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.
