[FINAL] Allocate $1M of Mento’s Current Reserve Holdings to Glo Dollar to fund Celo Public Goods at no cost

Governance Governance Proposals
1

Hi everyone! Garm here, CTO at Glo Dollar - the stablecoin that funds public goods.

We propose that Mento allocates $1M (or ~0.7%) of its Current Reserve Holdings in Glo Dollars (USDGLO) to fund Celo Public Goods, at zero cost.

Doing so has three distinct benefits:

  1. Enable Mento’s treasury to embed philanthropic impact through Glo Dollar’s Automatic Public Goods Funding (autoPGF) Mechanism. Holding Glo Dollars creates a virtuous cycle of Celo public goods funding, instead of extracting value like USDC/USDT.
  2. Support the development of an alternative US regulated stablecoin that benefits the public and the broader crypto ecosystem, instead of a few shareholders.
  3. Strengthen cUSD’s resilience by diversifying into more native, centralized, USD-backed stablecoins.

What is Glo Dollar?

Glo Dollar (USDGLO) is the stablecoin that funds public goods.

Stablecoin companies generate up to $7.4 billion in profits annually from their stablecoin reserves. Our approach is different—we funnel 100% of our profits to public goods and charities.

Holding Glo Dollars creates a virtuous cycle to grow ecosystems. By choosing Glo Dollar, you’re funding public goods. At no cost.

Choosing the causes to support can be done from our dApp. Right now, users can select between three cause areas: web3 public goods, fighting extreme poverty, or combating climate change. We’ll add more causes and cause areas on a rolling basis.

We’d love to add Celo Public Goods as a recipient of our proceeds. Glo Dollar users across all chains would be able to generate funds for Celo Public Goods.

Glo Dollar is available on 7 chains: Ethereum, Celo, Polygon, Optimism, Arbitrum, Stellar, and Base.

How it works

What happens when you buy Glo Dollars:

  1. The fiat backing Glo Dollar is invested and earns revenue (similar to other stablecoins). The Glo Foundation receives its part of the revenue on-chain—all transactions are displayed on our website.

  2. We donate 100% of our profits on these investments to public goods and charities—the user decides which public goods and charities. Donations are sent on-chain and reported on our website. These can be directed to Celo Public Goods.

  3. You’re funding public goods at zero cost.

We call this Automatic Public Goods Funding (AutoPGF, S/O to Marek), because it is:

  • Simple: just hold a stablecoin
  • Zero-cost: holding a stablecoin is free
  • Embeddable: in treasuries, payroll, card transactions, …

Glo Dollar, Mento Labs, and Celo are mission-aligned

Mento Labs is on a mission to develop the next generation of assets for real-world adoption.

Early interest shows that Glo Dollar’s philanthropy, which doesn’t rely on donations, is attracting people beyond the crypto community. This is key for getting more widespread use in the real world. We’re working on more features and products that help us gain mainstream adoption, such as Glo Dollar backed credit cards in collaboration with Rain.

Celo’s mission is to build a regenerative digital economy that creates conditions of prosperity for all.

By using Glo Dollars, we’re embedding regeneration into our currency (→ economy). With your support, we’re confident that we can scale to a $24 million market cap in 2024, which in the current interest rate environment could funnel up to $1,000,000 into a regenerative digital economy. In practical terms, that means we could:

  1. Donate $1,000,000 towards Celo Public Goods, or

  2. Lift more than 2000 people out of extreme poverty through GiveDirectly, or

  3. Avert hundreds of thousands of tonnes of Co2e through CATF.

We view this proposal as a solid foundation for building a closer partnership. Once Glo Dollar reaches the scale-up stage, we’d love to expand our offerings with a Euro edition of Glo. Given Mento Labs’ background (spin-off from Celo, EU-domiciled, an exceptional team), they’re considered our ideal partner for this. Short-term, we’d also like to set up a cUSD/USDGLO trading pair to allow for direct issuance and redemption of cUSD via Glo Dollar.

