PROSPERITY FOR ALL
It is not just a blockchain project, it is a project that has a social mission.
Have you ever thought that blockchain can change not only the economic side of our life, but also affect its social side? Can cryptocurrency help people who are in an economically unfavorable environment? It turns out that it can. And such system has already been created, it’s a Celo.
Celo aims to provide financial accessibility for everyone in all corners of the world. If we read the World Bank Group’s financial inclusion reports, we’ll see that almost 1.7 billion people do not have a bank account, and 1.1 billion people do not have an officially recognized form of identity card.
These people can’t open a bank account or even get health care or education. Since the advent of mobile phones and the development of mobile services, access to financial services began to grow. But at the same time, they remain expensive for many, because the commission for cross-border transactions can reach up to 10%.
Celo, pronounced /ˈtselo/ means ‘purpose’ in Esperanto.
«The spirit of Esperanto and auxiliary languages, is to equip speakers with a means to connect, engage, and build trust with someone who speaks a different native tongue. In a similar spirit, we are aiming to create a new platform to connect people globally and bring financial stability to those who need it most. We believe blockchain technology is one of the most exciting innovations in recent history and as a team we look to push the boundaries of what is possible with it today.»
What did the Celo project invent? It began to use the mobile phone in order to remove barriers in the process of large-scale introduction of cryptocurrencies as a way of payment.
Main features of Celo
Intuitive user interface and a stable cryptocurrency backed by a reserve.
Celo team suggests that their project can contribute to:
1.Help meet basic needs: access to food, clean water,
and basic health care.
2. Help people develop and move on their own path. Lack of access to capital or high unemployment hinder prosperity.
3. Social support is critical to economic prosperity. For example, researches have shown that a 1% increase in remittance flows can lead to a 16% reduction in extreme poverty.
Celo can be the foundation for a monetary system that allows everyone to thrive. It has been created a framework for stable currencies that can evolve to support the ecology of stable coins and to redefine what money is and how we use it. It is an inclusive governance system that will allow stakeholders from around the world, large or small, to decide how move this new monetary system forward.
Alliance for Prosperity
A lot of the world’s poorest regions use mobile phones to “stand up” technologically. The number of values that are now transmitted via mobile devices is growing every year. The number of mobile money agents even exceeds the number of commercial banking infrastructure facilities. For further development of this mission, Celo created the Alliance for Prosperity.
Alliance for Prosperity is a group of projects, investment funds, and service providers that seek to improve financial conditions where they are most needed.
Celo not only wants to become the first mobile and highly secure blockchain network, but also fulfills a social mission to improve the financial well-being of people. The Alliance is not only about payment methods, but it also performs a number of other important functions: Accept, Acquire, Build, Learn, Educate, Give, Grow, Lend, Preserve, Send, Save, and Secure.
Our mission is to build a financial system that creates the conditions for prosperity — for everyone
How does it work?
Using new cryptographic techniques, Celo allows anyone to connect to the network with minimal data requirements. Users can also send and receive cryptocurrencies using a mobile phone number, instead of leaving complex, long strings of letters and numbers as blockchain addresses. Celo matches phone numbers to wallet addresses using a new decentralized address-based encryption algorithm. In addition, mobile participants can receive rewards for protecting and maintaining the system.
Users can send Celo Dollars (cUSD) or Celo Euros (cEUR) via WhatsApp whenever they want. But in order to receive cUSD or cEUR, the recipient will need to download and install the Celo wallet. When creating a wallet, the mobile phone number is associated with the wallet address, and the cryptographic hash of the phone number is stored in the blockchain. It is also possible to send payments even to people who have not yet connected to the network. When funds are sent to an unregistered user, the Celo protocol holds the funds in escrow until the recipient matches their phone number with the corresponding cryptographic address. In addition, Celo allows users to pay for transactions in the same currency in which they make transactions.
Celo Assets
· Celo dollars (cUSD) and Celo Euro (cEUR)
· Celo
cUSD
Celo dollars or cUSD as well as Celo Euro or cEUR are Celo stable coins. They are backed by shares of other digital assets, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, and are pegged to the value of the US dollar.
CELO
CELO is a cryptocurrency that serves as a service and management token for the Celo platform.
CELO has a fixed part. They cannot be made or burned at any chosen time in order to maintain stability, and are not pegged to the US dollar (unlike cUSD). Thanks to this fixed-supply cryptocurrency, Celo maintains price stability as well as great management of the blockchain management operation.
Celo dollars can be sold for the equivalent market value of CELO. And conversely, a CELO can be sold for an equivalent value in Celo dollars. This process can take place using a decentralized exchange built into the protocol (modeled on the Uniswap technology).
Users with the required number of CELOs can join the network in the validators property, as well as suggest and vote for protocol changes. Any offers also require sending a small amount of CELOs to a smart contract, where they are blocked. If the offer is eventually approved, these funds will be refunded after a three-day waiting period.
Voting after a protocol change is also done by locking CELO in the same smart contract. Again, voters can withdraw their CELO after a three-day waiting period. This waiting period is designed to prevent attacks on the network.
In conclusion
Relying on extensive research that has been conducted in emerging markets and in developing countries: Tanzania, Colombia, Argentina, Mexico, the Philippines, and Kenya, Celo has created the first mobile blockchain platform along with a set of financial tools available to anyone with a basic smartphone. Using this platform, transactions are made faster and cheaper than using traditional bank transfers. Since cryptocurrencies are fully programmable, a wide range of financial services can be created without expensive intermediaries.
You can become a part of this program and contribute to its development with us, using Making Cash as a validator. We will soon release detailed instructions on how to do this.
