TL;DR: With a new update or project being released almost every day, it’s clear the crypto ecosystem is constantly evolving. Celo has gone through a lot of ups and downs to reach the level it’s at today — but it’s just the beginning. Knowing what brought it here and why it was created will lead you to make better decisions when investing or simply using Celo.
In this article, we’re gonna dive into the Celo ecosystem, answer all the $CELO related questions and even more. Prepare yourself for a history lesson and a journey to the future of Celo!
What is Celo (CELO)?
Celo is a Layer 1 blockchain created in 2017 by Rene Reinsberg, Sep Kamvar and Marek Olszewski. It is an open-source platform that focuses on being mobile-friendly. Celo explains their mobile-friendly approach saying the number of mobile phone users grows faster than the number of blockchain users.
The team follows the approach of developing both the protocol and a consumer wallet. The latter enables cryptocurrency transactions simply by using the cell phone number.
The consensus mechanism that Celo uses is based on an implementation called Istanbul, or IBFT. It is a reimagined alternative to the Proof of Stake consensus used by Ethereum.
Proof of Stake means that Celo gets its security from validators that stake $CELO to secure the chain. This is different from Proof of Work blockchains, where miners replace the role of validators. The native token of Celo, $CELO, is used actively throughout the network, from validators to users.
The concept of blockchains is not new, and Celo is one of many such networks. The idea started in 2008 with the release of Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin Whitepaper. This kicked off the subsequent creation of many different types of networks under the same “blockchain” terminology.
Despite being similar in concept blockchains have all different architectures and use cases. What all have in common — including Celo — is that they have to be secure.
Security is the ability of a blockchain to prevent attacks and penalize malicious actors. This is usually done through their consensus algorithm and the mechanism they use to reach finality. In order for a validator to join the network, it needs to stake a minimum of 10,000 CELO tokens, meaning that anyone can participate in the network consensus.
Finality is achieved when a block has been created and is now immutable, meaning that nobody can change the date inside. One of the advantages of Proof of Stake blockchains is that they achieve fast finality. For Celo the average block time is around 5 seconds, making it suitable for global adoption.
Over time many different mechanism have been designed, ranging from Proof of Work, Proof of Stake to novel ones called Proof of Spacetime. Each one hopes to achieve the best way of securing the network they are built for.
Celo’s consensus is based on go-ethereum, the Go implementation of the Ethereum protocol. This makes Celo inherently EVM compatible.
The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is an execution environment for smart contracts. Operations on the EVM vary from simple token transfers to more complex commands.
One of the biggest improvements with the emergence of EVM is that applications can run in a decentralized manner. This makes them uncensorable (nobody can stop them) and ensures they’re always online — as long as the chain they run on is processing transactions.
While similar to Ethereum, Celo implements a some new improvements to the protocol. The first one is implementing a “light client” that connects users to the network and is optimized for low-power devices and low-bandwidth connections.
Blockchains are able to communicate via nodes. To act as a node, a computer must download a copy of the entire blockchain, which it then uses to verify the validity of future transactions. If any transaction is found containing an error, it will automatically be rejected by the node.
A light node, also called a light client, is similar to a full node in terms of its functions. However, instead of storing the entirety of the blockchain in its memory, it only stores parts of the blockchain that are relevant to the transaction being performed.
Celo’s primary motivation is to make blockchain transfers easy for smartphone users. At the time of its inception, very few blockchains had implemented light clients, which made it impossible for smartphone users to manage their accounts.
Hosting a full node to this day requires a sizeable amount of storage space (800-1000 GB for Ethereum) and it’s difficult to set up, unless you have the technical knowledge. In Ethereum right now, there are few incentives to run a full node that is not mining. Few nodes serve light clients, and that results in a poor experience for mobile users.
The job of the Celo light clients is to connect to nodes ran by the validators. In exchange for a small fee, validators will answer their requests for account and transaction data and forward new transactions on their behalf.
Celo assumes that an abundance of full nodes geolocated close the where users live will improve the app performance and reliability. Because the fees quickly add up, full nodes will compete to advertise the minimum fee.
The protocol is powered by the CELO token, a central part of the Celo ecosystem. CELO is an deflationary token due to the way its tokenomics have been planned. This means that new CELO coins are created with each epoch reward.
