Celo is a user-friendly cryptocurrency platform built by the Prosperity Alliance and aims to bring crypto to your smartphones. Their goal is to make a new international financial system that serves users even if they are unbanked.

Many people use centralized applications which have a lot of control over your account and transaction limitations to transfer money to other users, although they are straightforward to use. This protocol is trying to please the same market and bring the advantages of cryptocurrency to the users.

This platform is an alternative to the Libera crypto scheme of FB (Facebook) since Libera has faced disagreements from members of the U.S. Congress and many other politicians.

It is a platform that aims to make financial tools accessible to anybody who has a mobile phone. On their website, they describe this protocol as a Mobile-First Blockchain Platform.CELO or CLGD is a token on this platform. There is also a stable coin called CUSD or Celo Dollar.

What is Celo

Celo is a blockchain with dApps (decentralized applications) and smart contracts that allow users to access the DeFi (decentralized finance) and trustless transactions.

Users’ public keys are their phone numbers, so it would be easy to send money to your contacts on your phone. There are many smartphone users but not as many crypto users worldwide yet.

In many countries, people cannot rely on banking or personal finance opportunities, and these are nonexistent even in some others.

CLGD (The native token on the platform) powers fees and the protocol’s votes. This digital currency, like any other, acquires value based on its usefulness. If they show to be helpful and make life easier for people (to some extent), they are valuable.

Like any other blockchain ecosystem, this protocol has the ability to transfer money from anywhere in the world to another. On significant exchange platforms, you can trade CLGD for crypto, fiat, and stablecoins. The focus of this blockchain is on raising crypto adoption among people.

The platform has two native tokens:

1- CLGD: A PoS (proof of stake) token used for transaction fees and governance participation.

2- CUSD: A stable coin

Celo background

People from these organizations came together to create the platform: MIT, Google, Stanford, Visa, Circle, GoDaddy, Federal Reserve Bank, World Bank, Harvard University, Pennsylvania Law School U.S. Department of Justice, Cambridge University, Bank Of America, Capital One, Give Directly, Twitter, and the Gates Foundation. A few of these people are Rene Reinsberg, Marek Olszewski, Sep Kamvar and Marek Olszewski.

The Celo Foundation is a non-profit organization that started alongside the mainnet in 2020. The company describes the Celo Alliance for Prosperity as an ecosystem of mission-aligned organizations.

CLGD and CUSD have complementary functions on the platform. There are 1 billion CLGD tokens in existence. Six hundred million were available in 2020 (the time of launch). They will regularly release the last forty percent of the tokens gradually through fees and rewards.

Additionally, about 120 million CLGDs will be kept for the maintenance of the validity and price stability of CUSD. This stablecoin tends to be a suitable payment method for users who do not wish to worry about the loss of value of their assets.

Why Celo?

Blockchain technology is new to a lot of people, like the internet used to be in the late 20th century. And just like that, this technology will change the world.

Some say Celo is not a suitable cryptocurrency because it is not Ethereum compatible; ETH is the most popular blockchain. Most cryptocurrencies are Ethereum based, and additionally, this means that this token will not work with most blockchain platforms.

But there are unique points to this platform:

its focus is on smartphone users: they wish to increase the number of crypto users
It is highly suited to those regions that do not have access to the banking sector, but they can have access to smartphones.
Harnesses the benefits of DeFi by supporting the creation of dApps and smart contracts.
It automatically calculates transaction fees and also lets users pay the gas fees, which power transactions in any currency.