Season 2 Stabila Retrospective
Dear Celo Community,
Season 2 marked a transition for Stabila from broad ecosystem bootstrapping toward a more focused strategy centered on strengthening the most important components of Celo’s DeFi ecosystem.
At the beginning of the season, Stabila was tasked with supporting DeFi liquidity, lending markets, and market infrastructure aligned with Celo Governance’s priorities around sustainable TVL growth and deeper onchain activity. Building on lessons from Season 1, the focus shifted toward concentrating resources on high-conviction initiatives that could strengthen the long-term foundations of Celo DeFi.
This retrospective provides an overview of the key outcomes delivered during Season 2.
Expanding Celo’s DeFi Ecosystem
Season 2 saw several important milestones that expanded the depth, accessibility, and diversity of Celo’s DeFi ecosystem.
Morpho Launches on Celo
One of the most significant achievements of Season 2 was the successful launch of Morpho on Celo.
Morpho introduced a new generation of lending infrastructure to the ecosystem through immutable lending markets and curator-managed vaults, providing users with additional opportunities to earn yield and access crypto-backed credit markets.
At launch, Feather began curating USD₮ and CELO vaults backed by collateral including wBTC, WETH, EURm, and stCELO, bringing professionally managed lending strategies to Celo users. The launch further strengthened Celo’s position as a home for accessible, mobile-first DeFi by extending lending opportunities to the network’s growing global user base.
Since launch, Feather has continued to expand the collateral base supported on Morpho, onboarding XAUt0 (omnichain Tether Gold) as a supported asset and curating a XAUt0/USDT market. Celo is host to the large majority of XAUt0 holders, over 100,000 to date, giving Feather a built-in, growing user base to tap into. Most recently, Theoriq integrated its Gold Vault with this market, allowing XAUt0 depositors to borrow stablecoins against their gold and deploy that liquidity into yield strategies, with returns rotated back into gold exposure over time.
Morpho complements the ecosystem’s existing lending infrastructure, providing additional options alongside AAVE and helping diversify available liquidity sources across the network.
UpDown Launches Leveraged FX Markets on Celo
Season 2 also saw the successful launch of UpDown, a decentralized leveraged FX trading platform built exclusively on Celo.
UpDown brings access to one of the world’s largest financial markets—the $9.6 trillion per day foreign exchange market—through decentralized leveraged futures products. Users can gain exposure to currency pairs tied to stable assets such as the British Pound, Japanese Yen, Nigerian Naira, and other currencies represented within Celo’s stablecoin ecosystem.
The launch represents an important expansion of Celo’s financial infrastructure, creating new utility for Celo’s growing ecosystem of stable assets while introducing a differentiated DeFi use case focused on global foreign exchange markets.
XAUt0 Adoption Accelerates
Season 2 also saw significant growth in tokenized gold adoption on Celo.
XAUt0 emerged as one of the ecosystem’s standout success stories, with Celo becoming the leading network for Tether Gold adoption globally. By the end of the season, more than 88,000 holders were using XAUt0 on Celo, representing the vast majority of growth across the broader XAUt0 ecosystem.
Building on this momentum, Feather launched a dedicated Morpho market allowing users to utilize XAUt0 as collateral while accessing liquidity through USD₮ borrowing markets. This created new opportunities for capital efficiency while further integrating tokenized commodities into Celo’s broader DeFi stack.
Strengthening Core Market Infrastructure
Throughout the season, Stabila continued supporting the liquidity and lending infrastructure that underpins Celo’s DeFi ecosystem.
This included support for:
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Core DEX liquidity
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Lending markets including Aave
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Stablecoin market depth
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FX market development
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Emerging DeFi integrations and infrastructure
These efforts helped ensure that new protocols, assets, and financial products launched into an ecosystem with sufficient liquidity and market infrastructure to support long-term growth.
Budget Breakdown
Navigating Market Conditions
Season 2 took place during a challenging period for DeFi markets broadly.
While market conditions placed pressure on TVL across much of the industry, Stabila remained focused on supporting the health and resilience of Celo’s core DeFi infrastructure. Throughout the season, incentive programs were continually evaluated and adjusted based on performance, liquidity retention, and ecosystem priorities.
Looking Ahead to Season 3
Season 2 reinforced the importance of focusing resources on initiatives that create durable ecosystem infrastructure and long-term value.
Looking ahead, Stabila remains focused on expanding lending markets, deepening liquidity, supporting new asset classes, and strengthening the financial infrastructure that enables broader adoption across the Celo ecosystem.
As the ecosystem continues to mature, Stabila will continue refining its approach to incentive design and capital deployment while supporting the next generation of DeFi products and financial infrastructure on Celo.
The Stabila Team