Epoch Rewards are similar to the block rewards in other blockchains, minting and distributing new units of CELO as blocks are produced, to create incentives. A portion of the epoch rewards is distributed to various parts of the Celo ecosystem.
A total of 400 million CELO will be released for epoch rewards over time. The proposed target curve of remaining epoch rewards declines linearly over 15 years to 50% of the initial 400 million CELO. The tokenomics of Celo also specifies a maximum amount of tokens that will ever be created. The maximum amount that will ever be minted by the protocol is 1 billion CELO.
For more details about how you can earn more Celo by running a validator node at home check out our Celo Mining & Staking guide. It includes the exact steps and best methods of earning more crypto like $CELO in 2024 and beyond.
When was Celo (CELO) created?
Celo (CELO) was created by a team of software engineers from MIT. Work began on the Celo network in 2017, but before that, a couple of important events happened. Most events revolve around the Celo founders, Rene Reinsberg and Marek Olszewski.
The first meaningful event is their career was founding Locu, a platform that better connected local merchants with consumers. Founded in May 2011, Locu was a software solution that provided a menu dashboard for local merchants. One of the company’s first partnerships was with WordPress.com to simplify menu uploads on restaurant websites.
The selling point of Locu was that no technical skills were required for retailers. Once they’ve completed the menu, all the updates would be published everywhere on the internet. It was an easy and efficient solution for restaurants to build up their online presence at a time when the concept was just taking off. The startup proved to be a success.
In 2013, it had more than 30,000 businesses, largely restaurants, as well as spas, salons, and other local businesses like photographers, law services, and more. On August 19, 2013, Locu had been acquired by GoDaddy for an undisclosed sum. As a result of the acquisition, Locu’s team members have joined GoDaddy.
With money in their pocket, Rene and Marek decided to continue building Locu under the ownership of GoDaddy. They would work at the company for another three years before building their next big project: Celo.
In 2017, Ethereum was kicked off the ICO hype, where hundreds of projects were raising funds to build projects that used cryptocurrencies. Most of the ICOs had their ideas centered around payment systems on the blockchain, but very few had the expertise to deliver on their promises. Rene and Marek already knew the ins and outs of retail payments, and saw the opportunity to build a better service.
Driven by a lack of reliable crypto payment implementations, they were looking to create an efficient system for people to send and receive money around the world. This is how Celo and Valora was born.
What the Celo team created can be categorized as a global payment infrastructure that targets mobile users. Due to its internal mechanics, Celo has its own network which can be used for payments in a decentralized manner.
Until that point, the 2 most popular blockchains were Bitcoin and Ethereum. However, both networks were too slow and expensive to be used as the base layer for global transactions. In order to be fully decentralized, Celo had to support nodes on a mobile phone.
This was impossible to do on Ethereum, as the size of an ETH node was around 100 GB at the time. Moreover, using node providers such as Infura proved to go against Celo’s ethos: full decentralization.
To overcome these limitations, the team had to create its own blockchain on top of which mobile users ran a light client. Nodes are an instance of a client that is connected to other devices and together form a network. Clients are like mini servers that run a copy of the blockchain and connect to the network.
Light clients don’t store the copy of the blockchain. Instead, they connect to full nodes in order to post the transaction on the chain. Using a modified version of their light clients Celo had created a complete stack of blockchain software optimized for mobile users.
The biggest app that came from from Celo is Valora, a crypto wallet and payment app. Valora is using a lightweight identity — a layer for users to securely identify and transact with each other based on their contact’s phone numbers. In exchange for a small attestation fee paid to the miners, users could register their phone on Valora.
Up to that point, users had to interact with 42 character-long wallet addresses. For a person new to crypto and finance this can be overwhelming in the beginning. This is where Celo innovated with its Valora wallet. All the user had to do was add his phone number and from that point on, he could send money all over the globe as easy as sending a text.
On the back end, users’ phone number is tied to a wallet address that communicates with the Celo validating nodes. Moreover, users remain in control of their private keys. It was a simple and appealing idea back in 2018, when people were just finding out about crypto, and all they needed was to be able to make cross border transfers at low fees.
