Celo has announced an Alliance for Prosperity with 50 members as it moves forward with its payment plan in competition with Facebook’s Libra.
Since Facebook Inc (NASDAQ: FB) announced the Libra project, its future has been very shaky. There has been so much backlash from the public and also from the government that many people concluded that it might never see the light of day. However, as Libra is fighting to stay alive, the Celo project is competing quite favorably and has taken a page out of the Facebook playbook with the announcement of an alliance.
Celo Announces Alliance Similar to Libra Association
In an official announcement posted today, the Celo Foundation has revealed the Celo Alliance for Prosperity. The alliance already consists of fifty founding members for an “open, decentralized, and transparent approach” to cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.
“The goal of the Alliance is to bring organizations together to help with the shared vision of making digital assets more accessible and useful in the real world. Today, less than .5% of global citizens benefit from the speed, transparency, utility, and low cost of using blockchain technology. The Alliance members have a plan to change that and are committed to leveraging the power of Celo’s innovative blockchain technology to create solutions that work across devices, carriers, & countries.”
Celo Competing with Libra
The project’s Celo token is a dollar stablecoin much like the original plan of Libra. What’s more interesting is that some of the members of the Libra Association are also a part of the new Alliance for Prosperity. These dual members include Andreessen Horowitz, Bison Trails, Anchorage and also Coinbase Ventures.
The announcement also specifies that the members of the Alliance will be furthering Celo Dollars use cases across several scenarios. These include making payments easier, simplifying microlending and “enabling faster and affordable remittances.”Celo says the Alliance has a combined reach of over 400 million people.
The above use cases, in general, are very similar to what Facebook advertised with the Libra Association. Also, it’s important to think about how members of both associations intend to give their best equally, to competing projects.
Also, while the Libra Association requires a $10 million minimum investment, Celo has no such requirement.
Celo to Change the Payments Clime
Celo’s was founded in 2017 and the project is still going through a testing phase. It plans to release its mainnet for public use in April, as a blockchain platform but with a different twist.
Celo wants to allow users to initiate and receive payments using only phone numbers. This method skips the long and intricate wallet addresses that are too difficult to commit to memory. Already, the Celo Wallet is available on both Android and iOS platforms.
There’s a very good chance that Celo could actually compete favorably as far as crypto and blockchain payments are concerned. Its Alliance members and the ease it promises for payments especially without the technical wallet addresses might attract a large number of customers to the platform.
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