A consortium of Ethereum decentralized finance (DeFi) projects recently launched DeFi for the People, a collaboration of global crypto organizations. The projects’ main aim is to bring DeFi to the 6 billion smartphone users around the world.
Built on Celo, the new initiative has Aave, Curve, Sushi, PoolTogether, 0x, UMA, Valora, Ubeswap, and Moola Market as its founding partners. Education and infrastructure partners include Chainlink, RabbitHole, The Graph and Wrapped.com. This new program will offer more than Ksh. 11 billion ($100 million) in educational initiatives, grants, and incentives. Majority of program participants will jointly contribute half the funds for incentive programs.
Rewards are already available for PoolTogether on Celo, and incentive pools with other DeFi protocols and projects will be launching in the coming weeks and months.
DeFi has experienced explosive growth in recent years, but has yet to gain widespread adoption. Of the roughly 5 million people around the world currently using DeFi applications, less than 10% live outside of developed countries. DeFi for the People aims to change that by bringing builders together to create products that make DeFi more accessible and easier to use for the people who need it most.
For billions of people, a mobile phone is their most important device and often their only access to the internet. Celo’s mobile-first platform with over 1 million wallet addresses across 113 countries, presents a unique opportunity to bring the benefits of DeFi to anyone with a mobile phone. New real-world applications for DeFi with Celo are already underway.
Commenting on the new program, Rene Reinsberg, Co-Founder of Celo said, “DeFi for the People aims to make DeFi accessible to everyone by powering real-world use cases and focusing on mobile-first adoption. We are excited to collaborate with the biggest projects in DeFi to bring more than 1 billion new users into the DeFi ecosystem over the next five years.”
PoolTogether, an open source and decentralized protocol for no-loss prize savings, is now live on Celo with more than Ksh. 55 million ($500,000) in prizes. Users can deposit into PoolTogether on Celo for a chance to win prizes, and even if they don’t win, keep all their deposited money. This is possible because prizes are funded by the interest earned on deposits.
“Research shows prize savings is one of the most important and effective on-ramps into savings for underbanked people. PoolTogether on Celo can facilitate crypto and DeFi adoption for the unbanked and users in developing markets who benefit most from low gas fees and fast transaction times,” said Leighton Cusak, Founder, PoolTogether.
Aave, an open source and non-custodial liquidity protocol, is designed to enable users to earn yield on crypto assets supplied to the protocol, and to borrow assets. Suppliers earn yield by depositing digital assets into liquidity pools.
Sushi facilitates trading, lending, and earning yield. Currently, Sushi users can trade assets with the Swap feature and provide liquidities on Celo with yield farming rewards and incentives coming soon. With Celo, Sushi users can benefit from faster transaction speeds and lower fees through secure and Ethereum-compatible transactions on Celo’s Proof-of-Stake (PoS) network.
As part of its commitment to bringing crypto to mobile phones, DeFi for the People is hosting a hackathon in October with the goal of bringing more DeFi projects to Celo.
Developers around the world are invited to build their projects on Celo, with Ksh. 110 million ($1 million) in prizes and seed funding available for teams to jumpstart their projects.