This proposal requests a governance grant adjustment to enable the completion of the value agreed in the precedent MiniPay Grant Proposal. The proposed amount will complete the Q4-2025 grant, which is currently only partially claimable under the precedent authorization. A separate proposal will be submitted in April 2026 for the final grant for Q1-2026, completing the grant agenda originally approved by the community.
This grant will support continued efforts to scale MiniPay as a global distribution layer for stablecoin-powered applications on Celo, and to accelerate real-world usage via Mini Apps across Africa, LATAM, Southeast Asia, and other high-growth corridors.
Since the original Strategic Grant (approved Q4 2023) and the subsequent authorization of the second half (approved in 2025), MiniPay has expanded substantially in reach and impact—becoming one of the largest and most consistent sources of daily chain activity on Celo, with 12M+ wallet activations, 380M+ transactions processed, and live usage across 66+ countries. Mini Apps inside MiniPay have matured into a high-volume economy that turns stablecoins into everyday money across Africa and LATAM.
This proposal is forward-looking. It focuses on sustaining and extending ecosystem outcomes already being delivered at scale: user adoption, transaction throughput, Mini App distribution, and new stablecoin use cases.
Over the funding period, MiniPay will focus on outcomes aligned with Celo’s growth intents:
When the original Strategic Grant was approved in 2023, MiniPay was scoped primarily around:
Those objectives were met — and materially exceeded.
Since then, MiniPay has:
What began as a distribution experiment has become infrastructure: a stablecoin rail that users, builders, NGOs, freelancers, and local businesses rely on daily. In practice, this infrastructure now accounts for a material share of stablecoin transaction flow, daily active usage, and application-level engagement on Celo.
MiniPay started as a browser-native wallet aimed at onboarding users in Africa. It has since become a cross-platform standalone app(on Android and iOS) and of the most widely used ways to interact with stablecoins onchain—particularly for users who were not previously crypto-native.
This growth has been driven by solving practical, real-world problems:
As MiniPay’s footprint expanded, the ecosystem impact expanded with it. A wallet became a distribution layer, and a distribution layer became a compounding growth engine for Celo-native applications.
This proposal exists because MiniPay is now operating at a scale and geographic scope beyond the original 2023 grant assumptions. Demand for stablecoin rails is accelerating across LATAM, Southeast Asia, and the Global North, and Mini Apps are demonstrating that stablecoins can function as day-to-day money at meaningful scale.
This proposal supports a continued and expanded scope of ecosystem-facing work delivered through MiniPay. The focus is on sustaining and scaling real-world stablecoin usage, Mini App adoption, and builder distribution through one of the most active user-facing surfaces on the Celo network, where demand has already been demonstrated.
While Africa remains a core focus, MiniPay’s usage has expanded organically into new regions where stablecoins solve immediate, practical problems. These regions were not part of the original grant scope, but adoption emerged naturally as users sought reliable ways to get paid, send money, spend locally, and save value.
MiniPay now supports meaningful usage across:
To support this growth, MiniPay provides:
Each new region compounds Celo’s global transaction footprint by introducing incremental, non-overlapping user demand and new stablecoin flows onto the network.
Mini Apps have evolved from a curated experience into a high-volume application layer embedded directly within MiniPay. Today, the Mini App ecosystem generates 20M+ monthly app opens, 200M+ monthly impressions, and millions of user interactions spanning utilities, remittances, gaming, savings, and donations.
Collectively, Mini Apps represent one of the densest concentrations of end-user interaction on Celo, centered on everyday financial activity rather than isolated DeFi usage.
MiniPay users have now spent millions of dollars via Mini Apps on everyday needs such as airtime, data, electricity, vouchers, and local services across Africa and LATAM.
This activity represents stablecoins functioning as everyday money, not speculative assets.
Each transaction:
Spend Mini Apps demonstrate that Celo can support high-frequency, low-value payments at scale, a core requirement for real-world adoption.
In Q4 2025, MiniPay launched the Buy Gold Mini App in partnership with Squid Router, enabling users to purchase fractional, tokenized gold (XAUt0) from as little as $1, directly inside MiniPay.
Since launch:
This use case matters because it:
The Buy Gold Mini App is a clear example of MiniPay enabling new onchain categories seamlessly, not just increasing transaction counts.
MiniPay has also become a significant entry point for net-new value flowing onto Celo through native cross-chain deposit functionality.
