Dear Celo Community,
At the start of Season 2, the Celo Foundation requested funding to support a focused set of ecosystem programs aligned with two key objectives: increasing onchain transactions and growing TVL. At the same time, the community launched the Tokenomics Initiative to evaluate CELO’s long-term economic design while maintaining momentum across ecosystem growth, strategic partnerships, communications, and industry engagement.
While broader market conditions created industry-wide challenges, including pressure on total value locked across many ecosystems, Season 2 was defined by execution against long-term strategic priorities: strengthening distribution, advancing tokenomics, expanding stablecoin infrastructure, and positioning Celo for its next phase of growth.
This retrospective provides an overview of the major outcomes delivered between January and June 2026.
CELOmorphosis: Unifying Core Contributors Under Celo Core Co.
One of the most significant developments of Season 2 was the announcement of CELOmorphosis, the unification of Celo Foundation and cLabs into one operating organization, Celo Core Co.
This transition brings protocol development, ecosystem growth, operations, communications, and strategic execution under a single structure with shared priorities and leadership. By reducing organizational overhead and increasing coordination across teams, Celo Core Co. is positioned to move faster and more efficiently while maintaining Celo’s commitment to decentralization and community governance.
This alignment reflects a broader focus on ensuring that protocol innovation, ecosystem growth, and value accrual evolve together as the network continues to scale.
Advancing the Tokenomics Initiative
Season 2 began with a commitment to make tokenomics a central ecosystem priority, and ended with a governance proposal, accepted with 99%+ community approval, that fundamentally redesigns how network growth translates into CELO value.
Throughout the season, ecosystem stakeholders participated in governance discussions, research initiatives, community calls, and collaborative working sessions focused on evaluating CELO’s economic design and identifying opportunities to strengthen long-term sustainability and value accrual.
This work culminated in the publication of the CELOccelerate proposal and community adoption through Celo Governance process, evolving CELO’s tokenomics and aligning network growth more closely with long-term ecosystem incentives through:
- Sequencer revenue routed to CELO holders: After covering core protocol operating costs, is now used to acquire CELO on the open market and route it to the Community Fund, which is governed directly by CELO holders through onchain governance.
- Minimum base fee increase: Increasing in a measured, programmatic cadence to better capture revenue from a network already generating significant activity, while keeping fees among the lowest in the industry.
- Pausing Carbon Offset Fund contributions: With the fund holding approximately 25x the network’s annual emissions, and Celo’s post-L2 emissions profile significantly reduced, the existing surplus is sufficient to maintain Celo’s carbon-negative status through the pause period.
The Tokenomics Initiative established an important foundation for future governance decisions and reinforced the community’s commitment to thoughtful, long-term stewardship of the CELO asset.
Growing Network Revenue and Economic Sustainability
Season 2 also marked an important step forward in strengthening Celo’s economic foundations. Following the Jovian upgrade and associated protocol improvements, including changes to the network’s fee configuration and revenue model, Celo saw significant growth in network revenue generation throughout the season.
Network revenue surged 66.6% in the week following implementation, reaching single-day highs of over $18,600. This growth reflects the ecosystem’s ongoing efforts to better align protocol activity with long-term economic sustainability.
While adoption metrics such as users and transactions remain important, growing network revenue represents another critical milestone in Celo’s evolution. Sustainable protocol revenue helps strengthen the network’s long-term resilience, supports future ecosystem growth, and advances broader goals around value accrual.
Opera Becomes a Long-Term Network Stakeholder
Season 2 also marked a major evolution in one of Celo’s most important strategic relationships.
Following over four years of successful collaboration through MiniPay, Celo Core Co. proposed a one-time 160M $CELO allocation in place of quarterly grants issued in US Dollar-denominated stablecoins, deepening incentives alignment between Opera and the long-term success of the Celo ecosystem. The clear signal of Opera’s long-term support of Celo reached broad, global audiences and continues to drive forward visibility for Celo with each quarterly report the publicly-traded corporation (NASDAQ: OPRA) issues.
This milestone was also covered by CoinDesk, Cointelegraph, The Block, The Defiant, and more leading industry outlets.
