Today, Celo Core Co. announces the appointment of Dr. Markus Franke as Global Head of Stablecoins, responsible for leading the expansion of Celo’s onchain economy and leading stablecoin strategy across partnerships, new stable asset issuance, and institutional adoption. Celo, the Ethereum Layer 2 built for the real world with the leading programmable rails for global finance, serves hundreds of thousands of users every day and is growing. The appointment follows Markus’ role as CEO and co-founder of Mento Labs, early innovators in local stablecoins and onchain FX.

A Celo core contributor and former chief economist at cLabs, Markus helped shape Celo’s early vision for accessible, mobile-first financial tools before mainnet launched on Earth Day 2020. He later led the 2022 spin out of Mento Labs and advanced that mission with 10+ local digital currencies across the Celo ecosystem, including BRLm, formerly cREAL, the first Brazilian Real-pegged stablecoin. His work has directly shaped how millions of people across emerging markets access, hold, and move money.

Since then, Celo has become crypto’s “Home of Stablecoins,” as the #1 transport layer for Tether’s USD₮, with over five million weekly active users; native USDC; 23 additional stable assets; and more than $65 billion in stablecoin volume since its migration to an Ethereum Layer 2.

“Over the past year, the Celo community has made significant strides delivering on the early vision for a global stablecoin economy. We’re thrilled to welcome Markus to Celo Core Co. as we enter the next phase of growth,” said Elizabeth Peng, Celo Core Co. COO.

“In the six years since we launched Celo on mainnet, users, companies, and financial institutions throughout the world have embraced stablecoins for cross-border payments, B2B transfers, foreign exchange, and remittances,” said Dr. Markus Franke. “Now is the time to push Celo’s stablecoin economy even further, and I’m here to make that happen.”

Celo will soon become the first Layer 2, and second network across crypto after Ethereum, to host native USA₮, the US Dollar-backed stablecoin issued by Anchorage Digital Bank, N.A. and supported by Tether. With stablecoin gas payments, MiniPay as a core distribution arm, and Markus leading stablecoin strategy, Celo is entering its next chapter as the stablecoin rails best positioned to serve the next hundred million users.

Celo Core Co. was originally published in The Celo Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Textile, the self-service platform for onchain private credit, is developing a global lending pool on Celo, the leading network for programmable global finance with 600K+ daily users worldwide. By bringing on Tala, the AI-native credit infrastructure that connects global capital to the global majority, the pool will expand access to emerging market borrowers, with the goal of reaching users through non-custodial stablecoin wallets such as MiniPay, built by Opera on Celo.

The onchain pool, targeting $25M in committed liquidity, structured by Tribeca Park Capital, introduces an open marketplace structure where multiple lenders compete to finance the same borrowers, replacing the closed bilateral facilities that have historically priced credit in emerging markets.

Since launching on Earth Day 2020, Celo has facilitated 1.3B+ transactions, expanding access to accessible, affordable financial tools throughout the Global South. Textile launched on Celo in February of this year as the first self-service platform for onchain private credit and has since grown to over $500K in Total Value Locked (TVL) across 10 transparent credit pools serving businesses in Nigeria, Colombia, Kenya, and beyond.

Billions of people continue to be invisible to the financial system, especially in emerging markets. Traditional lending in these highly underserved markets has been constrained not by borrower creditworthiness but by capital structure and lack of formal lending history. Lenders originate loans and prove out borrowers, then institutional capital steps in through closed facilities that finance only a selected subset of repeat customers. Each facility sees a slice of the market, and each borrower is locked into a single capital channel where their reputation cannot travel. The result is predictable: limited competition raises the cost of capital, and end borrowers pay the price.

Textile’s open credit marketplace inverts that model. Built on Celo, the platform makes borrower identity portable, lets capital compete for yield, and allows reputation and repayment history to compound across pools rather than resetting at each facility.

Tala brings a decade of AI-native unsecured credit underwriting infrastructure built specifically for thin-file borrowers in informal economies. The company’s AI-underwriting models are built from deep, alternative, real-world behavioral data from 14 million borrowers and $8 billion in lending performance data globally. Tala’s end-to-end infrastructure includes KYC, underwriting and liquidity orchestration to verified wallets all through a single SDK and set of APIs making it easily available to all the family of apps/wallets on Celo.

Here’s how the marketplace will work:

• Each borrower is assigned a persistent onchain identity
• A global pool provides liquidity to fund loans, with Tala’s AI models handling underwriting
• Repayments flow onchain back into the pool
• Multiple independent lenders allocate capital dynamically, competing for yield
• Borrower credit data is hashed onchain — no raw data is exposed
• Credit scores and history update continuously across pools, so a single borrower’s reputation compounds across every lender they touch

“Textile and Tala are proving what Celo was built for: stablecoin infrastructure that puts global financial rails on every phone in the world. An open credit market for emerging economies is exactly the kind of application those rails make possible,” says Marek Olszewski, Celo co-founder and Celo Core Co. CEO.

