Celo (CELO) is a platform serving as a global payment infrastructure for cryptocurrencies targeting mobile users. With this aim, Celo (CELO)’s goal is to make financial activities globally accessible to everyone, thanks to the ability to send and receive payments to any phone number in the world. Celo (CELO) is a blockchain ecosystem focused on increasing the adoption of cryptocurrency among smartphone users.
Beyond basic payments, Celo (CELO) can support the development of decentralized applications on the blockchain. These applications include a crowdfunding platform for social purposes, allowing everyone to contribute to a universal basic income plan for the community.
At the heart of operations on its blockchain, Celo (CELO) has two native tokens: CELO, a governance asset for voting on protocol changes, and Celo Dollar (cUSD), a stablecoin pegged to the value of the US dollar. The platform’s two native tokens are: First, CELO, a Proof of Stake (PoS) token used for transaction fees, governance participation, and related activities. In the future, the platform aims to host various stablecoins in addition to the already in use Celo Dollar (cUSD).
By using phone numbers as public keys, Celo (CELO) hopes to encourage billions of smartphone owners around the world, including those without banking access, to engage in cryptocurrency transactions.
The network also allows the creation of smart contracts and decentralized applications (DApps) as part of decentralized finance (DeFi). Its mainnet was launched in April 2020.

The Celo (CELO) network consists of three separate parts to operate its platform, these are:

Celo (CELO)’s system requires CELO token holders to vote for validator nodes.

The Celo (CELO) project was founded by a team from MIT, Stanford, Google, Square, Circle, Visa, GoDaddy, World Bank, Federal Reserve Bank, Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania Law School, University of Cambridge, U.S. Department of Justice, Bank of America, Capital One, Twitter, Give Directly, and the Gates Foundation.

The main selling point of Celo (CELO) lies in its focus on smartphone users. The company believes that while the number of smartphone owners is increasing exponentially, the number of those using cryptocurrency is increasing at a much slower pace.
Cryptocurrency is particularly suitable for regions where a large portion of the population lacks access to the banking sector but still possesses a smartphone.
In addition to leveraging the benefits of DeFi by supporting the creation of DApps and smart contracts, one of Celo (CELO)’s main goals is also to bridge the gap between these smartphones and cryptocurrency technologies.
The Celo blockchain, optimized for mobile, automatically calculates transaction fees and also allows users to pay ‘gas’ fees in any currency, supporting transactions.

Celo (CELO) uses Proof-of-Stake to ensure security and has a complex selection process for determining the validators of the blockchain. CELO owners can use their assets to participate in elections by voting for validator groups.

At the core of Celo (CELO) is the Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT), a Proof of Stake governance mechanism that keeps the distributed computer network synchronized.
To strengthen the blockchain and vote on changes, validator nodes must first stake a minimum of 10,000 CELO tokens, meaning anyone owning CELO can help maintain the network's operations.
At any given time during the current era, only 100 validator nodes are elected by full nodes, and each node is then rewarded with a portion of the block reward for validating transactions. Full nodes receive their rewards from fees paid by light clients.

A significant feature of Celo (CELO) is its ability to run stablecoins like cUSD, which offer the efficiency and transparency of crypto transactions while avoiding the volatility typically associated with these assets.
Celo (CELO) automatically ensures that each cUSD's value is pegged to one US dollar by using an overcollateralized reserve consisting of CELO and other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) or Ethereum (ETH), known as the programmatic reserve. This means cUSD can be sold for an equivalent CELO value and vice versa.
In the future, Celo plans to allow CELO owners to propose and vote on the creation of stablecoins that reflect the value of other national currencies like the euro or yen.

CELO and CUSD perform complementary functions within the Celo platform. CELO has a limited supply of 1 billion (1,000,000,000) tokens, with 600 million available at the launch of the mainnet in April 2020.
The remaining 40% of the supply will be gradually released through fees and rewards, and various entitlement programs will be applied depending on how the initial investors received their tokens.
Additionally, 120 million CELO will be used for a reserve designed to maintain the validity and price stability of CUSD. As a stablecoin, CUSD is envisioned as a convenient payment method for Celo (CELO) users who will not have to worry about fluctuations in the value of their assets.

As of the date this article was written, the live CELO price is 5.11 USD with a 24-hour trading volume of 101,218,426 USD. From the date of this article, CELO has increased by 0.33% in the last 24 hours. Its ranking on the exchange from where the current data is drawn is 75th, and its live market value is 1,568,385,712 USD. It has a circulating supply of 306,819,314 CELO tokens and a maximum supply of 1,000,000,000 CELO coins.