Following the community’s approval of this update, MiniPay launched the Squidrouter-powered “Buy CELO” Mini App. The app made Celo’s native governance asset easily accessible to MiniPay’s at-the-time 15 million activated wallets, and has been promoted with boosted cashback reward initiatives and social campaigns across Celo, Squid, and MiniPay accounts.
Throughout Season 2:
- MiniPay grew to 16 million users across 66 geographies
- Celo has maintained it’s position as the leading network for USD₮ weekly active users, reaching a new all-time high of 5M WAUs
- The Mini App ecosystem continued to expand with new real-world use cases, including the ability to pay bills and buy goods with Fonbnk.
- Launched key Mini Apps like Squidrouter’s Buy Gold, Buy CELO, Buy ETH, and Buy BTC.
- Integrated DeFi yield through the Kiln Mini App, bringing Celo-native Aave and Morpho to Mini App users.
The partnership represents one of the most significant strategic commitments in Celo’s history and reflects a shared conviction in Celo’s long-term vision.
Strengthening Celo’s Position as a Leading Stablecoin Network
Season 2 brought several important milestones that reinforced Celo’s position as a leading global network for stablecoin activity.
In March, USA₮, Anchorage Digital Bank’s US Dollar-backed stablecoin, supported by Tether, announced its expansion to Celo, making Celo the first blockchain beyond Ethereum to host the asset natively. The launch brought together infrastructure from Anchorage Digital Bank, Tether, Google Cloud, Self, and the broader Celo ecosystem.
Highlights included:
- USA₮ selecting Celo for its first deployment beyond Ethereum
- Google Cloud and Self’s upcoming first-of-its-kind mainnet distribution faucet
- MiniPay’s role as a key distribution network for the asset
The announcement was covered by Decrypt, Bankless, Crypto Briefing, Token Post, and more widely read trade publications.
The announcement served as a strong validation of the infrastructure, distribution, and real-world utility that Celo has built over the past several years and further strengthened the ecosystem’s role in the future of digital dollars.
Expanding Global Ecosystem Presence
Season 2 maintained a focused presence at key industry events, helping showcase ecosystem growth, attract builders, strengthen partnerships, and increase awareness of Celo’s progress.
EthCC Cannes
- Hosted the OpenClaw Meetup (489 RSVPs) with co-sponsors Talent Protocol, ScopeLift, and LayerX, further establishing Celo’s role as a home for agentic activity. The brunch invited developers and founders building AI and blockchain solutions to meet the teams and learn more about Celo’s agentic infrastructure.
- Co-hosted the Espresso Cafe, building awareness ahead of Celo’s forthcoming use of Espresso pre-confirmations
- Led the EthCC official ReFi breakout session, bringing together leaders from Giveth, the Ethereum Foundation, and more to ideate on the future of regenerative finance.
- DevRel Lead Lena Hierzi spoke with @Rektonomist_ to introduce Celo’s ecosystem and mission to his global followers: video
- Supported ecosystem projects, including MiniPay and Self, across industry events such as EthGlobal Pragma and FP Block’s Côte d’Azur Carré d’Or, and met with stablecoin-focused teams, agentic builders, and additional aligned Ethereum developers to progress ecosystem expansion
CoinDesk Consensus Miami 2026
- Announced that Bridge, a Stripe company, added support for the Celo network, unlocking stablecoin infrastructure and API, and leading microlender Tala Finance’s forthcoming launch with Textile Credit of onchain credit pools on Celo.
- Included in recaps of Consensus highlights, covered by Fintech Finance News
- Celo Core Co. coordinated a Consensus panel with Marek Olszewski, MiniPay’s Charles Hamel, and Bridge’s Christian Heidelberger to further position Celo as the home of stablecoins. Conversations covered Celo’s unique technical advantages, Opera’s work building MiniPay exclusively on Celo, and Bridge’s integration with Celo, which was announced just that morning.
- Marek Olszewski joined CoinDesk TV live to further platform the Celo ecosystem, recent MiniPay growth and adoption, and more
- Hosted CELObrate Miami: an ecosystem event co-sponsored by Bridge and MiniPay, featuring talks from partners including Google Cloud, Self.xyz, Tala Finance, and Textile Credit.