The transactions are posted on chain which ensures they are immutable and final. On the other hand, Celo was committed to create fiat on-ramps for users all over the globe. Valora started in a limited form in which users had to buy crypto from exchanges.
Over time, the app has evolved to introduce payment partners (Simplex, Moonpay, Ramp) and laid out their plans to create physical fiat on-ramps in certain regions. Given that Valora is a friendly crypto app, the company is targeting countries such as Kenya, Tanzania and Argentina, where the majority of the population is unbanked.
Celo’s vision attracted considerable support early on. Between 2018 and 2020, Celo raised more than $46 million by selling around 120 million CELO tokens from reputable VCs. Some notable early investors are Polychain Capital, Reid Hoffman, Jack Dorsey, and Coinbase Ventures. In May 2020, Celo held its ICO raising an additional $10 million from retail investors.
Who created Celo (CELO)?
Celo was created by Rene Reinsberg, Marek Olszewski and Sepandar Kamvar. Rene Reinsberg is the President of Celo Foundation and partner at cLabs, the company developing Celo. His previous experience was in marketing and finance. Before founding Celo, Rene worked at several high profile companies such as Morgan Stanley and helped build Locu, a company that was later acquired by GoDaddy.
Rene created Celo with help from Marek Olszewski, his fellow founder of Locu Inc. Rene and Marek are both now part of the Celo team. They work on expanding the adoption Celo network with the rest of the cLabs members.
Rene Reinsberg started his studies Otto Beisheim School of Management in Germany, where he earned his Master’s degree in Finance, Accounting and Entrepreneurship. His thesis was on Pricing options on the DAX, a stock market index consisting of the top 40 major German blue chip companies trading on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.
After finishing his studies at the university in Germany, Rene enrolled at MIT where he earned his MBA in 2011. Rene started his first startup out of high school, building one of the first guide user interfaces for sales and inventory management systems for small retailers.
Rene started out his career in traditional finance, working as an intern at McKinsey. He then worked on the software department at Morgan Stanley for 2 years, where he focused on hybrid bond structuring, corporate debt capital and structured derivatives. After his time at Morgan Stanley, Rene had worked for a brief 5 months as a consultant at the World Bank before going to MIT.
Rene spent 9 months at MIT, working as a research assistant. He learned about the evolution of web 3.0. and was also a teaching assistant for the technology and sales management seminars. At MIT, he met Marek Olszewski, who was also a research assistant. Marek graduated at the University of Toronto with a Master’s degree in Computer Engineering in 2007.
He then enrolled at MIT to complete his PhD in Computer Science. His area of research was a domain named deterministic multi threading, which coincidentally is now very relevant in the crypto industry. Specifically, this domain of knowledge has application in smart contracts execution. In parallel with his PhD, Marek worked as an intern software engineer at Google and as a research intern at Microsoft.
Marek would meet with Rene at a seminar held by Tim Berners-Lee, who is the inventor of the World Wide Web. Inspired by Tim Berners’ talk, they started together with their advising MIT professor a link data and machine learning company which helped small businesses better compete against the tech juggernauts.
The company was named Locu, and started out with a $600,000 seed funding. Locu had employees trained to structure data and help automate it. The first application for Locu was a menu dashboard that could be updated by restaurants and local merchants. Whenever the menu changed, restaurant owners could modify it across all pages where their restaurant was listed.
Locu was charging businesses to use its service and they leveraged the data to expand the businesses’ reach across the internet. Soon enough, professional services such as law firms, spas and home services flocked to Locu in a bid to increase their presence online.
In 2013, Locu had reached 30,000 customers and was acquired by GoDaddy for an undisclosed sum. After the acquisition, Rene and Marek continued to work together at Locu for another 3 years before starting Celo.
Among the founders of Celo is Sepandar Kamvar, who was also at MIT. Kamvar was previously the LG Career Development Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT, and director of the Social Computing group at the MIT Media Lab.
Kamvar’s research was primarily focused on peer-to-peer networks, social search and data mining. His 2003 paper on P2P network “EigenTrust” is one of the most highly cited papers in the field. Kamvar also helped develop “Dog,” a high level programming language that facilitates communication between social computing applications.
