USA₮ Is Coming to Celo, Plus One Year of CEL2 and Opera's 160M CELO Allocation

Hi 👋

If you blinked, you might’ve missed one of the many milestone announcements from the Celo ecosystem over the past two weeks. Celo Prosper is back to break down some of the highlights, including the news that: 

• Valora is integrating Self Connect, the phone number mapping pioneered by Self for sybil resistance and strengthened proof-of-human verification

• Virtuals is coming to power agentic commerce on Celo, joining as the ecosystem tops agentic leaderboards and draws 100+ submissions during the Ethereum Foundation’s Synthesis hackathon and Build Agents for the Real World v2

• Celo is the #1 chain for XAUt0 (omnichain Tether Gold), with users accounting for nearly 90% of all holders

• Celo Agent Visa is live, a new initiative bringing benefits and resources like DeFi incentives, mentorship, and liquidity to agents scaling on Celo. Sign your agent up and start scaling to a Celo Citizenship.

Opera is officially a key stakeholder of the Celo network following the community’s vote in favor of a 160M CELO allocation! This replaces previous quarterly US Dollar-denominated grants, reinforcing the company’s belief in Celo and its financial stake in the ecosystem’s long-term growth.

What’s next for Opera and Celo Core Co.? Onboarding 50M Opera Browser users eligible for rewards via USD₮ in MiniPay, a roadshow in Vietnam and the Philippines, and new asset integrations (including CELO and USA₮… more on that below)

The vote closed on the one-year anniversary of Celo’s migration to an Ethereum Layer 2, just hours after our livestream celebration. The livestream brought together builders, partners, and ecosystem founders for a look at Celo’s growth since the “hard, hard fork” on March 25, 2026. Read the blog post for an in-depth recap of the monumental year, and watch the livestream recording for thoughts from Sreeram Kannan (EigenLayer), Jill Gunter (Espresso), Leland Lee (Succinct), Bogdan Dumitru (Mento), and Vitalik Buterin himself. 

Last but certainly not least: USA₮ is coming to Celo! Celo will be the second network to host the regulated dollar stablecoin issued by Anchorage Digital, following Ethereum. The launch will be supported by day one partners MiniPay, Google Cloud, and Self. MiniPay will integrate USA₮, boosting distribution to 14M users immediately upon launch. Google Cloud and Self will launch the first-of-its-kind Mainnet Faucet, distributing the stablecoin to users verified by Self’s proof-of-human infrastructure. A proposal for USA₮ and XAUt0 is also live on the Celo Community Forum. Join the conversation today!

From regulated stablecoins to AI agents to 50M new users within reach, the past two weeks reflect what this ecosystem has been building toward, and there's plenty more to come. As Vitalik said last week, the Celo community is in a great position to “build the kinds of things that keep people safe and set people free."