According to CoinDesk, Nina Rong, the head of ecosystem development at the Arbitrum Foundation, submitted a proposal to the Celo community on Tuesday, suggesting that Celo pick Arbitrum’s Orbit tech stack for building a new layer-2 blockchain. The Orbit tech stack builds customizable layer 2 and layer 3 chains based on Arbitrum’s optimistic technology. Celo originally planned in July to build its layer 2 with Optimism's OP Stack, a similar stack also based on “optimistic” technology. However, since then, Polygon and Matter Labs have both pitched their stacks, which are based on zero-knowledge technology, to the Celo community.
Celo has said it's aiming for mid-January to pick a stack to build its new chain on, giving time for community members to evaluate which is the best stack. The Arbitrum Foundation is aligned with Celo’s mission to build a financial system that creates the conditions for prosperity for everyone, according to Rong's proposal. Celo Labs, the primary developer behind the network, posted an update this week on its discussion-forum page saying that the team had begun work on technical evaluations. The post included a preliminary assessment of the pros and cons of the various proposals, including the one from Arbitrum.
A notable fact about Arbitrum is that it's the largest layer-2 based on the key metric of 'total value locked' (TVL), which represents deposits locked into decentralized-finance protocols on any given network. The figure currently stands at $8.4 billion for the Arbitrum One network, according to the website L2Beat, almost double No. 2 OP Mainnet's $4.6 billion. The Celo Labs team mentioned that Arbitrum has the largest TVL of any L2, which is relevant as it speaks of the trust earned by Arbitrum in the market.
