Anchorage to Support Celo Launch as a Preferred Custody Provider

Anchorage clients will be able to not only safely custody Celo Gold (cGLD) at launch, but also participate in staking and other advanced network functionalities. Since the very early stages of the Celo network, Anchorage engineering has worked side-by-side with the team at cLabs to ensure institutional purchasers of cGLD will be able to hold, transfer, and lock cGLD at launch. Celo is a complex protocol, reliant on on-chain governance and participatory mechanisms, with huge potential benefit to the world — all features that make it exactly the kind of protocol that Anchorage was created to support.

“With a vision for a safe and accessible digital economy, strengthened by institutional backers, Anchorage has been a natural, mission-aligned collaborator for cLabs since day 1. Best-in-class security and their ability to support all manner of on-chain participation makes Anchorage a preferred custody provider for the Celo community.”

—Marek Olszewski, Celo Co-Founder and Partner, Engineering at cLabs

Celo’s mission is to build a financial system that creates the conditions for prosperity for everyone, no small part of which involves merging cell phone ubiquity with blockchain technology to bring open finance to the 5.6 billion smartphone owners around the world. As a founding member of the Celo Foundation’s Alliance for Prosperity, Anchorage is proud to contribute to a shared vision of making digital assets more accessible and useful in the real world.

The Celo protocol itself is a proof-of-stake smart contract platform, based on Ethereum. Powered by cGLD — the network’s governance asset and its main reserve currency — Celo’s governance structure weighs staking rewards relative to the amount of cGLD locked, as well as the length of time in a given locking period. This structure helps improve overall network stability by incentivizing users to hold cGLD over the long-term.

One of the greatest obstacles to crypto’s popular adoption is purchasing-power volatility. To address this, Celo has a market side and a reserve side. On the reserve side, a variable basket of digital assets minimize volatility risk. On the market side, Celo will allow for multiple stable-valued currencies, each of which tracks a store of value (USD, Euro, unmined minerals, etc.) and maintains its tracking by adjusting supply relative to market demand.

In terms of usability, Celo relies on a kind of identity-based encryption using a hash of end users’ phone numbers. The resulting system makes sending payments about as hard as sending a text message, similar to centralized pay-by-phone-number services like M-pesa and Venmo.

“Easy user experience is a significant part of what it will take for a truly open financial system to prosper,” says Rene Reinsberg, Celo Co-Founder and Partner, Business at cLabs. At Anchorage, making digital assets usable has been part and parcel of our mission since the very beginning. “With their intuitive, mobile-first solution and white glove service, Anchorage has developed a fast and frictionless experience for institutional purchasers. We’re glad institutional purchasers of Celo Gold will be able to custody with Anchorage at launch.”

Whether you’re a cGLD holder or you’re interested in adding cGLD to your asset portfolio, we’re here to help. If you’d like to learn more about Anchorage, please get in touch.