Risks

Glo Dollar is 100% fiat-backed, always redeemable 1:1 for USD and USDC, issued and regulated in the United States, and receives monthly independent attestations.

In April, we received our Bluechip rating, with an initial B grade. This places us in the top 10 fiat-backed stablecoin, and we’re deemed safer than Tether’s USDT, FRAX, FDUSD, among others. Glo Dollar received the following assessments:

  • Stability: Stable
  • Management: Very low risk
  • Decentralization: High risk (not relevant to the grade)
  • Governance: Low risk

Glo Dollar is developed by the Glo Foundation and issued by Brale, which acts as the US-regulated entity that manages the reserves. Brale is led by Ben Milne, who previously founded Dwolla and served on the board of a US bank. Tens of US states continuously monitor and scrutinize Brale as part of their holding Money Transmitter Licenses in each state separately. This is the same regulatory framework under which Circle issues USDC.

Relevant links

9 Likes
2

I am truly excited about this proposal @garm. This is a perfect example of a building block for a digital regenerative economy.

Using the yield from $1M GLO to fund CeloPG is the perfect example of AutoPGF. Looking forward to this initial trial and potentially scaling this later on!

3 Likes
3

Hello @garm :wave: I really love to see you posting in this forum. :raised_hands:

From my Personal POV: I’m :100: in favor of this proposal.

Since the launch of Glo Dollar, Colombia Community have been actively supporting it through ReFi Medellin (@refimedellin) and Green Digital Guardians (@dg_guardians), with nearly 30K held in USDGLO.

The concept of expanding GloTokens is exciting, and the prospect of a $COPGLO would be particularly beneficial for Colombia :colombia:, especially considering community current activities with loans in USDGLO through ReFiMedellin.

While Mento’s launch of $cCOP is eagerly anticipated, the potential for a $COPGLO pairing is intriguing, which could further streamline our operations.

However, regarding the allocation of $1 million to Celo Public Goods, there’s a slight concern about the mechanism.

As you rightly pointed out, the current system allows users to choose where their donations go, which might not always align with Celo Public Goods. It would be helpful to clarify how this substantial sum can be directed specifically to Celo Public Goods, ensuring its intended impact.

Thanks for posting this proposal :heart_hands:

3 Likes
4

Thanks for the kind words @LuukDAO - I’m very happy to read you’re excited about this proposal. Looking forward to growing the Celo regenerative economy!

@0xj4an we’re so happy with the amazing support for Glo Dollar by the Colombia Community - it’s been a huge vote of confidence for us :raised_hands: !

I’d love to explore a $COPGLO powered by Mento when the time is right. Or perhaps $cCOP could even get a community-voted mix of stable reserves that may include Glo Dollar?

With regards to your mechanism concern:

  1. Holders get to choose where their portion of the funds go to. 1 Glo Dollar = 1 vote.
  2. This means that to get up to $1 million in funding towards Celo Public Goods the Celo community would need to hold $1M in Glo Dollar and delegate it to Celo Public Goods. With this proposal, Mento would take a great first step towards this.
  3. Celo Public Goods will be added as a delegation option for all holders of Glo Dollar, regardless of the chain that the Glo Dollar is held. This creates an opportunity to encourage all holders to choose Celo Public Goods instead of the alternatives.

Let me know if you have any other questions :heart_hands:

6 Likes
5

Very excited by this proposal and huge fan of the work Glo Dollar is doing. A ReFi Blue Chip for sure! :rocket:

4 Likes
6

Thanks everyone who joined the recent Celo Governance Call on May 30 to discuss this proposal.

Based on the discussion during the call, I’d like to add two things to the proposal:

  1. We propose to hold the $1M Glo Dollar for a period of one year, after which the reserve governance could re-evaluate their holdings
  2. We want to clarify that the funding of Celo Public Goods will start after one month of holding Glo Dollars

Curious if there’s any further questions by the community - would be delighted to provide further input!

4 Likes
7

Hey everyone! Upon request this got paused for some time, but everything is now ready to move forward and I’d like to request this governance proposal to be put to a vote.