Through integrated cross-chain deposits, MiniPay enables users to bring assets from 10+ external blockchains and thousands of tokens directly into stablecoins on Celo, without requiring users to understand bridges, routing, or gas mechanics.
This functionality has already facilitated over $4 million in deposits (Q4 2025 alone) in external blockchains and wallets into stablecoins on Celo, largely driven by non-crypto-native users seeking simple, reliable access to stablecoins.
This matters because:
In practice, cross-chain deposits position MiniPay as a liquidity gateway for Celo, converting external assets into onchain stablecoin activity and downstream application usage.
MiniPay has become a distribution layer for builders on Celo, allowing teams to focus on building while accessing real users at scale. Integrated Mini Apps receive ongoing support through:
Examples of builder outcomes include:
MiniPay has also attracted builders from other ecosystems (including Base, World, and others) to launch and scale applications on Celo, further expanding the network’s reach.
Many successful Mini Apps:
This is ecosystem leverage: one integration unlocking sustained user adoption, transaction growth, and long-term builder retention.
MiniPay’s impact on the Celo ecosystem is observable through publicly visible onchain activity, in-app usage patterns, and builder adoption. Rather than prescribing a fixed set of performance targets, MiniPay focuses on tracking and optimizing for signals that reflect real-world usage, sustained engagement, and ecosystem health.
These signals include, but are not limited to:
MiniPay’s growth and reach are reflected through aggregate adoption trends, transaction activity, and geographic expansion. Wallet activations and transaction volumes provide directional insight into how stablecoins are being used in everyday contexts across regions.
The Mini App ecosystem provides a clear lens into how users interact with Celo-native applications. Engagement signals such as app opens, impressions, and transaction volume illustrate how MiniPay functions as a distribution layer for ecosystem apps and how stablecoins are being used beyond simple transfers.
Spend-oriented Mini Apps, in particular, surface direct evidence of stablecoins operating as day-to-day money through onchain purchases of utilities, services, and digital goods.
New product categories—such as real-world assets and cross-chain flows—are evaluated based on early adoption patterns, repeat behavior, and qualitative user feedback. For example, engagement with the Buy Gold Mini App highlights demand for intuitive savings instruments and real-world asset exposure within MiniPay.
Builder success is assessed through a combination of qualitative and quantitative indicators, including sustained Mini App usage, visible growth trajectories, and public case studies shared by teams themselves. Many builders operating within MiniPay measure success not just by initial launches, but by ongoing user engagement and long-term viability.
MiniPay has already delivered substantial outcomes since the original grant:
As MiniPay transitions from rapid expansion into sustained, global infrastructure, the focus shifts from proving viability to deepening impact, increasing resilience, and compounding onchain activity across the ecosystem. The following outlines MiniPay’s directional focus across near-, mid-, and long-term horizons.
Opera continues to invest significantly beyond ecosystem funding, including a considerable financial investment in dedicated product, design, marketing, and business development resources, as well as owned marketing inventory across Opera Mini, Opera Mobile, and Opera News.
In parallel, Opera has made broader, long-term ecosystem investments aligned with MiniPay’s mission, including several million dollars in backing through initiatives such as Verda Ventures, a fund focused on supporting builders, applications, and infrastructure that drive real-world stablecoin usage on Celo.
As MiniPay expands into new regions, Opera has also grown local and regional teams to support market-specific partnerships, builder engagement, regulatory navigation, and on-the-ground execution. This localized investment is critical to ensuring MiniPay’s expansion translates into sustained usage and real economic activity on Celo.
Community funding is used to amplify ecosystem outcomes. The result is a co-investment model where each ecosystem dollar unlocks materially more distribution, reach, and on-chain usage than standalone grants could achieve.
MiniPay sits at an inflection point:
The original grant helped unlock adoption, usage, builders, and real economic activity on Celo — and has since grown into one of the ecosystem’s most reliable engines of daily user activity and transaction throughput.
MiniPay has become one of the clearest pathways through which people experience and participate in Celo in their daily lives. Continued partnership ensures that pathway remains open, growing, and grounded in real-world utility.
950’211.75 $CELO
Opera will continue publishing quarterly updates with:
The original grant helped unlock adoption, usage, builders, and real economic activity on Celo—at a scale few ecosystem initiatives achieve. This request seeks to sustain and extend that momentum, aligned with the ecosystem’s long-term goals.
MiniPay has become one of the clearest pathways through which people experience and participate with Celo in their daily lives. Continued partnership ensures that pathway remains open, growing, and grounded in real-world utility.