Celo Euro (cEUR) is a stable-value asset of the Celo ecosystem specifically designed to track the value of the Euro (EUR). Celo refers to a mobile-first blockchain, aiming toward offering DeFi (decentralized finance) tool and service accessibility to anyone using a mobile phone. According to the platform docs, cEUR was developed to create a new payment market for the European Union—a payment market where users can quickly transfer their digital assets between countries in seconds using just a phone number. Celo functions as an EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) compatible technology created to transform cryptocurrency into usable currency with a multi-asset system. This multi-asset system includes a governance and staking token called CELO, and a basket of stablecoins, cUSD, cEUR, and cREAL.

As stated in the Celo whitepaper, the two main reasons interrupting large-scale adoption of cryptocurrencies as a payment method involve ease-of-use and purchasing-power volatility. The Celo protocol plans to resolve these issues by building an ecosystem of address-based encryption schemes and stable-value assets. The address-based encryption allows participants to validate a series of phone number-to-public key mappings to use their family or friend phone numbers as public keys. The stable-value assets are stabilized with the help of an elastic supply-based monetary policy while getting backed by a variable-value reserve. (Elastic supply refers to an asset whose circulating supply varies according to its price.)

The Celo Reserve is the variable-value reserve of the platform and helps to ensure the stability of the platform’s stabilized assets. The Celo platform utilizes several different cryptocurrencies, such as CELO, ETH, BTC, and DAI, to support its elastic supply policy. The platform also works to make sure that all the transactions happen on-chain with high levels of decentralization.

According to the website, the Celo team is a group of people gathered together from around the world to contribute to the Celo ecosystem. This group consists of public and private sector experts, technology, and nonprofit organizations. The platform mainnet was launched in 2020.