- Featured as an official Consensus side event, with CoinDesk onsite to cover: video
- 732 RSVPs, with attendance from key ecosystem partners and industry leaders, including Binance, Verda, Succinct, Optimism, Espresso, Fonbnk, Upright Ventures, and more
These events provided important opportunities to engage developers, institutions, ecosystem partners, media, and builders while continuing to position Celo as a leader in real-world blockchain adoption.
Supporting Builder and Ecosystem Growth
Throughout the season, Celo Core Co. continued investing in programs designed to move builders from experimentation to production and into the MiniPay ecosystem.
The Proof of Ship program scaled in ambition, rewarding only the top 50 contributors each month and offering personalized mentorship to the top three teams. This tighter focus raised the bar for quality and drove meaningful results: 648,815 transactions, 129,216 users, and 628 projects in 2026, lifting the program’s lifetime totals past 6 million transactions from 1,215 projects since inception.
To expand global builder support and maintain the onboarding funnel, eight regional ambassadors were onboarded. These former ecosystem DAO team members represent Argentina, Brazil, Ghana, Indonesia, Nigeria, the Philippines, West Africa, and a dedicated Proof of Ship lead. These ambassadors funnel early-stage local teams into Proof of Ship and introduce established teams to the MiniPay funnel, and in the final month of the season, ambassador regions accounted for roughly a third of all Proof of Ship submissions worldwide. Brazil alone mentored 52 projects into the program across the season, Indonesia doubled its targets two months running, and Colombia shipped its largest cohort to date, placing two projects in the global top 10. So far, more than 25 introductions to existing Web3 teams with traction have led to four launching on MiniPay and fourteen more being added to the Mini App ecosystem pipeline––among them an Anthropic partner in Africa building LLM infrastructure for onchain agents, and a $2.5M African early-stage fund aligning its startup portfolio with MiniPay.
The ambassador network increasingly operates as one system rather than eight silos: sourcing playbooks developed in one region are adopted in others, senior ambassadors mentor newer ones across continents, and ambassadors co-lead the weekly office hours, contributing more than ten merged open-source pull requests to Celopedia and testing new toolings like x402. The same network delivers grassroots reach no central team could replicate: a single $350 event sponsorship in Lagos put Celo in front of 300+ senior AI developers, generated roughly 215,000 impressions, and was covered on national television, while the Mulheres que Codam program in Brazil brought 50+ women into the ecosystem and produced 11 Mini Apps from its first cohort.
On grants, the team supported Prezenti grantees in using Proof of Ship as a path to production readiness. Season 2 concluded with nine completed Prezenti grants and eight grantees in the active pipeline. Ten new grants were also proposed for emerging builders.
Office hours were restructured to be feedback-first, deepening technical engagement across the community and participation going up to 30+ builders in the office hours each week.
Closest to distribution, the team co-operates the Mini App listing pipeline with MiniPay, the last mile from builder program to real users. In Season 2 the pipeline tracked 46 projects and took 14 Mini Apps live inside MiniPay, 11 of them backed by ecosystem grants, delivering on the season’s push that grant-funded teams ship to MiniPay; four more are ready to launch and 28 are in active review, testing, or build stages.
To make that impact measurable, the team released the open-source attribution-tags SDK, bringing ERC-8021 attribution to Celo. In its first 30 days, it attributed more than 11,300 transactions across 12 attribution tags, and it will instrument the upcoming hackathon.
The team also launched the Founder Stage content series, featuring interviews with founders from Partna, Daimo, Fonbnk, BuyGold, HumanLabs, BitGifty, Squadletics, and MiniPlay, helping surface real-world builder stories from within the ecosystem.
Developer growth in H1 2026: 428 monthly active developers, with established developers up 38% (Electric Capital).
On programming, we worked closely with CeloPG, who sponsored the bounties for Proof of Ship Season 2 as well as the first edition of the real-world agent hackathon.
These efforts helped maintain momentum across the builder funnel while supporting the applications and services that drive real-world usage across the network.
Emerging as a Leading Network for AI Agents
Season 2 also saw growing momentum around AI-powered applications and autonomous agents on Celo.
Throughout the season, Celo consistently ranked among the top ecosystems on agent activity leaderboards, reflecting growing experimentation from builders developing autonomous applications, AI agents, and machine-to-machine financial systems.
