Introduction

StakedCelo is a Celo-native open source liquid staking protocol developed by cLabs to encourage the active participation of users in the protocol. It allows anyone to stake CELO, thus supporting the network and receiving the Epoch Rewards associated with staking, and at the same time to keep these assets liquid so that they can be used to participate in and engage across other applications in the ecosystem.

In a nutshell, the protocol works as follows:

• Users deposit CELO into the protocol, which are then staked to support active participation and consensus of the Celo blockchain

• As a receipt for the deposited CELO, users receive stCELO in return. These stCELO are freely moveable on chain (in contrast to staked CELO which are locked) and can be exchanged anytime for a respective amount of CELO via the protocol

• The CELO received by the protocol are used to vote for validator groups and receive Celo Epoch Rewards*

• The rewards accrue in the protocol and are shared proportionally among all holders of stCELO for their active participation and engagement in the protocol

• The rewards are reflected in an increasing value of stCELO over time, meaning the amount of CELO backing one stCELO is increasing constantly with the Epoch rewards

These core features characterize StakedCelo:

• stCELO is following the ERC-20 standard and is non-rebasing

• A rebasing version is available and called rstCELO (a wrapped version of stCELO) - this will ease the access to StakedCelo for different types of users and, thus, further help to promote the participation in the governance process, including timely and active validation of blocks

• StakedCelo currently charges no fee - meaning 100% of the epoch rewards accrued by the underlying CELO are shared with stCELO holders

• Votes are distributed evenly among 8 validator groups, which were selected at random from a shortlist of validator groups

• StakedCelo is upgradeable through a 3 out of 5 multisig with a 7 day timelock, giving users ample time to withdraw funds before a code change should they wish to do so