“Tala’s mission is to unleash the economic power of the global majority. By combining our AI decision engine with the efficiency of onchain credit capabilities, we make it possible for any wallet, app or issuer to be able to offer instant liquidity to their customers.” said Shivani Siroya, Tala CEO and Founder.

“Closed credit facilities are an artifact of legacy infrastructure. Once underwriting, repayment, and reputation can all live onchain, the natural shape of credit is a market, not a product,” says Tomer Bariach, Textile founder and CEO.

The marketplace is designed to expand. Future pool structures are expected to integrate Self.xyz, Celo’s native privacy-preserving proof-of-human and identity protocol — giving Tala’s underwriting a new layer of verified credentials on every borrower, including as a way to pre-qualify borrowers, and also unlocking new pool types gated by Self credentials.

The Tala lending pool will be live in Celo in the near future. Developers building on Celo can learn more at celo.org.

Celo and Textile to Partner on Emerging Market Lending Platform, Leveraging Tala’s Onchain Credit… was originally published in The Celo Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Bridge today added support for Celo, connecting its stablecoin orchestration platform to one of the most actively used networks in crypto. With 1.3 billion lifetime transactions, $65B+ in stablecoin volume since its March 2025 migration to an Ethereum Layer 2, 600K+ daily active users, and 25 native stablecoins in circulation, Celo gives Bridge developers direct access to a chain where stablecoin payments are already part of daily life for millions of users.

Celo by the numbers:

• 1.3B lifetime transactions
• $65B+ in stablecoin volume since March 2025
• 25 native stablecoins, including USDC, USD₮, and soon, USA₮
• 15M MiniPay users across 66 countries, with plans to onboard 50M+ Opera Browser users
• Sub-cent fees, one-second blocks

Celo launched on Earth Day 2020 and was purpose-built around stablecoins from day one — six years before stablecoin-first infrastructure became an industry category. That focus shows in the network’s design: sub-cent fees, one-second block times, and gas payable directly in stablecoins. Through a single Bridge API any business can now access onramps, offramps, and cross-chain bridging of USDC on Celo.

The clearest proof point of Celo’s real-world traction is MiniPay, the self-custodial wallet built by Opera (NASDAQ: OPRA). Since launch, MiniPay has reached 15 million users across 66 countries and facilitated over 400 million stablecoin transactions on Celo, with nearly 50 Mini Apps powering peer-to-peer payments, cross-border remittances, utility payments, and everyday commerce.

“Celo was built for the people who actually need stablecoins to work — for remittances, for savings, for daily commerce in markets where legacy rails fall short,” said Marek Olszewski, Celo co-founder and Celo Core Co. CEO. “Bridge has built the most developer-ready platform for moving stablecoins at scale. Together, we’re closing the gap between stablecoin infrastructure and real-world adoption.”

Celo’s sub-cent fees and one-second blocks have made it a default rail for everyday payments across emerging markets.

To get started with Bridge’s Celo integration, visit apidocs.bridge.xyz. To build on Celo, visit celo.org.

Celo Goes Live on Bridge, Bringing One of Crypto’s Most Active Stablecoin Networks to the… was originally published in The Celo Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Six years ago today, Celo mainnet launched on Earth Day as an EVM-compatible blockchain with an ambitious mission: to create the conditions of prosperity for all. The network was born out of a need to build borderless financial systems accessible to anyone with a smartphone — leveraging blockchain rails to break down barriers between people around the world and deliver a new regenerative onchain economy.

Today, Celo is the most widely adopted blockchain for stablecoins worldwide, with over 1.27B+ lifetime transactions, 25 native stablecoins, and millions of USD₮ users. Celo consistently leads as the #1 Ethereum Layer 2 by Daily Active Users (DAUs), reaching a peak of 840K DAUs. For context: that’s more people using the network in a single day than the entire population of San Francisco — also, our home base.

MiniPay, the self-custodial stablecoin wallet built by Opera, is a core driver of this growth with 14M+ users and over 400M transactions processed on Celo. In celebration of the anniversary, MiniPay launched 16% cashback rewards for users who buy CELO in the wallet via Squidrouter’s “Buy CELO” Mini App. Opera also announced up to $1M in CELO for Mini App builders, growing the ecosystem of 50+ integrated applications, rewarding for the real impact and adoption of their applications.

