Celo Camp Batch 8 recently hosted a special Minipay Launchpad edition, guiding founders to build for Opera Minipay. 17 participants from six countries spent five weeks building projects designed for Minipay, receiving business development workshops, technical support, and mentorship. The winners of the Celo Camp Batch 8 awards were BitGifty, Lockie, Shiga Digital, and Yuki, each recognized for their innovative projects. Pre-registration for Celo Camp Batch 9 is now open, welcoming aspiring applicants to join the Celo Camp and contribute to the future of inclusive finance and Web3.

CELO

<figure><img src='https://sosovalue.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/sosponge/web3image/24/01/10/psj8tm1c1wbp.png'/></figure><a href="https://www.celocamp.com/" target="_blank">Celo Camp</a>, the virtual Web3 accelerator created in 2020 by the <a href="http://celo.org/" target="_blank">Celo Foundation</a> and <a href="https://www.upright.gg/" target="_blank">Upright</a>, recently hosted a special <a href="https://blog.celo.org/announcing-celo-camp-batch-8-participants-building-for-minipay-a0b185e84101" target="_blank">MiniPay LaunchPad</a> edition guiding founders to build for <a href="https://www.opera.com/products/minipay?shortlink=6lggmqqd&amp;c=OMA_SoMe_MiniPay2&amp;pid=Social_facebook&amp;af_xp=social&amp;source_caller=ui" target="_blank">Opera MiniPay</a>.17 participants from six countries spent five weeks building projects designed for MiniPay, Opera’s self-custodial stablecoin wallet built on Celo. Teams designed innovative solutions, such as enabling MiniPay users to earn rewards on their savings, compete in eSports tournaments, connect their MiniPay wallet to financial institutions, and send money within their communities (among many other solutions)!During Celo Camp, participants attended business development workshops led by experts, received dedicated technical support from cLabs developers, and connected with industry leaders from organizations including <a href="https://www.opera.com/" target="_blank">Opera</a>, <a href="https://www.floriventures.com/" target="_blank">Flori Ventures</a>, <a href="https://www.echovc.com/" target="_blank">EchoVC</a>, and <a href="https://consensys.io/" target="_blank">Consensys</a>, all of whom offered personalized mentorship.The Celo Camp Batch 8 cohort exemplified collaborative building by demonstrating an open approach to problem-solving through collective troubleshooting, developing intra-camp partnerships, and encouraging each other throughout the program. <a href="https://www.bloomtreewellness.com/" target="_blank">Bloomtree Wellness</a> facilitated weekly prosper sessions where founders explored their unique purpose, developed confidence-building skills, and benefited from mindfulness exercises. Camp then culminated with a public <a href="https://x.com/celo_camp/status/1737141291027218854?s=20" target="_blank">Demo Day</a> where teams pitched their MiniPay projects to the Celo Community.Celo Camp Awards are distributed to recognize each team’s progress and to acknowledge their project’s respective impact. Top prizes were decided by a voting process that included input from representatives of Upright, the Celo Foundation, Celo Camp mentors, and the broader Celo community. Congratulations to all!BitGifty — Gold Prize Winner of 10,000 CELO<figure><img src='https://sosovalue.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/sosponge/web3image/24/01/10/stcxtm1c1wpx.png'/><figcaption>BitGifty Co-Founders Adegoke Wasiu and Adedolapo Adeagbo</figcaption></figure><a href="https://bitgifty.com/" target="_blank">BitGifty</a> is enabling users to send personalized crypto gift cards to friends and family through their MiniPay wallet. Users can then spend the balance from their gift cards to pay for daily utilities such as airtime, data, electricity, and cable TV. BitGifty is also building a Crypto Gift Cards API allowing corporations to offer gift cards to their customers.During Celo Camp, BitGifty integrated with MiniPay and tested the functionality of users creating gift cards from their MiniPay wallets. Speaking about his time at Celo Camp, Adedolapo Adeagbo, CEO at BitGifty, said:“Celo Camp has elevated both myself as a founder and my project, BitGifty. I have connected with amazing builders and mentors with the possibility of pursuing potential collaborations. The future for BitGifty is looking very bright!”BitGifty continues to grow in 2024 by collaborating with Celo Camp alumni <a href="https://paychant.com/" target="_blank">Paychant</a> (to automate on/off ramping) and <a href="https://get-yuki.com/" target="_blank">Yuki</a> (for wallet aggregation so users can create gift cards from different wallets). They are also developing partnerships with small-to-medium- sized businesses in Nigeria to offer custom crypto gift card services for corporate gifting.To get involved and for more information, follow BitGifty on <a href="https://x.com/BitGifty?s=20" target="_blank">X/Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/bitgifty/" target="_blank">LinkedIn</a>.Lockie — Silver Prize Winner of 5,000 CELO<figure><img src='https://sosovalue.