As it turns out, Celo is Esperanto for ‘purpose’ and pronounced “tselo.”. That was news to me as I have been pronouncing it see-lo for months. Now that we got that out of the way, what exactly is Celo?
At its core, it is a dual asset, one being CGLD and the other being cUSD. CGLD are used to pay for transactions and are also staked by token-holders to earn rewards, participate in governance, and vote for validators. While cUSD is a stable coin pegged to the US dollar, meaning if you have five cUSD tokens you have five US dollars, that value is considered stable and will stay the same.
The purpose of Celo is to fight world hunger, no but seriously, it is, in 2018 Celo got jump-started when the World Food Programme selected them out of a pool of 800 applicants to bring blockchain-based cash transfer solutions to fight world hunger by bringing the benefits of financial institutions to anyone with a smartphone. To do this would be pretty revolutionary. According to the World Food Programme, it is more efficient and effective to deliver cash transfers rather than providing food aid. They say that cash transfers, often in the form of basic-income guarantees, empower those in vulnerable situations. Creating more inclusive and effective safety nets result in improved financial resilience, ultimately reducing the risk of hunger. Just imagine crypto feeding the hungry and delivering prosperity around the globe. That is something I can get behind.
Furthermore, according to Katie Haun and Denis Nazarov, over at Andreessen Horowitz, who wrote that “Nearly two billion people in the world, despite having access to a smartphone, lack bank accounts or even identity documents. Over half of Argentina is unbanked despite the high penetration of mobile phones. The situation is worse in Africa where an even higher percentage of the population lacks a bank account. Without basic financial services, people do not have a straightforward way to receive or store value or easily pay for things, let alone establish assets, build a credit history, or get a loan. As a result, this massive segment of the population is excluded from the global economy.” To me, that seems rather unfortunate considering today’s technologies and the power of web3, the blockchain, and decentralized applications. The Celo team and WFP must have felt the same sentiment.
Since they won the WFP Innovation Accelerator, the Celo team has stopped at nothing to build and deliver these tools, resources, and knowledge bases to anyone with access to a smartphone. Celo’s determination to take their dream and make it tangible and more useful than a financial institution for anyone with access to a smartphone is second to none. It is one thing to dream big when dreaming of a better way, a cheaper way, a decentralized way that brings the profits back to the people who use the products. But it is another altogether to do it.
The team at Celo stretches across the globe and is currently 116 stong, and that is just the faces they have put on their website at celo.org. Talk about impressive, and we haven’t even gotten into Figment, which brings an additional 20 plus bright minds and a huge community of developers to a project that was already well on its way. So why bring in figment.io if the project already had a working app, wallet, stable coin, and governance token? Because Good enough is not good enough for Celo, and ultimately, this is only the beginning for Celo.
At the time this article was written, the Celo ecosystem consists of the two assets we went over before, the Valora App and the Celo web3 wallet. When I was testing out the Valora App I noticed that first, it felt a lot like Venmo, clean and polished. Nice and simple UI that sends and receives Celo and Cusd. What more do you need? Maybe a way to convert your Celo to Cusd? No worries they thought of that too, that is where the Celo Wallet comes in to play. Now because Celo is an ERC-20 you would think the gas would still get you when making small transactions, but Celo is a complete stack of new blockchain software, core libraries that run on that blockchain, and end-user applications including a Wallet app that communicate with that logic. So once you set up your Valora App you can either buy Celo or cUSD with a debit card/ credit card or you can transfer the Celo or cUSD to your address on Valora. The cool part is that it is web3 and on its own chain so you can view your balance anywhere and execute sends, buys, and sells anywhere. When I transferred over 90 Celo and then 30 Celo from Coinbase pro it took all of 5s for both transactions to go thru. I then signed into the Celo web3 Wallet with the same seed key as my Valora App. I was then able to convert my Celo into cUSD, which happened instantly. I then looked in my Valora App and lo and behold my Celo Balance was now showing as cUSD without having touched it in the Valora app. after all was said and done the total amount charged in fees for the entire process was four cents. Let me repeat, it cost me a total of four cents to move around funds and convert them. To me that is Celo hitting the mark with what they set out to achieve, this is the Venmo of crypto, but then again it is not. It is better, light years better than Venmo. Unless you have a bank account linked to your app and the other person has a bank account Venmo will be a lot more expensive to use, hence the WFP not using Venmo or Paypal. But that is not where Celo stops, they want to be a platform for Decentralized Application development and deployment.
That is where Figment comes in, on their website they state that their mission is to support the adoption, growth, and long-term success of the Web 3 ecosystem. That is Figment’s unique approach: to make it simple to build on the next generation of blockchain technology. So they provide enterprise-grade node and staking infrastructure, with the Hubble Web 3 explorer, and developer tools while also actively participating in community & governance. I for one can attest to their participation in the community. Anytime I have run into an issue or problem with code they were always right there to help on their discord, which has an amazing community as well. One user even zoomed me in to help me with connecting to a node.
But how do you build on the Celo blockchain? Well, Figments “Celo Learn Pathway” probably has the answers and incentives to learn how. The Celo Learn Pathway is currently running a $50,000 campaign in cUSD for developers who learn how to build on Celo with figments DataHub. To learn more about this checkout Figment’s recent announcement about it here.
I just completed the Celo tutorial and learned how to connect to a node using Datahub. Then how to create my first Celo account, query the Celo network and submit my first transaction. Finally, I was shown how to write a smart contract and then deploy it. I thought it would be much harder as I do not consider myself a coder by any stretch of the imagination, but they were able to teach people in even a way someone with no coding knowledge learn, pick it up and run with it. Did I mention they also paid me to learn all that? I honestly can’t think of a better way to grow your community of users and developers than paying them to learn and grow.
I feel very good about the future of Celo with their team making so many good decisions since Rene Reinsberg founded Celo, their development, and community are quite revolutionary. With the Valora App already being used across the world by the likes of the World Food Programme, the Grameen Foundation, and J.P. Morgan, the latter two of which last June used the Valora app to send Covid-19 relief across the Philippines. “J.P. Morgan is committed to helping address the impact of COVID-19 in communities around the world. Here in the Philippines and through our partnership with Grameen Foundation, we are tackling inclusive recovery with a focus on supporting the most vulnerable individuals as they go through these difficult times,” said Carlos Ma. G. Mendoza, Senior Country Officer — J.P. Morgan Philippines. “As with nearly every region across the globe, those most in need across the Philippines suffered dramatically amid the pandemic,” said Steve Hollingworth, President, and CEO of the Grameen Foundation. “Cross-border efforts to provide aid during the pandemic have been even more complicated given the increased restrictions and health concerns. The Celo Alliance for Prosperity was able to move quickly to create a system to distribute cUSD through the Valora app to thousands of women across the Philippines through their smartphones. Almost none of the aid recipients had heard of cryptocurrency before, yet were able to easily download the Valora app, receive and use cUSD to pay for their basic needs, and paid almost no fees to do so. We are exceptionally pleased with the outcome of this project, as it was the first time we embraced blockchain technology and the results were far superior to anything we could have imagined.”.
This was all the tipping point for me, the moment I realized Celo is something that is already doing what it set out to do and has no plan of slowing down. Some of the exciting things to look forward to being released still, is bridge/re-deploy ETH DApps to Celo, creating smart contracts with Metamask, Minting NFTs on Celo, and mint your own fungible Celo token just to name a few that caught my eye. Hope to see ya in the Datahub. Don’t forget to find your purpose.
— Calico Kittencat