In many ways, Celo and its globally diverse ecosystem stand in a league of their own, setting the groundwork for accessibility and frontier tech with key features like stablecoin gas payments and phone number mapping that many have since tried to replicate. A few comparisons help capture the sheer magnitude of what the ecosystem has accomplished:

• $65B+ Stablecoin Volume Since the L2 Migration — Celo has processed more in stablecoin transactions than the GDP of Iceland.
• 99.8% Reduction in Security Costs Post-L2 Migration — Equivalent to going from illuminating an entire theatre to a single seat. It’s the same show, at a fraction of the cost.
• #1 Transport Layer for USD₮ by Weekly Active Users — Outpacing Tron, an incumbent with earlier integration. It’s David and Goliath, measured in active addresses.
• 25 Native Stablecoins: On Par with PayPal, Not Any Other Blockchain — PayPal supports 25 currencies after 25 years of operations. Celo integrated 25 stablecoins in just six.
• 1.27B+ Lifetime Transactions — Nearly as many transactions as there are cars on the road. Except these aren’t sitting in traffic, thanks to Celo’s one-second block time.

MiniPay’s accelerated adoption also been a defining driver of the ecosystem’s growth over the past year.

• 14M+ Users in 66+ Countries — If every MiniPay user held hands, they’d stretch from New York to Lagos and back, twice.
• 400M+ Stablecoin Transactions on MiniPay Alone — Roughly one transaction for every person living in the United States, all within a single app.

The wallet is the product of a longstanding partnership between Opera and Celo dating back to 2021 — a relationship that deepened substantially earlier this year with the community’s near-unanimous vote approving a 160M CELO grant.

Through this new structure, Opera has become one of the largest institutional stakeholders of CELO, and is uniquely incentivized to maintain and accelerate MiniPay’s expansion.

The recently launched “Buy CELO” Mini App, powered by Squidrouter, is an early example of how Opera’s increased incentivization has driven MiniPay expansion that directly benefits network stakeholders: Celo’s native token is now accessible directly within MiniPay for broader access and utility.

Last week, Celo Core Co. and Opera also kicked off a MiniPay Roadshow beginning in Ho Chi Minh City and Manila. Together, we offered on-the-ground support to developers in Vietnam and the Philippines as they built lightweight mobile apps designed for their communities’ specific financial needs, from microwork to utility payment. These efforts will continue throughout Southeast Asia and Latin America in the months to come as MiniPay’s global footprint increases.

The drive to accelerate growth extended to Celo’s core contributing organizations as well. CELOMorphosis brought cLabs and the Celo Foundation together as one unified entity, Celo Core Co., to ship more quickly, streamlining overhead and enhancing value accrual.

Last week’s CELOccelerate tokenomics upgrade was also passed by the community’s unanimous approval following months of forum discussions, governance calls, and working sessions. CELOccelerate evolved Celo’s network economics to capture more value from the network’s growing usage.

The result? In the week since, network revenue has increased 66.6%, while transaction costs remain sub-cent.

These comparisons and highlights help set the stage for just how much there is to celebrate, but they are far from comprehensive. While narratives and trends over the past six years have shifted as rapidly as the markets themselves, the Celo community has remained steadfastly committed to Celo’s founding mission.

Our proof of impact isn’t just in the metrics — it’s in the real users transacting on Celo every day, many of whom are being introduced to blockchain rails for the first time as a better way to send, spend, and save money.

The year ahead will unlock new partnerships, integrations, and initiatives purpose-built to scale the real adoption of Celo worldwide.

So, Happy Birthday, Celo. Thank you to everyone who has built, scaled, and used the network so far. We’ve come so far, but we’re still in the early innings.

Celo at Six: The Most Widely Adopted Blockchain for Stablecoins was originally published in The Celo Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

• Celo will be the first chain for USA₮ expansion following Ethereum deployment, bringing the stablecoin to the leading USD₮ transport layer
• Self Protocol to launch a stablecoin distribution faucet, using Google Cloud, with USA₮ on Celo for users verified with Self’s proof-of-human and identity solution
• Celo Governance process to enable USA₮ & XAUt0 (Tether Gold) as gas currencies, further supporting XAUt0’s rapid adoption, now exceeding 85,000 holders
• Opera MiniPay will support USA₮, expanding Opera’s strategic partnership with Tether to further scale fintech’s fastest-growing wallet, built exclusively on Celo

USA₮, the dollar-backed stablecoin issued by Anchorage Digital Bank, N., today announced its forthcoming deployment on Celo, the Ethereum Layer 2 built for the real world with the leading programmable rails for global finance.

This launch makes Celo the first network outside of Ethereum to support native USA₮, bringing the digital dollar directly to the network that has become the world’s leading transport layer for USD₮, with over 4.23 million weekly active users (WAUs).

Celo has emerged as the #1 global network for everyday stablecoin payments, with USD₮ users growing 506% in the past year. MiniPay, the self-custodial stablecoin wallet built by Opera (NASDAQ: OPRA) exclusively on Celo, has onboarded over 14 million global users, collectively processing over 420 million transactions on the Celo blockchain. USA₮’s deployment enables future integrations via MiniPay and across the vibrant Celo ecosystem, from payment platforms to blue-chip DeFi protocols including Morpho, Aave, Velodrome, and Uniswap.