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/sosponge/web3image/24/01/10/440rtm1c1wrx.png'/><figcaption>Lockie Co-Founders Nnamdi Umeh and Somoto Chukwuemeka</figcaption></figure><a href="https://www.lockie.pro/" target="_blank">Lockie</a> is simplifying how MiniPay users can earn rewards on their savings. By integrating with <a href="https://moola.market/" target="_blank">Moola Market</a>’s (<a href="https://www.celocamp.com/post/hero-story-moola" target="_blank">Celo Camp Batch 2</a>) lending and borrowing protocol, Lockie helps users hedge against hyperinflation through saving and earning in cUSD.During Celo Camp, Lockie built their prototype on MiniPay and began beta testing with users in the region. Speaking about his time at Celo Camp, Nnamdi Umeh, Co-Founder of Lockie, said, “Celo Camp was crucial for securing strategic partnerships to achieve success in our business.”Lockie continues to improve their product in anticipation of onboarding more MiniPay users who can save and earn rewards on their cUSD.To learn more, follow Lockie on <a href="https://twitter.com/lockiedapp" target="_blank">Twitter/X</a>.Shiga Digital — Bronze Prize Winner of 2,500 CELO<figure><img src='https://sosovalue.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/sosponge/web3image/24/01/10/ngu9tm1c1wxg.png'/><figcaption>Shiga Digital Co-Founders Abiola Shogbeni and Dami Etomi</figcaption></figure><a href="https://www.shiga.io/" target="_blank">Shiga Digital</a> is enabling MiniPay users to pay for goods and services anywhere in the world. During Celo Camp, Shiga developed a widget allowing users from 16 different African countries to both deposit and withdraw funds from their MiniPay accounts using mobile money or bank transfers.Speaking about their time at Celo Camp, Abiola Shogbeni and Dami Etomi, Co-Founders of Shiga Digital, said:“Celo’s alignment with our mission to make financial services inclusive was validated and refined at a crucial stage of our business growth cycle during Celo Camp. We leave reinvigorated, better people, and founders with a clear picture of what we need to do to grow to the next level.”Shiga aims to launch its on-ramp widget for users to deposit funds into their MiniPay accounts before the end of Q1 2024. They also anticipate their MiniPay payment widget for merchant services will be available in Q2 2024.To get involved and for more information, follow Shiga Digital on <a href="https://twitter.com/ShigaDigital" target="_blank">Twitter/X</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/shigadigital/" target="_blank">LinkedIn</a>.Yuki — Community Choice Prize Winner of 1,000 CELO<figure><img src='https://sosovalue.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/sosponge/web3image/24/01/10/okkstm1c1w4h.png'/><figcaption>Yuki Co-Founders Dennismary Chidiebere, Juliet Ogunkunle, and Joshua Abolade</figcaption></figure><a href="https://get-yuki.com/" target="_blank">Yuki</a> is empowering MiniPay users to swap and trade Celo assets through their gasless DEX (Decentralized Exchange) utilizing <a href="https://www.mento.org/" target="_blank">Mento Labs</a>. Through this feature, MiniPay users can swap cUSD to CELO (and vice-versa) without paying any gas fees.In addition to their DEX, Yuki started building a DeFi API kit during Celo Camp to provide builders with the tools to build on Celo. In speaking about his time at Celo Camp, Dennismary Chidiebere, Co-Founder of Yuki, said:“Celo Camp opened our eyes to the possibilities that the Celo platform unlocks for serving users in emerging markets. Through hands-on education, mentorship, and collaboration, we now have a robust roadmap to integrate decentralized financial services into our products. Participating [in Celo Camp] accelerated our development timeline by months. We’re thrilled to build on a platform purpose-built to increase adoption of DeFi globally.”Yuki is working towards their mission of increasing the adoption of decentralized financial services by leveraging Celo’s infrastructure. To achieve these aims, they are focusing on developing new products to provide users increased access to cUSD.To stay tuned for more updates, follow Yuki on <a href="https://twitter.com/YukiHodl" target="_blank">Twitter/X</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/get-yuki/" target="_blank">LinkedIn</a>.<h3>What’s Next? Welcome Celo Camp Batch 9</h3><a href="https://celocamp.typeform.com/to/rExPBIec#source=medium" target="_blank">Pre-registration</a> for Celo Camp batch 9 is now open! Calling all aspiring applicants to join Celo Camp and the Celo community, and to contribute to the future of inclusive finance and Web3. For more updates, subscribe to Celo Camp’s <a href="https://www.celocamp.com/" target="_blank">newsletter</a> or follow Celo Camp on <a href="https://twitter.com/celo_camp" target="_blank">Twitter/X</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/celocamp/" target="_blank">LinkedIn</a>.<img src=''/><hr /><a href="https://blog.celo.org/introducing-celo-camp-batch-8-winners-866337024ec4" target="_blank">Introducing Celo Camp Batch 8 Winners</a> was originally published in <a href="https://blog.celo.org" target="_blank">The Celo Blog</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.