Outside of work, both Marek and Rene share a passion for traveling. In pure entrepreneurial spirit, they’ve built Uncharted.io, a blog for travelers where they post regularly. Rene had described his experience building Locu as life-changing. Having interacted with end users, he said it helped him identify the problems that businesses need to solve, and secondly, he had an idea about the kind of culture a company needs to foster in order to succeed.
Celo’s “north star” was to build a financial system that creates “prosperity for everyone.” Early on, the founders understood that building Celo would come with many challenges, so they needed to have a strong set of values to carry them on through tough times. “Celo” means “purpose” in Esperanto. With the emergence of Ethereum and the concept of programmable decentralized money, Rene believes blockchain will usher in a new era.
Celo’s contribution is to solve real-world problems such as lack of access to sound currency, or friction for cash-transfer programs aimed to alleviate poverty. Celo’s philosophy is grounded in the work of Charles Eisenstein’s “Sacred Economics and Theory of Change.” The book traces the history of money from ancient gift economies to modern capitalism, revealing how money influenced the fate of civilizations.
“Sacred Economics” introduces the concept of negative-interest currencies, local currencies, gift economics, and the restoration of the commons, to serve as a remedy for the extreme monetary trends happening in our lifetime. Celo’s aim is to create the conditions for prosperity, defined as people fulfilling basic needs, growing along their own unique paths, and supporting each other. With such strong mission, the team embarked in a multi-year journey to make financial services accessible to the world.
How is the Celo (CELO) token used?
Initially launched under the name Celo Gold, the CELO token is the native token for the Celo network. Most assets in the Celo ecosystem are denominated in CELO, which makes it the default unit of account.
CELO is the fuel that powers transactions and block creation on the Celo chain. We sometimes refer to it as “gas”. Its primary use case is securing the network and keeping actors aligned to the same principles.
Making a transaction on the Celo network requires a small fee in CELO, usually around $0.001. Because Celo has a quick time to finality and processes more transactions per second the gas fees quickly add up. This small fee is paid by users and goes to validators for doing their work.
The total CELO supply is set at 1 billion, with 600 million tokens unlocked at launch. The remaining 400 million CELO tokens will be distributed via epoch rewards for validators who participate in the consensus. Half of the epoch rewards are expected to be distributed linearly over 15 years with the remaining half reducing out over time.
Besides its utility as a gas token, CELO token holders also have the right to participate in the protocol governance. For example, token holders can vote which stablecoins to add to the protocol and what upgrades to pass for the smart contracts.
The second most popular native asset on Celo is its stablecoin called cUSD. Pegged to the US dollar through a programatic reserve, cUSD represents the most efficient way for Valora users to exchange money within seconds.
cUSD is considered an incredibly low-risk investment because it’s backed by fiat. It’s also stable because of the internal mechanisms managed by the Celo treasury. The protocol controls the demand and supply of cUSD using a basket of assets such as CELO, BTC, ETH, DAI and USDC.
Coupled with the transparency of the Celo blockchain, it’s very easy for cUSD to stay compliant with international laws. If you are interested in sending money fast and safe, cUSD is the perfect medium of exchange.
Celo is currently listed on multiple exchanges. The major ones are Binance, Coinbase and Kraken. If you want to skip ahead and learn how to earn more Celo by running a validator node at home check out our Celo Mining & Staking guide. It includes the exact steps and best methods of earning more crypto like $CELO in 2022 and beyond.
Who is developing Celo (CELO) now?
Development on Celo started in 2017 by a team who later spun out into cLabs. After validating their idea, Rene Reinsberg and his team at MIT created cLabs.
cLabs is a company founded in 2017 that handles the development of the Celo (CELO) blockchain and protocol. Besides handling the development of the core protocol, it is also tasked with growing the ecosystem and attracting outside partnerships.
Based in Berlin, Buenos Aires, San Francisco and around the world, cLabs is also part of the “Alliance For Prosperity.”