USA₮ is issued by Anchorage Digital Bank, N.A., the first federally chartered digital asset bank in the United States, and is backed by reserves custodied by Cantor Fitzgerald and designed to meet the standards of the GENIUS Act.

Joining as a Day One launch partner of USA₮ on Celo, Self will leverage the power of Google Cloud’s faucet infrastructure and Web3 portal to power a first-of-its-kind mainnet faucet distributing USA₮ for verified real humans using Self’s zero-knowledge proof-of-humanity technology — this marks the first time a U.S. dollar stablecoin has been distributed through a privacy-preserving identity layer at the protocol level.

The integration extends a collaboration that went live in production in January 2026, when Google Cloud embedded Self’s ZK proof-of-humanity into its Celo Sepolia testnet faucet to ensure developer resources go to real people rather than bots. The USA₮ mainnet faucet is the next chapter: the same architecture.

To claim USA₮ from the faucet, users verify aspects of their identity privately through the Self app using their government-issued biometric passport or national ID. Self confirms users’ humanity and characteristics, including clearance against the OFAC sanctions list, without transmitting any raw personal data to any third party. Verified users connect a Celo-compatible wallet and receive USA₮ directly to their address.

USA₮’s arrival on Celo marks a new chapter in a close strategic partnership that has been expanding for two years. Native USD₮ first launched on Celo in 2024. XAUt0 was then deployed in September 2025 and has since grown to more than 85,000 unique holders on the network, more than any other chain globally.

“We’re excited to bring USA₮ to Celo, to make fast, low-cost payments and trusted assets accessible to millions of mobile-first users around the world,” said Rene Reinsberg, co-founder of Celo and CEO of Self. “Deploying the first federally regulated stablecoin on Celo is a powerful next step in driving global adoption of stablecoins and real-world assets at scale, and we’re proud to bring it to life with Opera MiniPay and Google Cloud.”

“USA₮ is designed to operate in environments where digital dollars are already being used at scale,” said Bo Hines, CEO of Tether USA₮. “Expanding to Celo, with infrastructure supported by Google Cloud, allows us to deliver regulated digital dollars in a way that is practical and accessible in an onchain economy. Our focus is on making USA₮ usable in real-world financial activity, where speed, cost, and reliability directly impact how people move and manage money.”

“MiniPay was built on Celo to bring digital money to mobile users everywhere, and USA₮ expands what we can offer our growing user base,” said Jørgen Arnesen, EVP Mobile, Opera. “Supporting USA₮ is a natural extension of our partnership with Tether and Celo, and our shared goal of making trusted digital dollars accessible to everyday users, whether they are sending money home, saving securely, or transacting for the first time.”

Celo’s purpose-built architecture pioneered fee abstraction, enabling ERC-20 token usage as accepted gas currencies to streamline transactions and simplify onboarding new entrants to crypto. This infrastructure is fundamental to the success of real-world applications like MiniPay, with nearly 50% of all Celo users paying gas fees with USD₮. Following USA₮’s launch, Celo Core Co. will begin the governance process to enable the asset as gas, in addition to a proposal to accept XAUt0 as gas currency.

The launch of USA₮ on Celo will mark a significant growth milestone, expanding the federally-regulated stablecoin to the leading global financial network trusted by over 700,000 users daily.

For more information, visit USA₮ and Celo.

About USA₮
USA₮ is a U.S.-regulated dollar-backed stablecoin that Tether, the global leader in stablecoin technology, is supporting. Purpose-built to serve the U.S. market and support American regulatory standards, USA₮ is the foundational rail for the next generation of American commerce, trade, and finance.

Tether’s support for USA₮ underscores its commitment to driving U.S. dominance and leadership in the evolving digital asset economy. As part of the broader Tether ecosystem, USA₮ will set a new benchmark in the U.S. for utility-driven stablecoins designed to deliver long-term value, strong governance, and real-world applications.

Tether Operations, S.A. de C.V. is not the issuer of USA₮. The issuer of USA₮ is Anchorage Digital Bank, N.A.

About Celo

Celo is an Ethereum Layer-2 and mobile-first blockchain network built for the real world and designed for fast, low-cost payments worldwide. The Celo ecosystem consists of a decentralized, proof-of-stake blockchain technology stack, the CELO native token, USDC and USDT (both enabled as gas currencies), several Mento stable assets (USDm, EURm, REALm, XOFm), and popular infrastructure including Morpho, Aave, Uniswap V3, Curve, Velodrome, and Chainlink. Launched on Earth Day in 2020, the open-source Celo mainnet supports a rich ecosystem of projects (1,000+) contributing to Celo’s global mission of prosperity for all. For more about Celo, visit https://celo.org/.

