The foreign exchange market processes more than $9.6 trillion in transactions every day, making it the largest financial market in the world. Yet most currency exchange still happens through traditional financial infrastructure, while onchain markets are developing new ways to represent and exchange currencies digitally. According to the Bank for International Settlements latest comprehensive survey, the results, released in June 2026 show just how much money moves between currencies through the traditional financial system every day.
Yet,onchain foreign exchange is still much smaller, but the market is beginning to develop the infrastructure needed to bring real-world currencies onto blockchain networks. Mento is one of the projects working on that infrastructure.
Mento is an onchain FX protocol that provides stablecoins and decentralised markets for exchanging different currencies. Its ecosystem currently includes 15 stablecoins, representing currencies such as the US dollar, euro, Nigerian naira, Kenyan shilling, Ghanaian cedi, South African rand, West African CFA franc and Japanese yen.
The protocol says it processed $18.5 billion in trading volume in 2025 and handled 277 million transactions during the year. Mento also says its stablecoins are used across more than 140 countries, while its infrastructure powers stablecoin swaps for more than 12 million Opera MiniPay users.
Mento’s focus goes beyond creating digital versions of individual currencies. It is developing the infrastructure for those currencies to be issued, traded and used across blockchain networks, with applications ranging from cross-border payments and remittances to treasury management and decentralised finance.
How Mento started
Mento began as the stability protocol behind decentralised stablecoins in the Celo ecosystem. The project originated within cLabs and the Celo community, where it was initially focused on creating stable digital representations of local currencies. As the platform grew, the community decided that Mento needed its own governance and a dedicated focus.
Following a community governance process, Mento spun out of cLabs as an independent project in 2022. Its focus remained centred on local-currency stablecoins and financial use cases such as payments, remittances, savings and lending.
Over time, the project expanded beyond its original role as a Celo-based stablecoin platform.
Mento now describes itself as an onchain FX liquidity layer, providing infrastructure for currency markets rather than simply issuing individual stablecoins. Its current strategy includes deploying its infrastructure across multiple blockchain networks.
Bringing currencies onchain
The protocol creates decentralised stablecoins designed to represent the value of different currencies. Instead of requiring every user to hold a traditional bank account in a particular currency, these assets provide an onchain representation that can be transferred, swapped and integrated into decentralised applications.
Mento’s current stablecoin portfolio includes USDm, EURm, BRLm, KESm, PHPm, COPm, XOFm, NGNm, JPYm, CHFm, ZARm, GBPm, AUDm, CADm and GHSm.
The portfolio covers currencies across Africa, Europe, Asia and the Americas. Most relevant assets include KESm for the Kenyan shilling, NGNm for the Nigerian naira, GHSm for the Ghanaian cedi, ZARm for the South African rand and XOFm for the West African CFA franc.
Mento says NGNm is designed for use cases including mobile payments, local lending and remittances, while XOFm is intended to support regional trade and FX activity across the 14 African countries that use the West African CFA franc.
The Mento Reserve
The Mento Reserve provides the collateral infrastructure behind the protocol’s stablecoin ecosystem.
Mento says the Reserve maintains verifiable collateral through a diversified basket of digital assets. Its current system uses an overcollateralized model, with the platform listing a 3:1 collateralization ratio. This reserve is important because Mento’s stablecoins need infrastructure that supports their value while allowing users to exchange them.
The Reserve also serves as part of the liquidity architecture behind the Mento Asset Exchange. As Mento has expanded its currency portfolio, the Reserve has expanded as well. In June 2026, Mento added Agora’s AUSD as a USD-denominated reserve asset and introduced programmatic cross-chain rebalancing for its non-Celo deployments.
Mento Asset Exchange
The Mento Asset Exchange is the trading layer of the protocol that allows users to exchange Mento stablecoins and other supported stablecoins through onchain markets. Users connect a wallet, select the currencies they want to exchange and execute the transaction on-chain.
The exchange was originally built around a virtual Automated Market Maker, or vAMM. Unlike a conventional AMM where liquidity providers must deposit the assets being traded into a pool, Mento’s vAMM uses the Mento Reserve and a dynamic mint-and-burn model to support liquidity.
This infrastructure allows users to swap between currency-denominated stablecoins without depending on a centralised foreign exchange desk. The platform also operates around the clock, giving users access to onchain currency markets outside the traditional five-day FX market schedule.
