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Sead Fadilpašić
Journalist
Sead Fadilpašić
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The mobile-first blockchain Celo has completed its transition to Ethereum Layer-2 after two years of development, as the last step on its path from an individual blockchain to an interoperable network.
Celo has migrated to an Ethereum Layer-2 on Optimism’s OP Stack. It is leveraging EigenDA, the data availability protocol developed by EigenLayer. Thanks to this, it says, Celo has returned to the Ethereum ecosystem with “renewed capabilities and purpose.”
With the upgrade to an Ethereum Layer 2, the Celo Layer 1 client has stopped syncing and the Layer 2 client has taken over, according to the 3 March announcement. “This is not just an upgrade. It is a return home,” the cLabs team wrote.
Celo Token Now Native to Ethereum
Celo developer cLabs initially proposed the transition in July 2023. The team followed this up with a series of testnets in July and September 2024, as well as February 2025.
According to Rene Reinsberg, Celo co-founder and Celo Foundation President, the migration is “a natural progression” towards the goal of creating “the conditions of prosperity for all” and “platforming a robust onchain economy for the future.”
Therefore, by utilizing Ethereum’s infrastructure, Celo has now boosted security and interoperability for millions of daily users, Reinsberg added.
The CELO token now also lives natively on Ethereum. CELO on L2 represents tokens bridged from Ethereum, the announcement says.
“Since launch, Celo has maintained close alignment with Ethereum, and we’ve always seen ourselves as a cultural extension of the community with a rich Regen culture and focus on mobile DeFi applications,” said Marek Olszewski, Celo Co-Founder and cLabs CEO.
“Migrating to a Layer 2 marks an exciting return home for Celo, combining the best of the networks’ advantages to scale Web3 with global reach and continued impact,” he added.
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Celo Migrating an Ecosystem
The chain is not transitioning alone. Under its umbrella is an ecosystem of over 1,000 projects that are now on the Ethereum network.
Celo has integrated popular infrastructure. This includes Uniswap, Curve, Chainlink, RedStone, Hyperlane, LayerZero, Wormhole, Axelar, Rarible, Infura, Quicknode, Alchemy, ThirdWeb, Self, and Aave v3.
Day 1 partners are node providers, RPC providers, indexers, bridges, and exchanges that have committed to upgrading within two hours of the first Layer-2 block. The list includes Alchemy, Hyperlane, Wormhole, Binance, Coinbase, Bitfinex, Kraken, Gate.io, Upbit, and more.
Per the team, the users will benefit from improved interoperability, fast transactions, and low fees averaging $0.0005. Celo also allocates a portion of every transaction fee to carbon offsetting and sustainability projects.
Among other enhancements, Celo’s core capabilities will see block times increasing to one second compared to the earlier five seconds.
The platform will maintain its signature features, it adds, such as SocialConnect, allowing payments using just a phone number. Another is fee abstraction, enabling transaction fees to be paid with ERC-20 tokens, including USDT and USDC.
Additionally, a native bridging with Ethereum will lower the reliance on external bridges, thus increasing security. The team noted that this is crucial for the millions of Celo’s users worldwide who utilize the chain for everyday use cases. Examples include dollar stablecoin savings in Opera’s MiniPay Wallet, sending crypto via Valora, and capturing environmental data onchain to earn money with GainForest.
Meanwhile, protocol-level changes include the evolution of the validator responsibilities from operating the consensus protocol to temporarily running community RPC nodes. Validator rewards are now distributed through smart contract execution instead of at epoch blocks.
Finally, a centralized sequencer will operate transaction sequencing and will transition to decentralized sequencing “in the future.” Prior to the migration, this was determined by validators running the consensus protocol.
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