Following Deutsche Telekom’s purchase of Celo’s native asset (CELO), T-Systems MMS, market-leading digital services provider and Deutsche Telekom subsidiary, now operates validators on Celo's public blockchain network. Celo is an open-source blockchain ecosystem focused on making decentralized financial systems and tools (DeFi) accessible to anyone with a smartphone.
Deutsche Telekom delegates (also known as ‘staking’) its CELO to the validators of T-Systems MMS. The private American venture capital fund Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) also delegates CELO native assets to T-Systems MMS validator group. By operating validators, T-Systems MMS contributes to the infrastructure of the Celo Blockchain network. For this purpose, the Deutsche Telekom subsidiary uses the Open Telekom Cloud, which meets the strictest security and compliance requirements.
“Electing a diverse set of globally distributed validators is critical to maintaining a blockchain network that is secure and technically robust,” said Katie Haun, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. “We partnered with Deutsche Telekom because their incentives align with Celo’s vision of building a global payment platform that can be used by anyone with just a mobile phone.”
"After Chainlink and Flow, Celo is the third public blockchain network that we actively support with infrastructure. Celo's vision to create a global payment solution for mobile users inspires us and we are proud to be part of this vision’s development," says Dr Andreas Dittrich, Head of the Blockchain Solutions Center at T-Systems MMS. "Public blockchains are the future of value-based collaboration. Our strategic cooperation with a16z and their significant investment in Celo reinforces our ambition to actively shape this future."