About MiniPay

MiniPay is a non-custodial stablecoin wallet built on the Celo blockchain and designed to make digital finance accessible, affordable, and user-friendly — especially across emerging markets. MiniPay is offered by Blueboard Limited, an Opera company. Opera is publicly listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the ticker symbol OPRA. Learn more at investor.opera.com.

USA₮ to Launch on Celo: The First Chain Following Ethereum to Host the Regulated Dollar Stablecoin… was originally published in The Celo Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

One year ago today, Celo returned home to Ethereum.

On March 26, 2025 at 3am UTC, Celo’s core engineers successfully migrated the network from an EVM-compatible, standalone Layer 1 blockchain to an Ethereum Layer 2 leveraging the OP Stack. This milestone migration was supported by more than 100 Day One partners across infrastructure, wallets, DeFi, identity, payments, and developer tooling. Preserving nearly five years of network history, the hardfork was a technical feat, exemplifying mass coordination at scale and building in the open, setting the stage for the next chapter of Celo’s evolution since launching mainnet on Earth Day 2022.

Subsequently, this past year has brought unprecedented levels of growth. Celo has emerged as the leading Ethereum L2 by Daily Active Users, the #1 transport layer for Tether USD₮ and XAUt0 (omnichain Tether Gold), one of the fastest-growing agentic ecosystems, supporting an onchain FX ecosystem with the most stablecoins (25+), and home to crypto’s killer use case with MiniPay reaching product-market fit and over 14M global users.

The Case for L1 -> L2 Migration, Revisited

Since launch, Celo has been closely aligned with Ethereum, serving as a cultural extension with an ecosystem committed to creating the conditions of prosperity for all. As a fork of Geth, Celo even future-proofed later-stage ETH2 milestones, like light clients, single-slot finality, and usability. From its inception as the “Global Venmo for Crypto” to mainnet launch on Earth Day 2020 and onwards, Celo’s community has set the standard for building accessible financial solutions for everyone with a smartphone.

We firmly believe that Ethereum will become the settlement layer for the internet, not just Web3 but the entirety of the Web. Migrating to an Ethereum Layer 2, over 20 months of testing, building, and community-wide decision making, was the Celo ecosystem’s bet on this belief. Below is a quick look at the numbers, or proof-of-impact:

Celo L2 By the Numbers

Users

• 840K peak daily active users, #1 among all Ethereum L2s
• 1.3M monthly active users, all-time high
• 14M Opera MiniPay wallets across 60+ countries, growing from 3M to 13M in calendar year 2025 alone

Stablecoins and Payments

• #1 transport layer for Tether globally — 5M+ weekly active users, 7.2M+ weekly transactions of USD₮
• 10M+ USD₮ holders on Celo, up 230% year-over-year
• 506% user growth rate for native USD₮ on Celo, per Tether
• USD₮ gas payments account for nearly 50% of all transaction fees on the network
• $6.2B+ stablecoin volume in a single month, all-time high
• $65.9B+ in stablecoin volume across 2025, up 142% vs. 2024
• 420M+ stablecoin transactions processed through MiniPay alone
• 25 stablecoins supported, more than any other ecosystem, including 14 local-currency stablecoins

Network Economics

• 99.8% reduction in security costs post-migration
• ~10x increase in monthly chain revenue since January 2024
• 1.2B+ lifetime transactions crossed

DeFi

• 88K+ XAUt0 (Tether Gold) holders on Celo, the leading network with ~90% marketshare
• Velodrome, Uniswap V4, UpDown, Textile Credit, and Morpho all now live on Celo
• Morpho USDT/CELO vault deposits exceeded $1M within one month of launch

Developers

• 709 monthly active developers, up 28% year-over-year
• 193 full-time developers, up 14%

Celo’s Differentiated Role Within the L2 Ecosystem

In early 2026, Vitalik Buterin wrote that the durable path forward for L2s is application-specific design backed by genuine Ethereum security guarantees.

Since Day 1, Celo was built different. Fee abstraction, a mobile-first interface for low-bandwidth environments, and native stablecoins including local currency assets were core Celo features before the migration. The L2 migration layered in Ethereum’s economic security and a trustless bridge, and the Jello Hardfork furthered it: ZK fault-proof rollup security via OP Succinct Lite, making Celo the leading “Optimium and Validium” per L2Beat. Self Protocol has extended Celo’s footprint in proof-of-humanity and identity, introducing DeFi yield programs for verified humans natively on Aave and Velodrome, on Uniswap via Merkl, and serving the developer community via Google Cloud’s testnet faucet.

