Buy Celo in Canada

Celo is a blockchain primed for payments. The idea is that, using Celo’s mobile apps, you can send money — in the form of the Celo cryptocurrency — to anyone in the world using just their phone number. Companies like Deutsche Telekom, Opera and the Grameen Foundation are already working with the technology.

Celo launched its mainnet — the official version of its blockchain — in April 2020. It supports smart contracts, the bit of blockchain tech that allows for programmable cash and decentralized applications.

Celo uses two main types of cryptocurrencies to power its blockchain. The first is CELO, a governance coin. This is a cryptocurrency that holders can use to influence what happens on the platform and the parameters by which it operates. The second is the Celo Dollar, also known as cUSD. This is a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar. These cryptocurrencies allow users to benefit from the features unique to blockchains, like decentralization, speed (in some cases) and privacy, without exposing themselves to the volatility inherent to so many cryptocurrencies.

cUSD maintains its value in a similar fashion to a far larger decentralized stablecoin, DAI — through overcollateralized reserves of other cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin or Ether. Celo also supports two other stablecoins: cEURO, pegged to the euro, and cREAL, pegged to the Brazilian real, although the markets for these are far smaller than cUSD’s market cap of $83 million.

It should be stressed that Celo is its own blockchain — it is not a set of smart contracts that sits atop another blockchain, like how USDC sits atop Ethereum. As such, Celo supports its own network of decentralized finance protocols. But, like rival blockchains Avalanche and Fantom, the Celo blockchain is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). This means that it’s easy for Ethereum developers to port their apps over to Celo.

Still, the network is comparatively small when stacked up against other DeFi markets — just $387 million in a market that holds about $200 billion in value, as of March 14, 2022.

Celo increases the speed of its blockchain by using a complicated cryptographic technique called zk-SNARK. This allows mobile blockchain nodes to verify transactions while sharing a minimal amount of data. The Celo blockchain itself is what is known as a proof-of-stake blockchain, meaning that you can offer assets on the blockchain as collateral to secure the network and validate transactions. Staking also earns you rewards in the form of more Celo coins.

Since proof-of-stake rewards those who lock up the most coins, it can benefit those who already have a lot of money, but it’s also far easier on the environment than proof-of-work systems like Bitcoin and Litecoin. In fact, Celo claims that its blockchain is carbon neutral; in May 2021, the community even voted to allocate 0.5% of CELO reserves to carbon credit programs.