Dear Mento friends,

2023 was an exciting year in the Mento ecosystem! We’d like to take a moment to look back at the milestones and achievements over the past year and share some insights on what to expect in 2024.

Mento Labs

The spin-off of Mento Labs from cLabs (Celo Foundation) was completed. After five years of dedicated development of the Mento Protocol, Mento Labs emerged as an independent entity and marked the occasion with a rebrand in July. Driven by a passion to enable real-world use cases of digital assets, Mento Labs redefined its vision to evolve the Mento Platform with a set of easy-to-use tools, enabling innovators and builders to effortlessly design and launch their own digital assets: from stable-value assets, to low-volatility and regenerative assets. The enthusiasm behind the rebrand is rooted in the belief that trust starts with transparency, and Mento Labs is committed to embodying this principle in every aspect, from technical development, to governance, and risk management.

Team

The decentralized Mento Labs’ team participated in three offsite gatherings in Lisbon and Berlin throughout 2023. These events provided an opportunity for team building, workshops, interactive discussions, and quarterly goal-setting.

Mento Stablecoins

Today there are four fully decentralized Mento stablecoins live on Celo that were launched due to community approvals: cUSD, cEUR, cREAL and eXOF. Stable value digital assets are essential components of the Web3 economy, allowing for fast, secure, and low cost transactions, as well as providing a stable store and transfer of value.

Emerging markets need more diverse stable value assets to support the growing demand for remittances, mobile payments, saving, lending, and borrowing in local currencies. Mento stablecoins are designed to provide a solution: a stable digital asset ecosystem with many currencies to facilitate new decentralized finance (DeFi) use cases and foster financial inclusion.

Mento Platform

Collaboration with Curve Finance and the creation of a 20M Curve pool on Celo connecting cUSD and USDC, enables a seamless transfer of funds between Ethereum and Celo, and serves as a link between the two blockchain ecosystems. It also plays a vital role within the Mento Reserve, where any generated earnings contribute to building up liquidity, further strengthening its position as collateral.

Mento Labs submitted four crucial protocol upgrades as part of the rollout of Mento V2 - Multi-Collateral Mento. These upgrades aim to improve stability, democratize profits, support sustainable growth, and enhance interoperability solutions. Mento V2 represents a leap forward, not just in preserving value but also in promoting decentralization, diversification, sustainability, and transparency.

Users now are able to mint and redeem with various collateral assets making the protocol more tailored to their needs. Experience seamless almost 1:1 minting and redemption of cUSD/USDC and cEUR/EUROC without slippage, ensuring a straightforward and accurate process. The integration of Squid Router adds an extra layer of convenience, making transactions smoother and more user-friendly.

Products

Mento Labs unveiled the roadmap of the Stablecoin Factory to streamline the process of launching new decentralized stablecoins. The Stablecoin Factory will focus on enabling partners to easily deploy use case specific stablecoins at scale. This decentralized approach has the potential to facilitate the creation of a number of community-governed digital currencies, each with unique characteristics.

Partnerships

Strategic partnerships strengthened the Mento ecosystem in 2023. Mento Labs is grateful for our partners and look forward to collaborating on projects for new stablecoins, local digital currencies and use cases. Some highlights from 2023 include:

The launch of the MiniPay wallet: the integration of Mento cUSD stablecoins into the MiniPay wallet on Celo expanded Mento Labs' stable assets to all Opera Mini users in Africa.

By entering into a strategic partnership with RedStone, a pioneering oracle provider, Mento Labs enhanced its position as a leading stablecoin provider. Mento and RedStone plan to expand their implementation to other Layer 1 (L1) and Layer 2 (L2) blockchain technologies, introducing the Mento Platform to additional ecosystems, with the goal of enabling more users to benefit from Mento's stability and transparency, and solidify Mento Lab's position as an innovator building customized solutions and tools to launch and operate digital assets around the world.

Users of Valora, the leading wallet in the Celo ecosystem, can harness the power of Mento stablecoins (cUSD, eEUR, cREAL and eXOF) for remittances, saving, purchasing, and earning rewards that can be cashed out with gift cards. With the Valora wallet, users can easily swap stablecoins for local currencies, and access a comprehensive suite of financial tools from their mobile phone.

The Ammer Group encompasses a universally accessible payment network designed for users who are unfamiliar with blockchain technology, and gives users around the world the freedom to exchange value through a decentralized payment network. The integration of Mento stablecoins into the Ammer Web3 ecosystem facilitates seamless peer-to-peer transactions in stablecoins, enhancing the overall efficiency of the payment network.

With the aim of promoting financial inclusion efficiently and transparently, impactMarket recognizes the potential of Mento's stablecoins. An ideal choice for everyday transactions and cross-border payments, Mento cUSD provides stability, transparency, and low transaction costs for users on the Celo blockchain. The benefits of Mento cUSD align with impactMarket's goals, allowing users to engage in transactions without borders, bypassing traditional banking intermediaries.

Events

The Mento Labs’ team connected with the Mento community throughout the year through virtual and live events around the world including meetups and conferences. From New York, to Paris, Berlin, Istanbul, Kenya, Cape Town and Singapore, the Mento ecosystem is thriving!

Key Metrics

In the global crypto community, our journey over the past year started gaining traction. Mento Labs was involved in 29 major conferences and events including EthCC, unStable Summit, ETHMilan, Token 2049, and Devconnect Istanbul, where our team not only participated, but also had 15 speaking opportunities. We contributed to industry discussions by publishing 24 articles. Built on Celo, the MiniPay wallet in the Opera Mini browser achieved a significant milestone, onboarding +1M users to save and transact with Mento stable cUSD in Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana. This year there are plans to expand the MiniPay ecosystem further throughout Africa and onboard more users to Web3 in additional countries across the continent. With a total transaction count of 668,159, the Mento Platform demonstrated robust activity. The increasing transaction volumes in cUSD (117,453,235.69), cEUR (28,503,508.71), and cREAL (12,669,897.14) underscored the adoption of Mento stablecoins.

For more information on key stats:

• Mento Reserve stats: https://reserve.mento.org/

• Mento stablecoin usage: https://dune.com/mento-labs-eng/mento-stables-usage

• Mento overview: https://dune.com/mento-labs-eng/mento-overview

What’s Coming in 2024?

As we look back on the achievements of 2023, it's clear that Mento Labs is on a mission that goes beyond stability. Mento 2.0 represents a commitment to fostering innovation and ensuring accessibility in the financial space. We're excited about what the future holds and can't wait to share more updates with you in the coming year. Thank you for being part of the Mento community!

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