This unique technical edge, coupled with real adoption and user metrics, has not gone unnoticed. Bankless called it “the most underrated chain.” Viktor Bunin called it an OG chain “quietly winning throughout market cycles.” Vitalik even said at the Hardfork Party last year that “the Celo community are some of the best examples that the Ethereum ecosystem and crypto as a whole has to offer.”

The Celo community has furthered development on these rails since the L2 migration: Velodrome, Uniswap V4, UpDown, Textile Credit, and Morpho deepened the DeFi ecosystem, XAUt0 (omnichain Tether Gold) brought the oldest store of value onchain to 88,000+ holders, and monthly developer activity increased 28%. This is just the beginning.

Looking Ahead

Next week’s Jovian Mainnet Hardfork will improve gas mechanics, infrastructure compatibility, and overall network performance. Espresso pre-confirmations and post-quantum hardening are underway. Celo’s agentic ecosystem is taking shape as one of the leading chains by ERC-8004 registrations, with both Virtuals’ forthcoming deployment and the first-of-its-kind Celo Agent Visa initiative announced just this week.

MiniPay, the self-custodial stablecoin wallet built by Opera, serves 14M+ users in 66+ countries and is onboarding new users to crypto, and to Celo, every day. With Opera’s proposed 160M CELO allocation to fund the next three years of MiniPay growth in governance, 50M eligible Opera users could claim rewards in Celo-native USD₮ as Opera deepens its commitment to the ecosystem’s long-term success.

This morning’s governance forum post advanced the proposed tokenomics update with proposed buybacks and burn mechanisms, designed to direct value from Celo’s real-world usage back to the network

The mission has always been to create the conditions of prosperity for all. In just one year as an Ethereum Layer 2, the ecosystem made strides in realizing this vision at global scale. In year two, Celo is poised for its most exciting period of growth yet.

Celo’s First Year as an L2: Scaling the Programmable Rails for Global Finance was originally published in The Celo Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

AI agents are taking over the timeline, dashboards, and crypto mindshare at large. Thousands are being built, launched, and hyped, but what are these agents actually doing?

For most chains, the answer is purely trading tokens. Agents launch coins, degens speculate, prices dump, and the cycle repeats. Some ecosystems have registered over 22,000 agents with just only a handful that are active. Others saw 90% of their agentic payment activity vanish within weeks. That’s a casino, not a real economy.

Celo is built different, with 700K+ daily active users leveraging the network’s diverse apps and infrastructure. As the fastest-growing USD₮ chain with a robust ecosystem of 25+ stablecoins, blue-chip DeFi protocols (Morpho, Aave, Uniswap, Curve, etc.), and payment platforms, Celo is purpose-built for real-world utility.

With over 1,000 registered agents on 8004scan.io, including top leaderboard projects like Loopuman, x402 payments supported by thirdweb, Celo’s agentic ecosystem is quickly accelerating. Today, we’re launching a first-of-its-kind initiative to further it: the Celo Agent Visa.

The Celo Agent Visa is a structured program designed to bring more agent builders into the Celo ecosystem, and to give them every advantage to succeed. Think of it like a national work visa, but for AI agents. Just as a country grants visas to workers who will contribute to its economy, Celo grants Agent Visas to agents who will contribute to a real, functioning crypto economy.

The program has three tiers with unique benefits: Tourist Visa, Work Visa, and Celo Citizenship. Each tier is tied to integration and usage metrics, starting with Self Agent ID verification as the entrypoint.

Self is the identity layer for the agentic web, using ZK proofs to verify humanity and unique attributes like age, nationality, and more while preserving user privacy. Self’s Agent ID lets users delegate credentials to their agent, confirming it is tied to a real human and enabling portable identity across the Celo ecosystem.

Virtuals also joins as a Day One partner for the first-of-its-kind initiative, powering agent commerce and allowing Celo-native agents to discover services, negotiate terms, and transact autonomously. Through Virtual’s forthcoming integration with Celo, Virtual agents can qualify for the Agent Visa program with just one transaction.

The Agent Visa tier structure, requirements, and benefits:

Tourist Visa: Minimum of 1 transaction on Celo

• Co-marketing support from Celo Core Co. to make sure your launch actually reaches the right audience
• Mentorship from ecosystem founders and partners who’ve built on Celo and understand what works

Work Visa: Tourist requirements, with Self Agent ID verification, 1,000+ transactions, $5,000+ volume or 1,000 unique contracts

• Featured placement on UpDown’s perpetual DEX, putting your agent in front of active FX traders
• DeFi incentives across Uniswap, Aave, Mento, and Velodrome, directed toward bootstrapping agent activity

Celo Citizenship: Work Visa requirements, with 10,000 transactions or $15,000 volume and manual review

• Liquidity support for agent token launches, giving your token depth from day one
• Access to 14M+ MiniPay users as a built-in employer pool of real people with real financial needs

Celo’s Agent Economy

There’s a fundamental difference between agent token speculation and an actual agent economy. An economy requires three things:

• Agents that do real work
• People who need that work done
• A way for agents to get paid

Most chains have, at best, one of these. Celo has all three.

