BLOCKCHAIN BAKE-OFF! In July, when the smart-contracts blockchain Celo proposed to ditch its unbiased “layer-1” standing in favor of changing into a layer 2 community atop Ethereum, the individuals behind the mission might have had little inkling of simply how widespread they might change into. Now there’s instantly a burst of competitors amongst veteran layer-2 groups to provide the expertise for Celo’s new system. The migration initially was speculated to depend on Optimism’s OP Stack software program equipment, which served because the template not just for Coinbase’s new Base blockchain but in addition the Binance-incubated BNB Chain’s new opBNB community. Then final month, Polygon injected itself into the combination, providing up its Polygon Chain Improvement Package, often called Polygon CDK, as an various. As of final week, there’s yet one more suitor to host Celo: Matter Labs, the creators of one other rollup, zkSync, in addition to the ZK Stack open-source software program, which can be utilized to create new “hyperchains” on Ethereum. “The modular and open-sourced ZK Stack is the optimum L2 stack for Celo’s transition to Ethereum,” in keeping with the Matter Labs proposal. “We hope to set off an sincere, open dialogue amongst the Celo and zkSync communities concerning the tradeoffs between the ZK Stack, the OP Stack, Polygon CDK and different choices.” Coming within the depths of crypto winter, the episode gives a reminder of the depth of the consolidation development, with the varied networks scrambling to search out contemporary enterprise.