As the end of the year approaches, various projects are starting to release their annual summary reports.

In fact, you can tell who is telling the story and who is delivering the results by flipping a few pages.

I looked at the annual report of Celo @Celo, and as a representative of the transformation of public chains, its ideas and data are valuable for reference and worth interpreting.

So, what did Celo do in 2025?
The core is just one sentence: make the small matter of "payment" a big deal.

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★｜Migrating from L1 to Ethereum L2: Users are almost unaware.

This migration is a system-level relocation, Celo returns to the Ethereum ecosystem as L2, and switches with 100+ Day-one partners, with the full set of infrastructure, wallets, DeFi, identity, payments, and development tools in tow.

The changes after the migration are also very obvious:
▰ Cost reduced by 99.8%
▰ On-Chain Income Increase 10x
▰ Unchanged positioning: mobile-first, low fees, fast, practical

On-chain migration is most feared for ecological disconnection and user loss, but Celo's migration this time was almost seamless, indicating strong execution.

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★｜The distribution channel is open: Opera MiniPay puts the wallet into the default entry.

In 2025, Celo turned Opera's MiniPay into a distribution system, and it's the kind that can run data.

▰ 11 million+ MiniPay wallet, covering 60+ countries
▰ MiniPay processes over 300 million stablecoin transactions
▰ The Opera ecosystem has over 300 million active users, and BBW officially announces the extension of cooperation.

The key to this collaboration lies in: the stablecoin wallet being integrated into the browser ecosystem and mini apps, allowing non-Web3 users to easily access it.

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★｜Stablecoins are not just a slogan: they have the taste of PMF in real transfers/payments.

The key to stablecoins lies in whether they are truly used. Celo provided several sets of indicators that can benchmark against Web2 payment networks:

▰ Peak of 790,000 DAU (ranked first in L2)
▰ USDT peak of 3.3 million weekly active users (ranked first among all chains)
▰ 5.2 million new users in 2025, 79% are first-time on-chain
▰ Stablecoin trading volume for the year is $65.916 billion, an increase of +142% year-on-year.
▰ Cumulative on-chain transactions 1 billion+
▰ Introduction/Issuance of 25 types of USD-pegged and local currency stablecoins

The signal from this set of data is very clear: it has shown verifiable repeatability in the emerging markets scenario.

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★｜Completing the underlying payment network: DeFi, identity, and privacy are all being laid out.

To expand the payment network, it is not enough to just facilitate transfers; there must also be liquidity and risk control.

In the field of basic DeFi, Aave v3, Velodrome, Uniswap v4, etc. have landed, and incentives are layered to create deeper stablecoin liquidity.

Interestingly, the development path of privacy and identity:
▰ Self: ZK Identity/Human Uniqueness, released at EthDenver and collaborated with Google Cloud for use case, supporting India's Aadhaar.
▰ Nightfall: L3 Testnet, based on EY's open-source ZK technology, focuses on enterprise-level privacy payments.

Celo aims to turn identity verification and enterprise privacy payments into foundational components, rather than just serving retail sentiment.

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Looking at it together, Celo aims to be a stablecoin payment network rather than an all-purpose L2.

Its potential lies not in how grand the narrative is, but in whether three things can keep rolling:

▰ Entry: Can MiniPay's activity and retention continue to climb?
▰ Scenario: Can mini-app economics deepen local use cases instead of just pursuing TVL.
▰ Trust: Can Self + Nightfall scale it to a larger user base and enterprises?

The data and actions in 2025 indicate that Celo's direction is feasible, but whether it can become a long-term barrier will depend on 2026, specifically whether these indicators can continue to rise, especially retention, transaction frequency, and broader application implementation.