Furthermore, Celo community around the world, from Nigeria and Kenya to Colombia and India are already using crypto daily for remittances, FX trading, savings, and buying gold through MiniPay. These are real world activities performed by real people, who agents could support whether FX swaps at optimal spreads, stacking gold on a DCA schedule, managing yield positions across DeFi protocols (UpDown, Morpho, Uniswap, Aave, Mento, Velodrome, and Curve), and more.

This next phase belongs to agents that provide utility and within an ecosystem where real users, real liquidity, and real infrastructure already coexist. Celo is that ecosystem, with proven infrastructure and rails that have scaled for millions. The Celo Agent Visa connects the pieces, matching the growing supply of capable agents with existing demand from real people in a real economy.

This is why, your agent deserves a real job.

If you’re building an agent that does actual work, the Celo Agent Visa is your entry point into the leading programmable rails for global finance, and the most widely adopted blockchain for stablecoin payments.

Celo is the best place for agents and their humans to build — it’s an ecosystem where real work and utility gets rewarded.

To learn more and apply, visit celo.org/agent-visa.

Introducing Celo’s Agent Visa: The World’s First Work Visa for AI Agents was originally published in The Celo Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

After nearly five years of building together, the partnership between Celo and Opera is entering a new chapter.

Celo Core Co., stewards of Celo, the Ethereum Layer 2 built for the real world with the leading programmable rails for global finance and Opera (NASDAQ: OPRA), a leading global browser and AI agent company, have proposed a restructuring of commercial partnership terms. The proposal recommends transitioning from a US Dollar-denominated quarterly grant model to an allocation of 160 million CELO, giving Opera a long-term incentive to support the ecosystem’s success as a key stakeholder.

The agreed terms have been submitted to the Celo community forum for approval, consistent with the network’s decentralized treasury governance model.

What This Means

Subject to Celo community governance approval, the existing USD-denominated partnership would be replaced with an allocation of 160M CELO, deepening Opera’s alignment with the Celo ecosystem’s long-term success. The restructured terms reflect the scale and maturity of the partnership, and Opera’s genuine belief and commitment to the long-term value of the Celo ecosystem and its native governance token, CELO.

Celo and Opera’s Partnership

The announcement marks the latest development in Opera’s nearly five-year partnership with the Celo ecosystem, which began in June 2021. From this early partnership milestone, Opera and key Celo contributors have remained laser-focused on scaling accessible stablecoin payments, launching self-custodial stablecoin wallet MiniPay in September 2023.

Since MiniPay’s launch, Opera and Celo have expanded the self-custodial stablecoin wallet to serve 66+ countries, facilitating over 400 million transactions, and growing to more than 14 million users. With MiniPay as a core driver, Celo has emerged as the leading global financial rails for everyday stablecoin adoption, positioned as the leading Ethereum Layer 2 by daily active users and strongest transport layer for USD₮ with 700,000+ Daily Active Users and 4.23+ million Weekly Active USD₮ Users.

That growth reflects the fit between MiniPay’s target markets and the payment infrastructure Celo was purpose-built to provide. Launched on mainnet Earth Day 2020 with architecture optimized for mobile-first, real-world financial use cases, Celo offers a full suite of tools optimized for speed, low cost, and accessibility at scale. Among the most consequential features for consumer adoption are fee abstraction, which allows users to pay transaction costs in ERC-20 tokens like stablecoins rather than a native gas token, and phone number-to-wallet mapping, which abstracts the complexity for blockchain addresses.

From Distribution Partner to Key Stakeholder

The three-year agreement transitions Opera from a distribution partner to a committed network stakeholder, replacing the prior quarterly funding model with a CELO allocation that aligns Opera’s and MiniPay’s success directly with the network’s over the long run. The partnership also carries a significant near-term growth catalyst: over 50 million Opera browser users have earned rewards and are positioned to redeem them as USD₮ within MiniPay.

“Our partnership with Opera has evolved significantly over nearly five years, and we’re proud to take this next step together as our joint mission of accessible, effective stablecoin solutions becomes a reality for users worldwide,” said Rene Reinsberg, Celo co-founder. “The path toward a billion-dollar onchain economy has never been so clear, and Opera’s belief in CELO reaffirms our joint commitment to the ecosystem reaching this goal.”

“Celo’s infrastructure and mission-aligned ecosystem have been instrumental in our work building and scaling powerful mobile financial technology with MiniPay,” said Jørgen Arnesen, EVP Mobile, Opera. “Through this continued partnership, we’re making a long-term commitment to the Celo ecosystem and to bringing that utility to our global user base.”

