The Arbitrum Foundation has joined a growing list of contenders to provide Celo a tech stack for its planned migration to being an Ethereum Layer 2 network.

The Arbitrum Foundation has submitted a proposal for the Celo blockchain to consider as the team mulls which tech stack would be most suitable for its transition to a Layer 2 blockchain on Ethereum,.

In a proposal submitted on Celo’s governance forum, Arbitrum’s head of ecosystem development Nina Rong pitched the Arbitrum Orbit tech stack as a permissionless path for launching a customizable chain.

“To achieve the objective of cLab’s proposal to “return home to Ethereum’’, we propose leveraging the Arbitrum Nitro architecture to deploy a Celo L2 Orbit chain which allows for greater Ethereum alignment,” said Rong.

The stack would allow Celo to customize its own sequencer implementation, achieve the aims of a low cost chain by using the off-chain data availability layer and retain Celo’s one block finality.

Arbitrum is the fourth Layer 2 infrastructure provider to bid for its tech stack to be Celo’s choice in the planned migration, joining OP Labs, Matter Labs and Polygon. Initially, Celo planned to use the OP Stack to build its new chain, but the team is now deliberating which direction to go in after receiving multiple proposals.

As of now, Celo is targeting mid-January to announce its tech stack of choice after its community evaluates which of the various contenders to select, in what has turned into a highly competitive process. 

“We’re focusing on learning first – understanding each stack and how it fits together, and familiarizing ourselves with the technology and its current state of production-readiness,” said the cLabs team in an update. 

The update also noted that Arbitrum’s technological maturity made it the only option that can be considered a “Stage 1 rollup” based on Vitalik Buterin’s definition of stages, and the relevance of its large Total Value Locked (TVL) which “speaks of the trust earned by Arbitrum in the market.”

Arbitrum One is the largest Layer 2 with $8.4 billion in TVL and commands 52% of the L2 market, according to data from L2Beat.