By season close, 9,658 agents had been registered on Celo through the ERC-8004 trustless-agent standard by 7,771 unique owners, generating more than 95,000 transactions and 26,000 onchain reputation attestations.
To support this emerging category, the ecosystem invested in builder education, hackathons, and community initiatives focused on AI and agentic applications, a funnel that is now measurably driving the category: agents built through Celo hackathons account for at least 60% of all agent transactions on the network. Highlights included:
- Sponsorship of the Synthesis Hackathon, which drew 91 submissions (submissions provided by Devfolio)
- Build Agents for the Real World V1 and V2, producing 40+ and 69 agents respectively, onchain, the Real World series and the Proof of Ship AI Track put 66 verified agents from 64 builder teams and more than 50,000 transactions on the network
- The Onchain Agents Hackathon: 73 submissions, 25,000 transactions generated
- An ambassador-led Onchain Agents Hackathon in Colombia: 192 registered builders, 19 shipped Mini Apps, 11 COPm stablecoin integrations, and a post-event NPS of 95
- Launch of Celopedia, an open-source AI skill used as the reference tool across every Season 2 hackathon, letting builders ship Celo Mini Apps and agents with Claude, Cursor, or v0
- Support for AI-native teams building on Celo, collaborating closely with the Prezenti team to launch the Frontier pool
- Growing ecosystem participation in autonomous agent frameworks, including a community-built remote, write-enabled Celo MCP server that lets any LLM safely transact on Celo
Celo Agent Visa
To support the growth of Celo’s agentic ecosystem, drive that growth toward mission-aligned projects with real-world utility, and boost activity onchain, Celo Core Co. launched the Celo Agent Visa program. The unique tiered system offers mentorship, support, access, and incentives based on the number of transactions, volume, and if the agent has verified their owners’ unique humanity via Self.xyz’s Agent ID.
An Onchain Marketplace for AI Agents
Celo backed the launch of Aigora, an onchain marketplace where AI agents are discovered, hired, and paid in stablecoins with a chat-based app, Algoria.
- Discover in plain language. Describe a task; a router ranks agents by onchain reputation (quality, timeliness, accuracy).
- Hire in one chat. The agent quotes a price → USDC locks in escrow → it delivers → payment releases. Reputation updates onchain.
- Live on Celo Mainnet. Contracts for identity, reputation, escrow, disputes, and gas sponsorship on the ERC-8004 agent standard, with gas payable in USDC.
Stablecoin Payments Built for Machines
Agents need to pay for things as easily as they call an API. Celo is leaning into x402, an open standard for inline stablecoin payments over HTTP.
- A free x402 gateway. x402.celo.org - hosted and free for any builder on Celo. Add stablecoin micropayments in minutes, no payment infra to run.
- cpay. An experimental layer that lets AI agents pay for APIs in stablecoins and prove identity (age, OFAC) via Self in the same request. No personal data exposed. Live on testnet; works with AI assistants over MCP.
Celo: the Settlement Layer for the Agent Economy
Sub-cent fees, native stablecoins including USDT & USDC, onchain identity and reputation, Self verification, and a mobile-first path via MiniPay. This is the full stack an agent economy needs, on one chain.
These efforts helped position Celo at the forefront of one of the most exciting emerging categories in Web3, creating early momentum around the use of stablecoins, programmable payments, and onchain identity as infrastructure for autonomous systems.
As AI agents increasingly become economic actors onchain, Celo is well-positioned to serve as a settlement and coordination layer for the next generation of machine-driven financial activity.
Looking Ahead to Season 3
Season 2 demonstrated the importance of pairing disciplined execution with long-term strategic thinking.
The work completed during the season strengthened Celo’s foundations across tokenomics, stablecoin infrastructure, ecosystem growth, strategic partnerships, and organizational alignment.
As we look ahead, the ecosystem remains focused on expanding real-world adoption, strengthening the utility and sustainability of the CELO asset, growing the MiniPay and Mini App ecosystems, and advancing the vision of building a trillion-dollar onchain economy accessible to anyone with a mobile phone.
Thank you to the community for the collaboration, feedback, and stewardship that continue to make this work possible.
Celo Core Co.