Built by the Celo Foundation, the Alliance for Prosperity offers a way for developers to build mobile dapps that are compatible with Celo’s blockchain and cUSD stablecoin. The Alliance has grown into an 150+ member organization and attracted several high-profile companies such as Deutsche Telekom, Coinbase Ventures, Kickstarter, and Klaytn.
cLabs has ties to the Blockchain Association, World Bank Group and the World Economic Forum (WEF). In parallel with advancing the Celo blockchain, cLabs is also helping with the development of a central bank digital currency framework.
Such partnerships have prompted people to call Celo a direct competitor to Facebook’s since retired Libra. Both companies share the same goal: having a mobile-first platform for global payments.
Open sources contributors are also important, as the company allocated resources towards incentivizing building on top of Celo protocol. Parts of the codebase were written by external developers, and Celo doesn’t shy away from giving credit to them.
The most popular way to contribute to the Celo codebase is via Celo Improvement Proposals (CIPs). Celo made sure to include the core protocol specifications, SDK, and contract standards. Every proposal is analyzed by the core team and they even have a feedback mechanism. Open source contributors are free to fork the protocol and submit their ideas as outlined in the Contributor Guidelines.
Celo Foundation is the arm responsible for handing ecosystem grants. It is also responsible for incubating promising projects on Celo. The Foundation contributes to education, technical research, environmental health, community engagement, and ecosystem outreach.
To attract more developers to its ecosystem, the company has started an independent initiative called “Celo Camp.” The event is held every year. Applicants receive mentorship from Web3 leaders and the top 5 projects get awarded with $25,000 in total.
Celo uses a formal on-chain governance mechanism to manage and upgrade the protocol. This means that changes are managed by the Celo Governance smart contract.
Any user can submit a governance proposal along with a small deposit of CELO (initialized to a minimum of 100 CELO). This deposit is required to avoid spam proposals, and is refunded to the proposer if the proposal reaches the Approval stage.
Once it passes the next stage, the proposal is approved by a 3 of 9 multi-signature address held by individuals selected by the Celo Foundation. According to the team, this is a temporary measure until the Celo DAO is formed.
One of the most important areas where CELO token holders can vote is the composition of the reserve. To help stabilize the value of Celo stablecoins, the protocol is supported by a component called a reserve.
The reserve consists of a basket of cryptocurrencies that helps the protocol to reduce the supply of Celo Dollars (cUSD) and its other stablecoins. The current target allocation for the reserve is 50% CELO, 30% BTC, 15% ETH, and 5% DAI.
The main advantage for using crypto assets for the reserve is that all user transactions with the reserve can happen on-chain, in a decentralized manner, in a fully-auditable way. As of 2022, Celo holds $177 million in its reserve, with $88 million held in CELO tokens.
What are the latest updates on Celo (CELO)?
Celo in 2019
2019 was the preparation year for Celo’s launch. Most resources were oriented towards creating the blockchain design and informing people on Celo’s vision. The team had introduced the design of Celo’s protocol and launched their own wallet.
Part of their research was to identify and target regions in which users have smartphones, but they are constrained by the environment to go to banks. As mentioned previously, one of the challenges of using blockchain is that transactions need to be easily broadcasted to the network.
In a blockchain, nodes in charge of storing and broadcasting data to the network. As the number of transactions increase, so does the requirements of running a node. This was the problem that Celo tackled in designing its protocol.
Users would be able to run an “ultra-light” client on their smartphones and transact on the blockchain for their day-to-day needs. In order to use the network, Celo created its own wallet where users could get verified and send transactions using their mobile phone as the wallet address.
Transacting cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum was placing limitations for people new to crypto. Not to mention the volatility that would make it difficult to rely on crypto as a payment service.
For this reason, the team has introduced its own stablecoin, the Celo Dollar. Backed 1:1 by the U.S. dollar, cUSD’s peg was maintained by a hybrid crypto-collateralization/seigniorage-style model.
Seiniorage-style stablecoins algorithmically expand or contract the supply of the stable token in order to match demand. These systems typically introduce one or more non-stable, or seigniorage, assets that may fluctuate in value in response to changes in demand for the stablecoin.
This should shift volatility risk from the coin holders to the complementary asset holders, depending on the activity of the market. Celo stated that the hybrid crypto-collateralization/seigniorage-style model maintains the stablecoin stability while keeping the system decentralized.