Some recent relevant updates on Glo Dollar:

  1. The recent Giveth Earth round on Celo incorporated some fun $REGEN incentives which resulted in a lot of activity on Celo: 1503 donations were made for a grand total of $15,352.92 donated. Soon about $40k in matching funds in Glo Dollar will be distributed to participants.
  2. Gitcoin’s GG21 is coming up soon and there will be multiple rounds disbursing matching funding in Glo Dollar + you will have the option to donate in Glo Dollar
  3. Glo Dollar started donating to a variety of Web3 Public Goods projects: Our donations. Funding public goods. Not a lot as first as not many $ are delegated to web3 public goods yet, but we anticipate this will pick up soon & we can’t wait to start donating to Celo Public Goods!
3 Likes
8

The progress made by Glo Dollar over the past months is exciting! I think it’s worth having this proposal go up for vote in the near future to see what Celo and Mento stakeholders think of this proposal.

1 Like
9

This proposal is now submitted for voting! Please cast your votes on Celo Mondo | Staking & Governance for Celo :slight_smile:

3 Likes
10

We at ReFi Colombia fully support this proposal and believe it will significantly benefit the Celo ecosystem.

By allocating $1M in Glo Dollars, Mento can create a virtuous cycle of public goods funding while also diversifying its stablecoin reserves.

We will vote in favor of this initiative and look forward to its positive impact on Celo community :heart_hands:

2 Likes
11

Hi everyone!

We wanted to give an update on this proposal since it got accepted in August.

To begin, in August 2024, we added Celo Public Goods as a Glo Dollar funding recipient inside our dApp.

Screenshot 2025-02-13 at 2.50.17 PM
Screenshot 2025-02-13 at 2.50.17 PM586×804 122 KB

In October 2024 Mento swapped $1M USDC into USDGLO, using it as an underlying collateral for cUSD. With this $1M Glo Dollar, we kickstarted our Liquidity Flywheel for Celo Public Goods. As of March, we’ve been able to donate over $16.5k to Celo Public Goods, and projects within the Celo Ecosystem.

This has allowed us not only to redistribute Glo Dollar Foundation’s profit back into the Celo Ecosystem, it’s also supported us in driving liquidity and TVL campaigns for projects and their communities on Celo. Our goal is to both fund AND help scale the Celo ecosystem through our work.

In August, our market cap on Celo was $217K. Along with Mento’s $1M swap, we’ve actively scaled by another $440K. Today, Glo Dollar’s market cap on Celo stands at $1.65M.

With every $1M market cap increase on Celo above our total market cap of $3.5M across all chains, up to $35,000 a year will be added back into the Celo Ecosystem through our Celo Public Goods donations.

Our goal is to scale to over $10M in marketcap on Celo in the next year, generating up to ~$350,000 in donations we can redistribute back into the Celo ecosystem annually at no additional cost to the Celo foundation or ecosystem.

By continuing to work with the Celo Foundation, Celo Public Goods, and Celo Projects, we aim to scale our market cap, boost TVL, create deeper liquidity and drive sustainable funding back into the ecosystem. With Stablia we have also been running liquidity incentives with USDGLO/cUSD, also supporting Mento’s stablecoin.

Some of our next steps to scale Marketcap and TVL on Celo:

  • Continue to expand our Liquidity Flywheel for Celo - we are now donating $3k/month to builders (up from $2k/month)
  • Work with Stablia and others Celo based projects to grow deeper liquidity of USDGLO on Celo among other Mento issued stablecoins and Celo based project tokens
  • Expand Glo Dollars use on DeFi lending platforms
    • We are seeing growing traction with USDGLO on platforms such as PWN on
      Optimism, and are in talks with the PWN team about bringing PWN to Celo
  • Collaborating with Celo Public Goods to drive more impact and value back into the ecosystem through grants
  • Add Glo Dollar as a gas token on celo - we’d love your input on our temp check proposal

Looking forward to your feedback :slight_smile:

3 Likes