SushiSwap commits $12.6m to Celo’s global DeFi initiative

Leading DEX SushiSwap has partnered with Celo in an initiative to make DeFi more accessible to the estimated six billion mobile phone users around the world.

The DeFi for the People initiative – which comprises a leading selection of top crypto protocols – is offering more than $100m in funding for educational initiatives, grants, and incentives in a bid to assist Web3 projects in making DeFi accessible globally on mobile devices.

To support the initiative, the Celo Foundation and SushiSwap have committed $12.6m in joint liquidity mining rewards in both $CELO and $SUSHI, with selected pairs going live today at 4 pm ET.

The combination of Celo’s “mobile-first and user-friendly focus” alongside SushiSwap’s “DeFi expertise” is a driving factor behind the collaboration – which strives to “serve real people with real needs” according to Celo’s most recent blog post outlining the partnership.

Initially built on the Celo blockchain, the ‘DeFi for the People‘ initiative counts notable platforms including Aave, Curve and Sushi as supporters. Alongside Sushi’s contribution, Aave has committed $20m and Curve $14m towards the success of the project.

The Initiative also has support from education and infrastructure partners including Chainlink and The Graph.

Joseph Delong, CTO at Sushi, spoke of how Sushi’s vast array of products can help drive DeFi and the initiative forward.

“The Sushi AMM, Kashi lending, and other BentoBox products provide the necessary primitives needed for users to connect to a global and permissionless financial system,” he said.

“By leveraging Celo’s mobile-first product suite and UX that expands reach beyond crypto-natives, Sushi can drive this mission forward and take DeFi to the next frontier.”

Celo also announced the launch of its bridge – Optics – which allowing Sushi users to bridge assets from Polygon to Celo without having to go through Ethereum. SushiSwap will be one of the flagship protocols to use Optics for bridging.