Celo has its own blockchain, which means it has its own validators to participate in the consensus. Finally, it was time for Celo to attract validators to the network in preparation for the mainnet. The reward for validating Celo blocks is paid in cUSD, since the expenses for running the infrastrucutre are paid in fiat currency. In exchange for their work, validators were promised up to 75,000 cUSD in epoch rewards annually and a 6% CELO voting reward.
Towards the end of the year, the Celo Foundation had launched a grant program to attract validators and developers to the network. Some of the focus points for Celo was to create fiat on/off ramps, cUSD integration to wallet apps, invoicing services, and education programs.
Since its inception in 2018, Celo managed to attract considerable community support, which meant the protocol was ready to deploy on mainnet later on.
Celo in 2020
The Celo mainnet was launched on Earth Day, April 22. The network launched with over 100 independent validators around the world who were committed to make money transfers available globally.
One week before the launch, Celo had raised $10 million from the community and introduced a set of diverse participants to the Celo ecosystem.
The CELO token stats are as follows: 3,996 total registrations and 761 bids from 132 countries. The average bid price was $5.02, with more than 50% of the bids coming in above $3 and more than 25% of the bids coming in above $9. CELO tokens have been distributed at the price of $1 per token.
Following the mainnet launch, the Celo Foundation has transitioned to a non-profit organization based in the U.S. Moreover, Celo formed an Alliance of Prosperity network to promote financial inclusion. The foundation initially gained support from 50 global organizations, and has expanded to include 100 members by the end of the year. Alliance Members include technology providers, nonprofits, mobile wallets, payment processors, and global investment firms.
On June 29, Celo announced their plan to support the Brazilian Real on their platform. If the community voted for the initiative, cBRL would become the second stablecoin on the Celo protocol. While cUSD represented a big opportunity for users to protect their savings, for someone earning Brazilian Reais would be risky to take out a loan in USD if the Brazilian Real depreciates.
On August 13, Celo has acquired blockchain interoperability firm Summa, to enable cross-chain bridges between Celo and other blockchains. Summa, backed by Polychain Capital, INBlockchain, and Naval Ravikant, among others, is a contributor to the Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cosmos, and Zcash ecosystems. The engineering team behind Summa is behind the cross-chain architecture that drives tBTC.
Two months after the acquisition, tBTC integrated the bridge with Celo’s blockchain. This bridge allows BTC to be used in the Celo Reserve (~$300M in value) to collateralize cUSD and other soon-to-launch stablecoins.
On September 25, Celo announced the Wave 3 of grants. Over the past two waves, more than 200 teams from 20 countries have applied and received grants worth $1.8 million in total.
Celo Foundation opened grant positions for building decentralized oracles, crypto trading bots, lending platforms, open APIs for accepting cUSD online, Ledger wallet integrations and development tools.
With the release of the Celo mainnet, users can pay with cUSD at retail shops. One of the first integrations is with MugglePay, a Chinese payment solution with over 2400 small businesses and online merchants.
By the end of the year, Celo had launched the pilot for its new mobile wallet, Valora. The wallet’s debut was one of the biggest milestones in Celo’s adoption.
Celo in 2021
2021 was Celo’s best year to date, reaching an all time high of $10.66. This was heavily influenced by a few key events and updates.
First and foremost, Valora officially launched, opening up to 6 billion mobile phone users worldwide. The selling point of the wallet was that users could send money for as little as $0.01 per transaction, making international money transfers cost-effective and accessible.
The team had demonstrated who a transfer took less than 5 seconds to make, with a fee of 0.0001 Cello Dollars. To help early adopters get up and running on Valora, the Celo community funded a rewards program that offered CELO to addresses that maintain savings in cUSD.
Another important announcement was Celo partnering with Deutsche Telekom, one of the world’s leading telecommunications companies with more than 242 million mobile customers. As part of the deal, T-Systems MMS, subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, started to operate a validator group in the Celo network, gaining exposure to the CELO staking rewards.
Following a governance proposal, a Euro-denominated stablecoin (cEUR) has been launched on Celo. As with the Celo Dollar, the Celo Euro is supported by the Celo Reserve, a diversified portfolio of cryptocurrencies.
