Celo

Celo is a carbon-negative, permissionless blockchain platform with a focus on financial inclusion and accessibility. It was co-founded in 2017 by Rene Reinsberg, Marek Olszewski, and Sep Kamvar. One of Celo's unique features is its mobile-first design, which aims to reach billions of global users. This includes features like Plumo, a zk-SNARK-based light-client syncing mechanism that allows mobile and resource-constrained users to sync to the Celo blockchain quickly while using minimal data. Celo also has the ability to map encrypted phone numbers to wallet addresses, allowing users to send digital assets to their contacts. Celo's ecosystem consists of the CELO governance asset, as well as several Mento stable assets (cUSD, cEUR, cREAL) that can be used to pay for transaction fees. The Celo platform uses a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, which requires a small fraction of the energy used by proof-of-work chains, making it a carbon-negative blockchain.