Celo

Celo president Rene Reinsberg explains why the protocol is optimizing for mobile

Celo president Rene Reinsberg believes Web3 adoption will require more block space and that Celo will be what the majority will choose on smaller screens.

On Episode 10 of Cointelegraph’s Hashing It Out podcast, Celo president Rene Reinsberg joins Elisha Owusu Akyaw (GhCryptoGuy) to discuss the regenerative finance (ReFi) movement, which focuses on the building blocks of decentralized finance (DeFi) and the principles of regenerative economics. Reinsberg also explains how Celo intends to stay relevant in the multichain world of layer-1 blockchains and layer-2 networks. 

The blockchain world is getting crowded, with multiple layer-1 blockchains launching and layer-2 networks becoming more popular. Reinsberg said the layer-1 Celo blockchain is not worried about the increase in options for users — instead, it sees it as an opportunity to bring more people into crypto. Regardless, to set Celo apart from other networks, the team has added elements that improve its mobile experience. According to Reinsberg, Celo caters to those users who access DeFi on devices or interfaces with limited screen size by incorporating increased functionality and particular features. Reinsberg said he sees this as an important step for adoption, considering the numbers at play.

“The way that most people in the world access the internet is not on a desktop computer but it on a mobile phone.”

Further regarding adoption, Reinsberg pointed out that Celo has decided to focus on developing economies where its impact can be seen and felt. According to the Celo president, creating a “10x better payment experience in a place like San Francisco or London” is difficult, but the changes made in developing countries can be felt. Due to this, the blockchain network has set up shop on the African continent, where Reinsberg claims there are over 50 startups built on Celo that have raised funds to accelerate their projects.

Related: The Agenda podcast chats crypto, media and ethics with Molly Jane Zuckerman

Listen to Hashing It Out Episode 10 on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or TuneIn. You can also check out Cointelegraph’s full catalog of informative podcasts on the Cointelegraph Podcasts page.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here and in this podcast are the participants’ alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Soulbound tokens power new identity solution on Celo blockchain

Masa Finance announced its deployment on the Celo blockchain with its new “Prosperity Passport” identity solution for users.

A central focus for many in the Web3 community has been improving identity solutions available to consumers. Last year, the emergence of soulbound tokens (SBT) introduced a new way for users to define themselves. 

Although the SBT hype quieted over the last months, they have not disappeared off the scene. On March 1, the SBT protocol Masa Finance announced that it will deploy on the carbon-negative Celo blockchain to create a new identity solution. 

More than 10 million wallets active in the Celo ecosystem will be able to generate a Masa “prosperity passport.” This new Web3 identity solution allows users to mint a variety of SBTs related to their digital life, such as an authenticated user verification SBT, a credit score SBT, a community reputation SBT and a “.celo” domain name SBT.

Calanthia Mei, co-founder of Masa Finance, said nonfungible tokens (NFTs) were the first pioneers for Web3 user customization, and SBTs are the next breakthrough technology.

“Web3 has a trust issue, and SBTs represent a composable and scalable way to build a trust layer between projects and users, and users amongst each other.”

The prosperity passport solution also gives access to other utilities from Celo projects, which have integrated the technology, such as micro-loans and universal basic income.

Mei believes that the identity solutions provided by SBTs will help onboard the next 1 billion authentic users into Web3:

“We see SBTs as a way to build bridges for global economies, industries and users to merge with Web3 and truly usher in the new economy.”

According to the announcement, the protocol already has 250,000 Masa Soulbound Identities minted, along with nearly 300,000 Masa .Soul Names minted.

Related: What is decentralized identity in blockchain?

At the end of 2022, MetaMask Institutional, Cobo and Gnosis DAO all teamed up to create an SBT project to bring exclusivity and identity verification to its users. Back in December, the Japanese financial firm Sumitomo Mitsui also revealed it is looking into SBTs for social reasons.

These new digital assets are thought to be a possible solution to future digital identity in the metaverse, along with digital citizenship.

While not directly mentioning digital assets, on Feb. 9, the European Union mentioned using zero-knowledge proofs for future digital IDs.

