<\/p>\n
The move would replace quarterly CELO grants to Opera, which each required Celo governance approval, to a one-time token payment for a three-year partnership. <\/p>\n
Publicly traded web browser Opera (NASDAQ: OPRA) announced that it has committed to being a long-term holder of Ethereum Layer 2 Celo\u2019s native token, CELO, according to press release<\/a> published today, March 19. <\/p>\n Celo Core Co., the primary developer and steward of the L2, submitted a governance proposal<\/a> today outlining the plan to restructure its five-year-old partnership with Opera, namely proposing to shift the browser giant \u201cfrom a distribution partner to a long-term network stakeholder.\u201d<\/p>\n If approved by the Celo community, the new structure has Opera set to receive an allocation of 160 million CELO tokens \u2014 worth about $13 million at current prices \u2014 from the network’s \u201cunreleased treasury,\u201d meaning the tokens would not be purchased from the open market.<\/p>\n CELO rallied over 7% on the day on the news, bucking a broader market slump, though the token remains 99% below its 2021 highs and was trading around $0.08 at time of writing.<\/p>\n Under the proposed deal, Opera would swap its existing quarterly grant arrangement for a one-time token payout that initiates an additional three-year partnership between the two organizations.<\/p>\n In December 2023, the Celo community approved a proposal<\/a> to pay Opera $568,182 per quarter in CELO \u2014 dubbed strategic grants, with each grant put before a governance vote on a quarterly basis \u2014\u00a0through Q1 2026, for a total of nearly $5.7 million, calculated at the time. The approved 2023 proposal emphasizes that Opera intends to hold and stake CELO, and has the ability to participate actively in governance. <\/p>\n These grants were effectively a marketing deal to increase the adoption of Celo DApps, namely MiniPay<\/a>, specifically across Africa, where Opera Mini was the most popular browser at the time, per the proposal. <\/p>\n The 160 million CELO allocation in today\u2019s proposal, also presented as \u201ca grant for distribution services,\u201d represents what both firms note is a shift to a more long-term partnership and commitment to the Celo ecosystem. <\/p>\n The allocation makes up approximately 27% of CELO’s current circulating supply and 16% of its 1 billion maximum supply. The one-time token transfer would come from Celo’s treasury into an Opera-controlled wallet, with Opera’s governance influence capped at 10% of total staked CELO under normal circumstance, per the governance proposal.<\/p>\n The proposal has already drawn scrutiny from some in the Celo community. One member of the governance forum, under the username Ginsburg, left a comment on the proposal earlier today, raising concerns about the deal’s structure and requesting further clarity from the team: <\/p>\n “This proposal effectively allocates ~160M CELO to Opera in lieu of a cash payment, which introduces meaningful dilution (or at least supply overhang) for existing token holders. I understand the strategic intent\u2014aligning Opera as a long-term stakeholder and scaling MiniPay distribution\u2014but the key question seems to be whether the expected user growth justifies the size of this allocation. If this were a market purchase, it would clearly signal demand. In this case, it’s more akin to CELO using its token as equity to acquire distribution.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The vote remains pending before the Celo community governance forum. Opera and Celo also announced plans for a joint roadshow in Southeast Asia and Latin America \u201cto drive grassroots adoption and grow the Mini App ecosystem,\u201d starting next month. <\/p>\n The original partnership between Celo and Opera began in June 2021, when Opera first integrated CELO and Celo’s native stablecoins into the browser\u2019s built-in crypto wallet, bringing cUSD and cEUR to millions of users.<\/p>\n That relationship deepened significantly in September 2023 with the launch of MiniPay, Opera’s self-custodial stablecoin wallet built directly on Celo, which has since grown to 14 million account registrations and processed 420 million transactions across 66 countries, according to the release. <\/p>\n Celo’s stablecoin activity and user base began surging in late 2024<\/a> as MiniPay drove adoption globally. Stablecoins more broadly crossed into mainstream fintech in 2025<\/a>, with total market cap rising 50% even as broader crypto declined. <\/p>\n According to L2Beat<\/a>, Celo has approximately $247 million in total value secured, making it the largest chain in the validiums and optimiums category \u2014 but a fraction of the scale of major rollups like Arbitrum or Base, which each hold over $10 billion. <\/p>\n Where Celo stands out is in user activity: per Token Terminal<\/a>, the network currently leads all Ethereum Layer 2s by daily active users, with roughly 660,000 DAUs \u2014 a figure Celo attributes<\/a> largely to MiniPay’s global reach.<\/p>\n This article was written with the assistance of AI workflows. All our stories are curated, edited and fact-checked by a human.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The move would replace quarterly CELO grants to Opera, which each required Celo governance approval, to a one-time token payment for a three-year partnership. Publicly traded web browser Opera (NASDAQ: OPRA) announced that it has committed to being a long-term holder of Ethereum Layer 2 Celo\u2019s native token, CELO, according to press release published today, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":422449,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[274,273,272,244,266,271,268,270,269,267],"class_list":["post-422442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-de-fi","tag-crypto-finance","tag-decentralized-finance","tag-liquidity","tag-metamask","tag-pancake","tag-slippage","tag-sushiswap","tag-tronlink","tag-trust-wallet","tag-uniswap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422442"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":422450,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422442\/revisions\/422450"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/422449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Quarterly to One-Time Grant<\/h2>\n
Five-Year Partnership<\/h2>\n