Funding Proposal: Accelerating the Next Phase of Celo’s L2 Development

Dear Celo Community,

This proposal requests funding from the Celo Community Fund to support six months (July–December 2025) of core protocol development by the cLabs team as part of the ongoing Season Planning. The focus is on scaling the Celo Layer 2 through critical infrastructure upgrades, enhanced data availability, fault-proof security, and crosschain interoperability. This proposal outlines key technical milestones, updated cost estimates, and a continued commitment to transparency and milestone-based reporting. These milestones reflect those shared in the recently published Celo L2 roadmap.

Background

Since transitioning to an Ethereum Layer 2, Celo has entered a new phase of technical development focused on scaling the L2’s throughput, improving security as well as L2Beat’s rating of Celo, and adding modular capabilities. With the initial upgrade complete, the cLabs team is now focused on delivering the milestones outlined in the post-transition roadmap, including protocol upgrades and integrations with modular infrastructure like Succinct and EigenDA V2.

Following the successful L2 transition, the cLabs team successfully activated the Isthmus hardfork on Mainnet, bringing the L2 stack in line with Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade and laying the groundwork for future enhancements. Upcoming work includes the integration of EigenDA V2, the launch of a new long-lived testnet aligned with Ethereum’s Sepolia (to replace Alfajores after the Holesky sunset), and an evaluation of fast finality solutions like Espresso to improve confirmation speed and crosschain interoperability.

Milestones for the Next 6 Months

Milestone Overview Deliverables Estimated Completion
Isthmus Hardfork Upgrade to incorporate Ethereum Pectra-aligned features and Holocene fault-proof improvements Successfully upgraded Mainnet with Isthmus features (EIPs, block header updates, etc.) Q3 2025
New Sepolia Testnet Launch a new long-lived testnet aligned with Ethereum’s Sepolia, replacing Alfajores Fully deployed Sepolia-based Celo L2 testnet with updated infra and documentation Q3 2025
EigenDA v2 Integration Integrate EigenDA Blazar to strengthen data availability and reduce confirmation latency Blazar fully integrated and operational on Mainnet Q3 2025
OP Succinct Lite Integrate ZK-enabled fault-proofs (used in the event of a dispute) into the L2 security model Succinct Lite integrated and live on Mainnet or testnet Q4 2025
Espresso Exploration Pilot integration of Espresso’s BFT-backed confirmation layer for faster finality and crosschain support Evaluation report and testnet demo for Espresso confirmations on Celo Q4 2025

Funding Request

To deliver on these milestone, this proposal seeks funding for the following budget line items:

Cost Category Details Total Cost (USD)
Fully Loaded Engineering Costs 20 full-time contributors focused on core protocol development (13), devops (2), security (3), and dev tooling (2) $1,979,774
Infrastructure & Tools Cloud services, testnet hosting, analytics tools $90,000
Communications & Events Public outreach, L2 developer events, community coordination $60,000
Total $2,129,774

Note that cLabs will continue to self fund personnel costs related to senior management, finance, legal, people ops, and marketing as well as office, hardware, travel, and other expenses.

Based on the 90-day average CELO price ($0.33 from April 17–July 15, 2025), this totals 6,453,860 CELO, distributed over six monthly installments of 1,075,643.33 CELO, subject to a two-month cliff.

Transparency and Accountability

Consistent with previous cLabs funding proposals, we propose that all funds be disbursed through a ReleaseCelo smart contract with a 2-month cliff and linear vesting thereafter. If milestone commitments are not met, a governance proposal can revoke the contract and return unvested funds to the Community Fund.

Progress updates will be published on the Celo Forum and cLabs will continue to engage ecosystem stakeholders and governance participants to ensure development remains aligned with the network’s needs and Ethereum’s L2-centric scaling roadmap.

Conclusion

Together, these milestones will strengthen Celo’s Layer 2 ecosystem, enhance alignment with Ethereum, and drive continued innovation across our community.

We welcome your feedback and look forward to continued collaboration with the Celo community!

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Thanks @marek and team for the proposal, at my end this proposal is fulfilling all the requirements:

  • Post a proposal in the Celo Forum and leave it for discussion at least for seven (7) days.
  • Present Proposal in a Governance Call and address the feedback received: Proposal was presented during Celo Governance Call #73 | Jul 24th, 2025

With the above said, from my end the proposal is ready to move into the voting phase when proposer wants to move forward or consider is appropriate.


:bangbang: Remember Current Celo Governance Overview & Procedures

To proceed to the submission and voting phase at least two Celo Governance Guardians must post explicitly that the proposal fulfills the requirements to be able to move into the Voting Stage in the proposal thread on the Celo Forum.


Remember next steps

  • Submission of PR to Celo Governance Repository
    Proposers needs to fork the Celo Governance Repository and add a PR including the proposal .md file and json file.
  • Approval of PR by Celo governance Guardians and merge into main branch of Celo Governance Repository.
    Celo Guardians are responsible for conducting a comprehensive review of every Pull Request (PR) to ensure that there is complete alignment and consistency between the final proposal posted in the forum post and the specific files that are being requested to be merged.
    This review process is strictly technical in nature, focusing solely on verifying the authenticity and good faith of the proposers. It does not involve any personal opinions or biases regarding the merits or content of the proposal itself. To maintain the integrity of the Celo Governance repository, it is mandatory to obtain approval from a minimum of two Governance Guardians for each PR before it can be merged into the main branch.
  • OnChain Submission of Proposal
    After PR is merged into main Governance Repo the proposers needs to fork locally the Celo Governance Repository and submit the proposal onchain using the guidelines described in the Celo Docs.

CC: Governance Working Group (@annaalexa @Wade @0xGoldo)

I believe the proposal now meets all required criteria:
• It was published on the Celo Forum and kept open for community feedback for no less than seven (7) days.
• It was presented during Governance Call #73 on July 24th, 2025, and the feedback gathered during that session has been incorporated.

With these steps completed, I consider the proposal ready to proceed to the voting phase at the proposer’s discretion.

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