranteed.

2 Likes

Awesome! With the two months extra, this seems like a perfect follow-up proposal, and the Retro approach I’m 100% in favor of this proposal.

2 Likes

The proposal is now live (with the discussed changes)! You can vote for it here:

3 Likes