Celo Foundation

Four years ago today, Celo mainnet launched on Earth Day 2020. Now, with 370M+ transactions and over 1,000 projects in more than 150 countries, the Celo ecosystem is thriving––as Web3’s home of regenerative finance (ReFi) and a leader in real-world assets (RWAs), notably stablecoins such as Celo-native USDC, USDT, and various Mento local currencies––and building for the real world. To mark the network’s milestone occasion, core contributors at @cLabs propose migrating Celo from a mobile-first, EVM-compatible Layer 1 to an Ethereum Layer 2 (“CEL2”) leveraging OP Stack, following a unanimous community vote in favor of the transition last year. By building on the OP Stack, Celo’s Ethereum L2 will maintain key features of Celo’s L1 including the ability to send money to a phone number, email address, or other social identifier via SocialConnect, and maintaining low gas fees to ensure greater accessibility and adoption of crypto around the world. cLabs will aim to build CEL2 with the OP Stack following a forthcoming community vote, with testnet deployment anticipated as early as Summer 2024. But that’s not all! To celebrate Earth Day, Celo’s mainnet anniversary, and the historic CEL2 proposal, there will be a series of NFT drops on the Celosphere marketplace, built by @Rarible, starting with a free, limited-edition CEL2 NFT on https://celosphere.xyz/ To learn more about cLabs’ proposal and this week’s activations and events, visit our blog post below:  https://lnkd.in/e6bb3kkR

Next week, Celo Foundation's CFO Nauman Mustafa, CPA joins Hedera's Betsabe Botaitis at the Blockchain 4 Good Virtual Summit to discuss, "A Multifaceted Approach to Financial Inclusion – Transforming Vision into Action." Don't miss the fireside chat, moderated by UKUS Crypto Alliance co-founder Dr. Lisa Cameron, on Tuesday, April 15th at 4:45pm CET! Register today: https://lnkd.in/dqpEvNEV

Earn Yield with Celo Foundation: AAVE Vaults Now Available on vaults.fyi The Celo Layer 2 era is here — and vaults.fyi is now your front door to earning sustainable, mobile-native yield onchain. Starting today, you can supply USDT, USDC, cUSD, and CELO into Aave vaults on Celo’s new Ethereum L2 — directly through the vaults.fyi interface. Celo brings: 📱 Ultra-low fees & mobile-first infrastructure 🌍 A mission-driven ecosystem focused on real-world access 🔗 Deep integration with Ethereum’s security via the OP Stack This launch expands our reach across the EVM landscape, now including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, Avalanche — and Celo. Whether you’re reallocating stablecoins or seeking diversified strategies across chains, vaults.fyi makes it easy to explore and earn with confidence. 👉 Read the full announcement: https://lnkd.in/e3UUjiC5

I'm thrilled to announce that Loop Crypto has launched on the Celo blockchain! This collaboration is particularly exciting given Celo Foundation's commitment to leveraging mobile technology and driving global crypto adoption. Stablecoin usage in emerging markets is accelerating, and Celo stands at the forefront of this movement. By integrating Loop’s payment infrastructure, merchants can now support a variety of payment options on Celo, including subscriptions, one-time payments, and invoicing. For payment processors and platforms embedding Loop’s APIs, this partnership introduces additional low-cost, efficient rails for global fund transfers. We’re also excited to share that Absinthe Labs, Drakkar-Software, BlockPeer, Frenglish, Para, and chainEDGE are already live with Loop, enabling seamless payments on Celo for their services. If you’re a merchant looking to expand your global reach or a payment processor aiming to enhance your international presence, we’d love to hear from you. Together with Celo, we’re unlocking the potential of crypto and stablecoin payments to empower merchants and consumers around the world. Read more below...

