Celer Network is an interoperability protocol enabling a one-click user experience accessing tokens, DeFi, GameFi, NFTs, governance, privacy solutions and more across multiple chains.
CELR is the native token of the project. The current use cases include:
Staking: Users can delegate CELR to stake with validators to participate in the network consensus, and in return are rewarded with CELR.
Network Fees: Celer stakers on the SGN can share the value captured by the State Guardian Network when the network syncs, stores, and signs messages.
The project consists of the following major components:
State Guardian Network (SGN): A Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain built on Tendermint with CELR as the staking asset. It serves as the message router between different blockchains and offers L1-blockchain level security.
Celer cBridge: A decentralized and non-custodial asset bridge that supports 130+ different tokens across 30+ different blockchains and layer-2 rollups. The cBridge SDK allows new and existing applications to integrate features that are available on cBridge.
Celer Inter-chain Messaging (IM) Framework: A framework that supports generic message passing and cross-chain function calls. Developers can build inter-chain-native dApps using the Celer Inter-chain Messaging SDK to gain access to efficient liquidity utilization, coherent application logics, and shared states.
Layer2.Finance: A novel solution that allows people to access all existing DeFi protocols at a fraction of the cost by acting like a “DeFi Public Transportation System”.
As of August 4th 2022, the total and maximum token supply of CELR is 10,000,000,000, and the circulating supply is 7,090,000,000 (~70.90% of the total token supply).
1. What is Celer Network (CELR)?
Founded by four PhDs from MIT, Princeton, UC Berkeley and UIUC, Celer Network is an interoperability protocol enabling a one-click user experience accessing tokens, DeFi, GameFi, NFTs, governance, privacy solutions and more across multiple chains.
Celer enables anyone to easily build inter-chain-native dApps using the Celer Inter-chain Messaging SDK to leverage efficient liquidity utilization, coherent application logics, and shared states, while users of Celer-enabled dApps can access a diverse multi-blockchain ecosystem with the simplicity of a single-transaction UX.
Ticker | CELR |
|---|---|
Issuing Price | $0.0067 USD |
Initial Circ. Supply | 1,965,033,333 (around 20% of Total Supply) |
Total Supply | 10,000,000,000 CELR |
Project Website |
2. Celer's key products
2.1 Celer State Guardian Network
The Celer State Guardian Network (SGN) is a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain built on Tendermint that serves as the message router between different blockchains.
Validator nodes stake CELR tokens to join the consensus process of SGN. The CELR staking process is a crucial part of the economic security of the Celer Inter-chain Messaging Framework and Celer-enabled dApps like Celer cBridge.
To use SGN’s message routing service and to store the multi-signature attestation, users must pay a fee to SGN for these services. These usage fees are distributed to the CELR stakers and validators for their work in securing the network on top of regular PoS block rewards.
2.2 Celer cBridge
The Celer cBridge is a decentralized and non-custodial asset bridge that allows users to transfer a variety of tokens across different blockchains in a fast, secure and low-cost fashion. It currently supports 130+ tokens across 30+ blockchains and layer-2 rollups. Built on top of Celer Inter-chain Messaging Framework, cBridge has processed over $10B cross-chain asset transfer volume on 30+ blockchains for more than 199K unique users, and is growing and expanding into more blockchains and layer-2s.
In July 2021, cBridge v1.0 was launched to support token transfers between Ethereum, Arbitrum, Polygon and BNB Chain. Transfers were enabled by liquidity provided by node runners.
In November 2021, cBridge v2.0 was launched on mainnet with support extending to over 80 tokens and over 20 blockchains and rollups. Transfers are enabled in two models: xAsset - the canonical mapping bridge, and xLiquidity - the pool-based bridge. With the two models, cBridge fulfilled the goal of supporting different token deployment scenarios. The v2.0 upgrade brings significant improvements and additions for users, LPs, node operators, and developers in terms of deeper liquidity, higher efficiency, and more ease-of-use.
By August 2022, Celer cBridge had surpassed $10B in total transaction volume, serving over 199K unique user addresses.
2.3 Celer Inter-chain Message Framework
Launched in January 2022, the Celer Inter-chain Messaging Framework (Celer IM) supports generic message passing and smart contract calls across different blockchains. With Celer IM, developers can build inter-chain-native dApps with efficient liquidity utilization, coherent application logics, and shared states. Users of Celer IM-enabled dApps will enjoy the benefits of a diverse multi-blockchain ecosystem with the simplicity of a single-transaction UX.
By making cross-chain composability possible, the Celer IM framework opens up an entire galaxy of opportunities for inter-chain-native applications like cross-chain DEXes, yield aggregators, NFT marketplaces, metaverse games, NFT bridges, etc.
Celer IM uses smart contracts that are deployed on each chain paired with the State Guardian Network in order to enable seamless multi-blockchain interoperability.
To send a message or invoke a smart contract function cross-chain, a user or a dApp will first send their intention as a message with a structured header and arbitrary binary payload to a Message Bus smart contract on the source chain.