What’s Next

Opera and Celo Core Co. will build their presence in Latin America and Southeast Asia with a roadshow to drive grassroots adoption and grow the Mini App ecosystem, beginning in Vietnam and the Philippines next month.

To learn more about Celo and Opera, visit celo.org and opera.com. Download MiniPay on Google Play and iOS App Store today.

Opera Commits Big to Celo: Proposed 160M CELO Stake To Transform Distribution Partner into Key… was originally published in The Celo Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As the leading programmable rails for global finance, Celo serves a vibrant ecosystem of builders, founders, and everyday users. Today, the Celo Foundation and cLabs announce the first cohort of Regional Ambassadors who will drive on-the-ground awareness, education, and grassroots adoption efforts. Spanning Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, these ambassadors will support communities where Celo’s adoption is strongest and where crypto is often most impactful.

The Regional Ambassadors bring unique insights into how their communities interact with Celo’s app ecosystem and blockchain, identifying opportunities for mission alignment (to create the conditions of prosperity for all) to benefit everyday users of all experience levels, whether expanding MiniPay adoption or cultivating the next generation of blockchain builders.

• Arturo Grande — Argentina: Arturo is an industry leader and AI-native founder who created DESAFIA, an AI-first educational platform for builders across Latin America. A Track Winner at ETHGlobal Buenos Aires 2025 and former Celo Ambassador, he has a deep record of supporting the regional builder community.
• Benjamin “Beni” Bauer — Brazil: Beni is a Web3 builder specializing in real-world crypto adoption, stablecoins, and decentralized infrastructure. His work focuses on connecting Brazil and broader emerging markets to the onchain financial system. He previously served as the CeLatam Brazil Ambassador.
• Ernest “Pablo” Akakpo — Ghana: Ernest has grown Celo’s developer community in Ghana to more than 380 active members, building through university workshops and hands-on organizing.
• Juan Giraldo — Colombia: Juan is a longtime Web3 builder and industry organizer based in Colombia who has been central to Celo’s growth in the region. Key efforts include Celo Colombia, TuCop Wallet, and Self Protocol.
• Luis Buenaventura II — Philippines: Luis is one of Southeast Asia’s most recognized crypto voices, a published author of three books on cryptocurrency, and the current President of the Blockchain Council of the Philippines. He previously led crypto at GCash and has spoken at the UN and OECD. His NFT work has been shown and sold at Christie’s and Sotheby’s.
• Mukunde Brisa — East Africa: Brisa has spent years at the intersection of Web3 and crypto in emerging African markets, growing and activating builder communities from the ground up. He led the Celo Africa DAO, supporting the adoption of MiniPay, the development of new ecosystem projects, and education through university events.
• Susanne Zarpellon — Proof of Ship: Susanne has been a Celo contributor for six years, with roots in ImpactMarket, CeLatam, and the Celo Regional Council. As lead of Proof of Ship, Celo’s flagship builder activation program, she will focus on helping builders grow their onchain reputation and convert early participation into long-term ecosystem commitment.

The Regional Ambassador cohort is active today, supporting the Build Agents for the Real World Hackathon and local community efforts, including a workshop with Crecimiento, guest lectures at Universidade Salvador (UNIFACS), and more.

For Celo ecosystem updates, events, and builder programs in your area, follow the Regional Ambassadors on X.

Meet Celo’s New Regional Ambassadors was originally published in The Celo Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The foreign exchange (FX) market moves more than $9.6 trillion every day. It is the largest financial market in the world, exceeding equities, bonds, and crypto combined. Yet for most people worldwide, access to the market is blocked by brokers, account minimums, and geographic restrictions.

UpDown, live today exclusively on Celo, is built to bridge the gap between individuals worldwide and FX futures. UpDown’s decentralized protocol lets users trade leveraged FX futures with up to 50x leverage, tapping into the same market that has historically been the domain of institutional desks and well-resourced retail traders.

Rather than betting on memecoin speculation, UpDown users can draw on their economic insights to trade stablecoin pairs from Tether and Mento Labs tracking the Great British Pound, Japanese Yen, Nigerian Naira, and more.

UpDown is built on Celo, the leading Layer 2 by daily active users, inheriting its key benefits, including sub-cent transaction costs and fee abstraction to make every trade as frictionless as possible. The project furthers Celo’s recent DeFi ecosystem growth, following the launch of Morpho’s institutional-grade vault and the integration of Kiln’s Earn Mini App within Opera’s self-custodial stablecoin wallet, MiniPay, just last week.

For the millions of people already transacting on Celo, UpDown opens a new door into the world’s largest financial market.

To explore UpDown’s leveraged FX trading, visit updown.xyz

UpDown Brings Leveraged FX Futures to Celo was originally published in The Celo Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.