Libra rival Celo announces $700,000 in grant funding for 13 startups

Open-source payments network Celo has announced its first round of development grant recipients.

A press release shared with Cointelegraph states that Celo has awarded $700,000 in grants to 13 different companies who are looking to build on top of the network, contribute to the development of the Celo platform, or foster the Celo community.

The project has already received more than 50 grants proposals from teams based in 16 different countries and will continue to accept proposals until May 19.

Celo Awards $700,000 to 13 developers in first round of grant funding

Celo states that the chosen grant recipients "provide building blocks to help strengthen the Celo protocol, provide more access to the financially underserved, and develop programs to help educate and nurture the Celo community.” 

The recipients building products and services on Celo include eSolidar — a charity marketplace platform, Philippine-based digital gift card platform Beam & Co, Brazilian crypto-powered platform for small paid tasks LoveCrypto, payments platform Pay with Mon, and bill remittance platform SaldoMX.

The Blockchain for Social Impact Coalition — a nonprofit for incubating Ethereum and blockchain-based solutions to address the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals — is also a recipient of funding from Celo.

The largest cohort of recipients are startups “building blocks to strengthen and scale the Celo platform” — which include Chorus One, Forbole, Gitcoin, Stake.fish, Figment, Gauntlet and Chainsafe.

Grants intended to foster Celo community and ecosystem

Celo announced its community grant program on Dec. 17, 2019, encouraging all “developers, designers, dreamers, and doers committed to building an open financial system” to apply.

The grants sought to foster development in governance and validator tools, on and off-ramps for payments and point-of-sale systems, smart contracts, and community education, in addition to innovative new use cases for the platform.

Libra members join Celo to hedge bets

On March 11, the Celo Foundation revealed the 50 founding members of its “Alliance for Prosperity,” including major tech, investment, payments, and cryptocurrency firms.

Among the alliance are several Libra Association members, including Andreessen Horowitz, Coinbase Ventures, Anchorage Mercy Corps, and Bison Trails.

During April 2019, Celo raised $30 million from noted blockchain investors Polychain Capital and Andreessen Horowitz.