The Celo Foundation is proud to share that following a successful hardfork, led by core contributors cLabs and Layer 1 validators, Celo is officially an Ethereum Layer 2! Since launching on mainnet Earth Day 2020 as an EVM-compatible, Proof-of-Stake Layer 1 blockchain and Geth fork, the Celo ecosystem has grown to more than 1,000 projects in over 150 countries. As a Layer 2 built on OP Labs PBC's OP Stack and leveraging Eigen Labs EigenDA, Celo maintains core features including sub-cent transaction costs, fee abstraction (enabling ERC-20 tokens including USDT and USDC as gas currency), Ultragreen Money, and more. With this migration, block time decreases to just one second (from five seconds), the network gains Ethereum security and native bridging, and deflationary tokenomics through the “Great Celo Halvening” are currently in flight. Celo also joins a shared roadmap focused on rollups and modular scalability, deepens composability with Ethereum-native apps and protocols, and unlocks access to Ethereum’s full suite of developer libraries and tools while expanding liquidity and presence across the blockchain ecosystem. Over 100 Day One partners, including Uniswap Labs, Curve, Chainlink Labs, RedStone Oracles, Hyperlane, LayerZero Labs, Wormhole, Axelar Network, Rarible, Infura, QuickNode, Alchemy, thirdweb, and AAVE, committed to supporting within just two hours to ensure their applications and infrastructure are ready for users immediately following the hardfork. “Celo’s upgrade to an Ethereum Layer 2 is a natural progression towards our Day 1 mission––to create the conditions of prosperity for all––and platforming a robust onchain economy for the future. Leveraging Ethereum’s network infrastructure, Celo is enhancing security and interoperability for millions of daily users,” said Rene Reinsberg, Celo Co-Founder and Celo Foundation President, “a transformative milestone in Celo’s five-year journey.” “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.” To read cLabs’ forum post, visit: bit.ly/42hpa3t  To read the founders’ letter to the community, visit: https://bit.ly/3QNBoKJ

Today, the Celo Foundation is proud to introduce CxAI, a user-centric AI initiative designed to accelerate prosperity for all. Joined by 15+ founding partners, CxAI is committed to harnessing AI’s transformative potential by leveraging blockchain innovation with AI-powered tools. Leading projects and open-source frameworks include Chain GPT, Climate Collective, EigenLayer, Eliza Labs, Gaia 🌱, GainForest.Earth, GOAT by Crossmint, GT-Protocol, Masa AI, Olas, Predicate, Safe, Sentient Foundation, Universal Machine, and Vana, who are joining efforts with the Celo Foundation to build a robust ecosystem of use cases aligned across the principles of user-centricity, open-source collaboration and transparency, and Celo’s core mission to create prosperity for all––humans and their agents. Since launching mainnet on Earth Day 2020, Celo has increasingly drawn AI projects empowering humans, including decentralized non-profit GainForest.Earth and real-time data network Masa. With recent progress on agent infrastructure, improved LLMs & groundbreaking agent-to-agent transactions, projects on Celo can scale for impact like never before. To expedite the growth of Celo's onchain economy, CxAI founding member Universal Machine, a consortium of MIT engineers and alumni, is developing AI agents to augment the network’s robust stablecoin ecosystem, DeFi applications, and introducing new ways for users to interact with agents onchain. With Web3’s influx of autonomous agents, Celo core primitives, like phone number and social mapping to prove personhood will unlock new possibilities for identity verification across everyday use cases — from gaming to the creator economy. “Web3’s promise has always been to use mass-coordination tools to solve the mass-coordination problems of our time, from systemic inequality to the climate crisis. With the emergence of powerful AI tools at our fingertips, the Celo Foundation and broader ecosystem stance — shared by so many Day 1 partners with CxAI — is to leverage agentic cooperation for good, rapidly aligning incentives for the benefit and prosperity for all — humans and their agents. We look forward to accelerating our mission,” says Rene Reinsberg, Celo Foundation President and Celo Co-Founder. "The Celo ecosystem is uniquely poised for a thriving agent economy which we’re happy to drive forward through bringing Olas agents to Celo” said David Minarsch, CEO of Olas core contributor Valory. “Joining the CxAI initiative allows us to demonstrate the full potential of our vision of user-owned autonomous AI agents and work with builders contributing to the rapid growth of onchain AI solutions.” To learn more, visit ai.celo.org.