Celo ecosystem projects raise $77.3M in support of interoperability, ReFi

The Celo blockchain supports mobile-first DeFi payment infrastructure; several projects building on the platform have received venture funding.

Projects building on the Celo blockchain have collectively raised $77.3 million in support of various business initiatives, underscoring the growing adoption of the payments-focused developer network. 

Celo announced on Oct. 27 that projects impactMarket, Loam, Tatum, Circular Impact, Sanergy, Hyperlane, RedStone and Jia secured funding to further the adoption of theirWeb3 business models.

The biggest raise came from Tatum, a blockchain development platform and early Celo Foundation grant recipient, which secured $41.5 million. Hyperlane, an interchain communication protocol focused on interoperability, secured $18.5 million in seed funding led by venture firm Variant.

Projects focused on regenerative finance (ReFi) — including impactMarket, Loam and Sanergy — raised a combined $6 million. ReFi is an emerging paradigm within the crypto community focused on using blockchain and Web3 technology to address environmental and social issues. 

On the decentralized finance (DeFi) side, RedStone secured $7 million and Jia added $4.3 million in preseed funding.

Celo was founded in 2017 by former GoDaddy executives Rene Reinsberg and Marek Olszewski. The Celo platform provides payment infrastructure for digital assets through the use of mobile devices, with phone numbers acting as a proxy for private keys. In 2018, the company raised $6.5 million with backing from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and Citigroup chairman Dick Parsons, among others.

Related: FTX and Visa partner to permit crypto payments in 40 countries

While crypto remains in a bear market, blockchain developers continue to attract venture financing in anticipation of growing ecosystem adoption in the future. Andreessen Horowitz, one of the biggest investors in the space, remains committed to the crypto sector despite incurring billions of dollars in short-term losses due to the bear market. 

Moola Market attacker returns most of $9M looted for $500K bounty

The attacker has scored about a half-million dollar “bug bounty” after choosing to return a majority of the cryptocurrency they exploited from the Celo-based lending protocol.

An attacker has returned just over 93% of the more than $9 million worth of cryptocurrencies they exploited from the Celo blockchain-based decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocol Moola Market.

At around 6:00 pm UTC on Oct. 18, the Moola Market team tweeted it was investigating an incident and had paused all activity, adding it had contacted authorities and offered a bug bounty to the exploiter if funds were returned within 24 hours.

Analysis of the exploit by Web3 security company Hacken shows the attacker manipulated the price of the protocols’ low-liquidity native MOO token by initially purchasing around $45,000 worth and depositing it as collateral to borrow Celo (CELO).

The borrowed CELO, along with further CELO provided by the attacker, was then used as collateral to borrow more MOO, driving up the token’s price. The attacker continued repeating this until the MOO token price had increased by 6,400%.

With the inflated token price, the attacker was able to borrow $6.6 million worth of CELO, $1.2 million of MOO, along with $740,000 of Cello Euros (cEUR) and $644,000 Celo Dollars (cUSD), all worth multiples more than their initial posted collateral resulting in the protocol’s loss of around $9.1 million.

Five hours after the initial confirmation of the exploit, Moola Market tweeted it had received just over 93% of the funds exploited, with the attacker seemingly keeping the rest, making around $500,000 as a bug bounty.

Moola Market did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s request for comment.

The attack draws similarities to the $117 million exploit suffered by Mango Markets on Oct. 11, in which Avraham Eisenberg and his team manipulated the price of the Solana-based DeFi protocols’ native token to borrow cryptocurrencies with an undercollateralized backing. Eisenberg negotiated to keep $47 million as a “bounty.”

Related: BNB Chain responds with next steps for cross-chain security after network exploit

Multichain cryptocurrency wallet BitKeep also suffered an exploit late on Oct. 17 with an attacker making off with $1 million worth of Binance Coin (BNB) through a service used to swap tokens BitKeep says it will fully reimburse any affected users.

The attacks are the latest in a series of exploits to have taken place in October which has also shaped up to be the biggest month ever for hacking activity with the total hacked value reaching around $718 million up until Oct. 12 according to analytics firm Chanalysis.