Celo co-founder outlines plan to return to Ethereum

The emergence of L2-solutions opens opportunities for the reverse integration of the first-layer blockchain Celo with Ethereum. This was stated by Marek Olszewski, co-founder of the project, in an interview with The Block.

The original idea of the project, founded in 2020, was to create a simple, user-friendly mobile Ethereum wallet. However, over time the platform evolved into EVM-compatible first-layer network.

“At the time, Ethereum expansion plans were only developing, and the fastest way to create a scalable EVM chain that developers demanded was to launch as a first layer,” explained Olszewski.

The higher performance of the second-largest blockchain today is achieved through rollups, so the head of Celo sees in this an excellent opportunity for a “homecoming.”

According to Olszewski, under the roadmap the primary developer — cLabs — plans to upgrade Celo to a high-scalability EVM based on zero-knowledge proofs.

At the same time, the project wants to preserve certain unique features, such as the ability to pay transaction fees with ERC-20 tokens, which became possible thanks to a new generation of zk-SNARK validation mechanisms.

“For most EVM-compatible blockchains, it is becoming increasingly difficult to justify standalone market positioning when Ethereum’s scaling plan has proven effective,” asserts Olszewski.

In July, the cLabs team planned to deploy Celo as an L2 network using Optimism’s OP Stack. Later, the Polygon project proposed to developers to use their CDK for deployment. Representatives of Matter Labs also put ZK Stack up for consideration.

Olszewski stressed that a final decision has not yet been made, as the community weighs all proposals.

Celo also joined the ReFi ecosystem, aiming for “the development of sustainable and inclusive financial practices,” he added.

According to the co-founder of the platform, the blockchain project “Ultra-Green Money” demonstrated commitment to sustainable development principles. The initiative is based on a token-burn mechanism that sends 20% of transaction fees in the network to a carbon-offset fund, making the CELO token deflationary.

In April 2023, Google Cloud and Celo agreed to collaborate to support improvements to blockchain infrastructure and the development of decentralized applications.

In July 2022, developers deployed Uniswap v3 smart contracts on the Celo network. The initiative envisages the creation of liquidity pools of “green assets” from Celo, such as tokenized carbon credits.