Mountain Protocol is now live on Celo Foundation. As the first prudentially regulated, permissionless, yield-bearing stablecoin, USDM enhances access to financial services for users and developers across Celo’s ecosystem. Celo’s commitment to real-world adoption through decentralized payments, mobile DeFi, and inclusive finance aligns closely with Mountain Protocol’s mission. This integration will support more efficient payments, savings, and a variety of global financial use cases. We’re excited to collaborate with a network dedicated to financial empowerment and prosperity for all.

🪄 MugglePay introduced real-life #stablecoin payments with Celo at #CES2025! ⚡️ Tap-to-pay with MugglePay is coming soon! Follow us & stay tuned! Celo Foundation #stablecoin #Cryptopayment #Celo #CES #PayFi

This year, the Celo ecosystem made strides toward our shared mission to create prosperity for all, transitioning from vision to impact. From surpassing 598M transactions and 9.7M total active addresses to reaching 718.5K daily active users, the ecosystem’s continued growth signifies that “prosperity for all” is no longer a mission statement––but attainable and within reach. Projects driving this growth include MiniPay, the self-custodial stablecoin dollar wallet built by Opera, which enables 4M+ users to send and receive stablecoins with just a few taps on their smartphone. By seamlessly onboarding everyday users, MiniPay and projects throughout the ecosystem exemplify how crypto is useful for everything from paying for groceries to receiving income from micro work. In 2024, Celo also emerged as the “Home of Stablecoins,” with 13 stablecoins covering seven currencies. In addition to the native integrations of Tether.io USDT and Circle USDC this year, also available as native gas currencies, a proliferation of local currencies thanks to platforms including Mento Labs, BRLA Digital, and minteo, have launched stablecoins that track the value of the Euro, Brazilian Real, Kenyan Shilling, West African Franc, Philippine and Colombian Pesos. This growth is furthered by the community-funded Stabila Foundation, bootstrapping onchain FX markets with Uniswap Labs’ Uniswap V3. Through the community's commitment to building a robust, battle-tested, and accessible ecosystem, applications are as diverse and relevant as ever, including peer-to-peer and cross-border payments, lending, universal basic income, prediction markets, onchain biodiversity data, and plastic recovery (cc: Valora, Haraka, GoodDollar.org, GainForest.Earth, Plastiks) Meanwhile, Celo core contributors at cLabs have been hard at work on the migration of the network from an EVM-compatible L1 to an Ethereum L2, with the community voting to leverage OP Labs PBC's OP Stack, and cLabs’ launching the Dango and Alfajores testnets, respectively, with the L2 mainnet still on track for Q1 2025. Celo enters its “Impact Era” in 2025, with user experience and accessibility greatly improved, new users can onboard and easily integrate crypto into their daily lives without realizing it (as a16z crypto’s Christopher Lyons described, "Hiding the Wires"). “The building blocks to creating a more inclusive and prosperous onchain economy have all come together, and I’m beyond excited for the impact our technology and community can make in the next several years,” says Celo Co-Founder and Celo Foundation President Rene Reinsberg. For Rene’s letter to the community & a comprehensive breakdown of Celo in 2024, visit: https://bit.ly/3ZF59Br 

You’ve heard it before. “Crypto is useless.” It’s a line repeated so often, it feels like fact.  But if you’ve only scratched the surface, it’s easy to miss the deeper truth: crypto isn’t useless—you just haven’t needed it yet. For most of us, traditional financial systems work well enough. But what about when they don’t? What if unreliable infrastructure, unpredictable macroeconomic conditions, and sky-high fees shape your everyday experiences? For millions of people, that’s the reality, and crypto is a lifeline. 1.4 billion adults remain unbanked, as the richest 1% own nearly half the world’s wealth, and 1.7 billion workers live in countries where inflation outpaces wages. So, while crypto may be “useless” to some, for the 617 million global crypto owners, it’s also a vital choice: a choice for greater financial literacy and freedom, a choice for self-custody and ownership, and a choice to participate in a new digital economy empowering the many, not the few. The Celo Foundation is proud to amplify the voices of builders creating solutions that address the limitations of existing systems, driving a more equitable financial future for all. From reducing the costs of cross-border payments to bringing small business loans to entrepreneurs in emerging markets, Celo ecosystem projects–and the industry at large–are making crypto useful for those who need it most. Visit cryptoisuseless.com to learn more about Crypto is useless* today.