New and Leading Ethereum DeFi Projects Join Celo on DeFi for the People Collaboration

A consortium of leading Ethereum decentralized finance (DeFi) projects announced DeFi for the People, a collaboration of global crypto organizations united by a common goal: bringing DeFi to the 6 billion smartphone users around the world.

Built on Celo, the new initiative counts Aave, Curve, Sushi, PoolTogether, 0x, UMA, Valora, Ubeswap, and Moola Market among its founding partners. Education and infrastructure partners include Chainlink, RabbitHole, The Graph and Wrapped.com. This new program will offer more than $100 million in educational initiatives, grants, and incentives. The majority of program participants will jointly contribute half the funds for incentive programs.

Full product integrations with PoolTogether, Sushi, Moola Market, Ubeswap, and Valora are available now, with more launching soon. Starting today, rewards are available for PoolTogether on Celo, and incentive pools with other DeFi protocols and projects will be launching in the coming weeks and months. Also expected this fall is the launch of Optics, a gas-efficient interoperability protocol for cross-chain communication. With Optics, users will be able to easily move assets between Ethereum and Celo.

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.

“DeFi for the People aims to make DeFi accessible to everyone by powering real-world use cases and focusing on mobile-first adoption,” said Rene Reinsberg, Co-Founder of Celo. “We’re 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 $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. PoolTogether is a unique “no lose lottery” because everyone who participates keeps their money.

“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.