Then the validator, the State Guardian Network, will first reach a consensus on the existence of such a message and concurrently generate a stake-weighed multi-signature attestation.
This attestation then is relayed to the destination via an Executor subscribing to the message.
On the destination chain, the same Message Bus contract exists to check the validity of the message and triggers the corresponding logic associated with the message either immediately or after a timeout.
2.4 Layer2.finance
Layer2.finance was launched in April 2021, and was built to tackle the two largest challenges preventing DeFi from reaching mass adoption: (i) The extraordinarily high transaction fees, (ii) Being very difficult to navigate and use.
Layer2.finance is a novel solution that allows people to access all existing DeFi protocols at a fraction of the cost by acting like a “DeFi Public Transportation System”.
3. Economics and supply
Token Name | CELR |
|---|---|
Token Type | ERC-20 (as of TGE) |
Seed Sale Allocation | 11.5% of Total Supply |
Seed Sale Date | April 2018 |
Seed Sale Price | $0.0065 USD / CELR |
Seed Sale Amount Raised | $7.46 MM |
Private Sale Allocation | 15.5% of Total Supply |
Private Sale Completion Date | August 2018 |
Private Token Sale Price | $0.0150 USD / CELR |
Amount Raised | $23.25 MM |
Launchpad Sale Allocation | 6% of Total Supply |
Launchpad Sale Price | $0.0067 USD / CELR |
Launchpad Sale Date | 19 March 2019 |
Amount Raised Public Sale | $4.0 MM |
Current Circulating Supply | 7.08 Billion (~71%) |
3.1 Token supply distribution
The token supply distribution is as follows:
Seed sale tokens comprise 11.5% of the total supply. It was completed in April 2018 for ETH at a rate of 76,000 CELR = 1 ETH and raised a total of 15130 ETH (~$7,475,000) at ~$0.0065 per token, selling 11.5% of the total token supply.
Private sale tokens comprise 15.5% of the total supply. It was completed in August 2018 for ETH at a rate of 31400 CELR = 1 ETH and raised a total of 49363 ETH (~$23,250,000) at ~$0.0150 per token, selling 15.5% of the total token supply.
Launchpad sale tokens comprise 6.0% of the total supply. It was successfully conducted on March 19th 2019, CELR for a total raise of ~$4,000,000 USD worth of BNB at ~$0.0067 per token for 6.0% of total token supply. The BNB to CELR rate will be determined on the day of the sale.
Team tokens comprise 18.3% of the total supply.
Advisors tokens comprise 1.7% of the total supply.
Foundation tokens comprise 17% of the total supply.
Marketing & Ecosystem tokens comprise 5.0% of the total supply.
Mining Rewards tokens comprise 25% of the total supply.
CELR token distribution (%)
3.2 Treasury and strategy
Celer has prioritized progress on their development and has thus spent a majority of funds for hiring top technical talent.
Tokens are stored in cold wallets with multi-signature support enabled.
The following chart represents the number and breakdown of all CELR tokens that are intended to be released into circulation on a monthly basis.
CELR token release schedule
4. Commercial partnerships
4.1 Communicated vs. completed milestones
Celer has established partnerships with 169 protocols (July 2022), building the interoperability infrastructure for a wide spectrum of blockchains, layer 2 rollups, DeFi projects, GameFi projects, NFT marketplaces, etc.
A full list of Celer partners as of July 2022.
5. Project team
Celer Network was founded by four PhDs from MIT, Princeton, UC Berkeley, and UIUC. Over the years, Celer has built a deeply technical engineering team with years of industry experience from top startups and technology giants like Google, Amazon, Cisco, HP and more.
6. Advisors
Dr. Christos Kozyrakis (Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Stanford University, a fellow of the ACM and the IEEE. He is broadly interested in secure and energy-efficient distributed systems).
Dr. Alan Mishchenko (Research Scientist at UC Berkeley since 2002. He specializes in building fast and scalable tools for design automation and developing computationally efficient methods for logic synthesis and formal verification).
7. Appendix
Celer has a robust community development and growth strategy targeted at both end-users and developers, and is designed to successfully build an interoperable blockchain ecosystem based on the Celer Inter-chain Messaging Framework.
As of August 1st, 2022, Celer has an active community of 230k members on Telegram, Twitter and Discord. Community announcements, educational initiatives, and live events are organized on a weekly basis to cultivate interoperability awareness and community growth.
A big portion of Celer’s community efforts leans towards building low-barrier developer partnership channels. Continuous creation and optimization of developer documentation in Celer blogs, the Celer documentation sites, and Github references allow anyone to leverage the Celer tech stack and build smooth and intuitive cross-chain UX for their users.
Celer is also taking an active role in leading the interoperability space towards a more decentralized, secure and sustainable future. Working with over 100 partners to promote an Open Canonical Token Standard initiative that Celer launched in Dec 2021, the team is boosting awareness of the vendor lock-in risks in certain bridging solutions where ecosystem contributors are constrained by one single interoperability vendor. Celer has since then been providing alternative solutions that endow dApps the flexibility and potential in integrating with future interoperability advancements.