Celo's Markus Franke on sending stablecoins to any phone number in five seconds

Ashton Addison: Can you give us a high-level overview of Celo?▶ 00:23

Markus Franke: Celo's mission is to build a financial system that creates the conditions for prosperity for everyone. We typically say Celo is mobile, open and real. Mobile means it is built mobile first, so you can easily access it from any mobile phone. Open means it is open source, based on proof of stake and permissionless. Real means it supports real use cases: peer-to-peer transactions around the world, and decentralized finance that people can use easily on their phones.

Ashton: What problems did your team want to solve when it started Celo?▶ 01:42

Markus: Most cryptocurrency users are active in the ecosystem as developers, traders or other projects. Fewer people use crypto for peer-to-peer transactions, payments, remittances, saving or lending, and many people don't have access to the traditional banking system. That's why we chose to build mobile first, so the technology could be inclusive. Today I can send a Celo Dollar or a Celo Euro to any phone number around the world, and it arrives in five seconds. The block time is five seconds and the fees are very low. It's also hard to build for mobile. The blockchain has to support ultralight clients, and designers have to focus on the most important things so people everywhere can understand the wallet. That is why open source is the way to go.

Ashton: Why are stablecoins built into the protocol?▶ 04:24

Markus: A second reason people didn't use cryptocurrencies for day-to-day transactions is that they are typically very volatile. Celo has embedded stablecoins on the blockchain. The Celo Dollar and Celo Euro are the first two, and in future we hopefully see many more, like a Celo Real or a Celo Peso. Embedded means the smart contracts that govern these stablecoins let you pay for gas in the same currency as the transaction. If I send you Celo Dollars, I only need to know your phone number, it arrives in five seconds, and I can pay for gas in Celo Dollar as well. It's a fraction of a cent for this transaction.

Ashton: How does Celo get its speed, and what does proof of stake bring to the network?▶ 07:14

Markus: Celo is a layer one, proof-of-stake blockchain with on-chain governance. By holding the native asset, which is both the utility and the governance asset, the community can vote on the validators and on future governance decisions. It also supports ultralight clients, so even very simple smartphones can interact with the blockchain. Celo is EVM compatible too, and smart contracts are written in Solidity. We are soon launching bridges to other EVM-compatible chains. Ethereum developers can use those bridges to have their applications talk to Celo, or they can port their applications over.

Ashton: How does sending money to a phone number work if the recipient has no wallet?▶ 09:04

Markus: A hash of the phone number is linked to a public key, so your phone number stays private. As a user, I only need to know your phone number. If you already have a Celo wallet, the transaction arrives within five seconds. If you don't, you get a text message saying somebody sent you a Celo stablecoin. It is held in an escrow smart contract, which you can unlock by getting a wallet on Celo.

Ashton: How can developers build dapps on Celo, and what incentives are there?▶ 10:00

Markus: If you're considering building on Celo, celo.org/developers has extensive documentation on the SDK and how the code works, plus links to the GitHub repo and several tutorials. There is also a link to the code base of the blockchain's core contracts. The Celo Foundation gives grants, and the grant kit on celo.org has the information on how to get one. Celo Camp is a boot camp and incubator with great mentors, and it is taking applications again. There are also ecosystem funds that invest in projects building on top of Celo.

Ashton: What is the cLabs team focused on through the end of 2021?▶ 12:42

Markus: Interoperability comes first. We introduced Optics at the Ethereum Paris conference in an event series called League of Bridges, where we described the bridges to other EVM-compatible chains. That connects Celo's mobile-first transactions and payments to the assets and use cases on those chains. Second, we want to issue more currencies. Celo Dollar and Celo Euro are the first two, and communities in Brazil would like a Celo Real that tracks the Brazilian real. Third is the Alliance for Prosperity, a set of mission-aligned organizations around the world, including mobile carriers, charities and builders, that want to offer Celo technology to their users. We want an ecosystem with enough on and off ramps and enough merchants accepting Celo currencies.

Ashton: Is there anything else on the roadmap?▶ 15:54

Markus: Celo is carbon negative. It is already more efficient than proof-of-work blockchains because it is proof of stake, and there is also an offset of carbon emissions at the protocol level to keep it carbon negative. We are also looking to add nature-backed assets to the ecosystem. We would like to see something like tokenized forest on Celo in future, and we already have a token that tokenizes carbon credits.