Celo is a blockchain platform designed for creating decentralized applications and providing financial services to individuals who do not have access to traditional banking.
Celo is a blockchain protocol that operates on a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism and enables users to send and receive digital assets, make payments, and access other financial services directly from their mobile phones.
Celo uses stablecoins, which are digital tokens pegged to a stable asset like the US dollar, to ensure that the value of the assets being transferred remains stable.
Overall, Celo is designed to be easy to use and accessible to everyone, regardless of their financial background or technical expertise.
Who Founded Celo?
Celo was founded in 2017 by GoDaddy executives Rene Reinsburg, Marek Olszewski and MIT professor Sep Kamvar. The company immediately attracted major investors, raising $46.5 million between 2018 and 2020 through the sale of CELO tokens.
What Makes It Unique?
Celo is a financial platform that can work with different systems and help more people get access to money. They want to make finance better for everyone, while also helping the environment. They call this the regenerative finance movement. By doing this, they hope to make it easier for communities to buy and sell things, no matter where they are in the world.
Importantly, Celo is also one of the world’s first carbon-negative blockchains. Its proof-of-stake consensus mechanism requires a small fraction of the energy used by proof-of-work chains. The Celo community’s commitment to the planet goes even further, as an integral partner in the Climate Collective, an expanding coalition of companies building at the intersection of Web3 and climate action. The Mento Reserve, supported by the Mento Protocol, which allows access to various stable assets to users on the Celo blockchain, further holds a diversified portfolio of digital assets, with plans to have 40% of the Reserve represented by natural capital-backed assets in four years’ time.
Another unique feature of Celo is its mobile-first design, which can help reach billions of global users at scale. This includes a light-client syncing mechanism called Plumo, a zk-SNARK-based system that allows Celo mobile and resource-constrained users to sync to the Celo blockchain faster while using only a few kilobytes of data; mapping encrypted phone numbers to wallet addresses (so users can send digital assets to friends and family in their contact lists); or accessing an ecosystem of dApps, like the Valora Wallet, via low-powered smartphone devices. Each of these makes transacting on the blockchain easier for real-world users of all experience levels.
Supply of Celo
CELO has a max supply of 1 billion tokens with a circulating supply of 491.54 million CELO coins (as of February 23, 2023). CELO assets in circulation are split between the Mento Reserve and a community of CELO holders.
How Is the Celo Network Secured?
Celo employs a proof-of-stake consensus algorithm. The CELO governance asset contributes to the platform’s security, growth, and development by allowing CELO holders to stake the asset in support of Celo Validators, vote on improvements or additions to the core technology offered by community members, and interact directly with Celo Platform dApps.
Validators are essential participants in the Celo Platform’s consensus procedure. They contribute to the security of the Celo network and operate independently to validate transactions and suggest blocks for inclusion in the blockchain.