During 2021, one important talking point in the mainstream was about crypto’s energy consumption. Most attention was focused on Bitcoin’s electricity consumption, but for Celo it was a chance to prove that their blockchain is carbon negative. Celo is a proof of stake blockchain, making it more environmentally friendly that Bitcoin’s proof of work algorithm.
In addition, Celo had partnered with Project Wren to offset 2,285 tons of CO2, and planned to offset a further 4,969 tons. That’s the equivalent of walking instead of driving over 17 million miles, or the CO2 absorbed by 320,000 pine trees for a year. It’s enough to make Celo 8 times carbon negative based on Wren’s estimates for the footprint of the network as a whole.
On May 19, the Donut hard fork went live. With the upgrade, Celo gained full compatibility with MetaMask, bringing all of Celo’s mobile-first DeFi ecosystem to MetaMask’s 5 million users. The upgrade opened the door for Celo to become interoperable with networks like Solana, Cosmos, and NEAR.
Another important announcement was Celo’s integration with Opera’s built-in crypto wallet. Users of the popular browser Opera gained access to cUSD and cEUR, which introduced new people to the Celo ecosystem. Opera also joined Celo’s Alliance for Prosperity.
On July 27, Valora transitioned from an app managed by cLabs into a standalone company. Valora also raised $20 million to help fuel the company’s growth. The leadership board would be formed of Jackie Bona —who most recently served as cLabs’ Head of Consumer Growth for Valora — and Marek Olszewski, who will be taking on the role as President.
At the time of the announcement, Valora had 200K users with a balance and 53K monthly active users in more than 100 countries. At the same time, Celo had also grown, with a fully diluted market cap of $3.7 billion, and a DeFi ecosystem of developers building on the platform.
On September 28, Celo announced a new product for testing Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). Provo is described as a sandbox for public and official sector experimentation on Celo. Provo clients will have full access to a Celo testnet and gain first-hand experience in issuing their own tokens. In addition, cLabs offered their expertise to guide clients in their CBDC experiments.
Celo in 2022
The current year has been a powerful one for Celo. After two years since the proposal of implementing the Celo Real (cREAL), the proposal finally materialized at the end of January.
The cREAL immediately became available on Brazilian exchanges FlowBTC, NovaDAX and Ripio, one of the largest crypto exchanges in Latin America. cREAL is a decentralized, over-collateralized algorithmic stablecoin that tracks the value of the Brazilian real.
Following the Donut hardfork, Celo announced in February that they are brewing a new upgrade called “Espresso hardfork.” The hardfork is expected to bridge the gap between Celo and the Ethereum protocol codebase. Espresso makes Celo fully compatible with the latest upgrades to the Ethereum network, and allows for some dapps built on Ethereum to deploy on Celo. The upgrade successfullt took place on March 10.
On April 4, The Celo Foundation has announced a new campaign to incentivize the development of Celo on/off ramps around the globe. Fiat ramps are ways for users to take their physical money and fund their digital wallet balance. Experts consider that fait ramps are one of the biggest challenges for crypto adoption, as people in remote areas don’t have banks nearby to transfer their funds.
Celo’s “Connect the World” campaign has pledged $20 million to instate payment providers as fiat on/off ramps. In simple terms, people can meet an actual person to deposit their money with, and the provider will fund their account with the money they’ve deposited.
To ensure the correctness of the process, Celo Foundation introduced FiatConnect, an open source API specification for payment providers that will make integrations more scalable and easier than ever.
Currently, Celo ecosystem partners in 23 countries offer fiat on/off ramps to Celo stable assets. Through partnerships with providers such as Ramp Network and Simplex, users are able to access CELO and Celo stablecoins in 150+ countries around the Valora wallet.
Not only does the campaign begin with an offer of $50K to the first payment provider in each country to integrate FiatConnect, but also the Celo Foundation will subsidize on-ramp fees of up to $100K for all providers. This means users anywhere will be able to access Celo assets from with little to no cost.
Celo is in a constant growth cycle, and network participants like us can earn more $CELO without too much hassle or technical knowledge, right from the comfort of our homes. Learn how to do that in our Celo Mining & Staking guide, which includes the exact steps and best methods of earning more crypto like $CELO in 2022 and beyond.