Building local-currency markets
One of Mento’s defining features is its focus on currencies beyond the US dollar. The stablecoin market has historically been dominated by dollar-denominated assets. Mento is building infrastructure for a wider range of currencies, allowing users to hold and exchange assets that track the currencies they use in their everyday lives.
For example, a Kenyan user can use KESm, while a Nigerian user can use NGNm. A business operating across West Africa can interact with XOFm, while another application can use GHSm for transactions involving the Ghanaian cedi.
This also creates opportunities for applications that need to work across currency zones.
A fintech could use local-currency stablecoins for payments. A remittance platform could use them for cross-border transfers. A DeFi application could integrate them into lending or liquidity products.
Mento’s role is to provide the underlying assets and market infrastructure these applications can use.
Stablecoins for payments
Mento’s stablecoins can be used for e-commerce, payroll, remittances and other local payment applications. The protocol also works with off-ramp and on-ramp providers that allow users to connect onchain assets with bank accounts and mobile-money networks.
This is particularly relevant in markets where mobile money already plays an important role in everyday financial transactions. Instead of replacing existing payment systems, onchain currency infrastructure can connect digital assets with those systems.
Mento and Africa
Africa has remained an important part of Mento’s development since its early days on Celo. The protocol was initially designed around the idea that blockchain could provide accessible digital currencies for people in markets where traditional financial infrastructure does not always provide the same level of access.
That focus has continued through the creation of local-currency stablecoins for African markets. Mento currently supports stablecoins representing the Kenyan shilling, Ghanaian cedi, Nigerian naira, South African rand and West African CFA franc.
Mento infrastructure powers stablecoin swaps for more than 12 million Opera MiniPay users, connecting the protocol’s currency infrastructure to a large mobile-first user base.
This gives Mento a role beyond the DeFi market. Its infrastructure can sit underneath consumer applications where users may interact with stablecoins without necessarily thinking about the underlying blockchain technology.
From Celo to a multichain network
Although Mento began inside the Celo ecosystem, the protocol is now expanding across multiple blockchain networks.
In 2025, Mento selected Wormhole as its interoperability provider to support the movement of its global and local stablecoins across chains. The integration was designed to give Mento access to liquidity across different blockchain ecosystems.
The multichain strategy became more visible in 2026. In March, Mento launched on Monad, beginning with a GBPm/USDm market and using the protocol’s new Fixed-Price FX model.
In July, Mento deployed its FX infrastructure on Polygon, launching with a USDm/EURm pool. Mento said the EUR/USD pair alone accounts for roughly $2 trillion of the $9.5 trillion traded daily across global FX markets.
These deployments are part of Mento’s effort to make its FX infrastructure available beyond Celo.
Mento V3
A major part of that strategy is Mento V3, introduced in March 2026.The upgrade changes both how Mento stablecoins can be issued and how currency markets operate.
One of the major additions is Collateralized Debt Positions (CDPs). The model allows certain non-USD stablecoins to be minted against USD-denominated collateral, giving their supply more room to grow with demand rather than depending entirely on the capacity of the Mento Reserve.
Mento V3 also introduces Fixed-Price Market Maker (FPMM) pools.
These pools are designed specifically for foreign exchange markets. Instead of relying entirely on the pricing curves used by conventional AMMs, FPMMs use oracle-based reference rates to provide more predictable FX execution.
The third major component is a system of rebalancers designed to keep liquidity pools near their target balance.Together, these components are intended to give Mento a structure better suited to real-world currency markets, where pricing and liquidity requirements differ from those of many other DeFi assets.
Fixed-Price FX
Foreign exchange markets operate differently from many cryptocurrency markets. Currency prices are closely tied to reference rates, while traders often need predictable execution when exchanging one currency for another.
The system uses external price oracles to establish the reference exchange rate, with each swap executing at the oracle rate minus the applicable fee. Mento’s documentation also describes circuit breakers and trading limits that can restrict activity when price feeds become stale or invalid.
The model is being used as Mento expands its infrastructure to other networks. The Monad deployment, for example, launched with a GBPm/USDm pool using the Fixed-Price FX model.
Governance and the MENTO token
The MENTO token was created as part of the process that separated Mento’s governance from Celo governance. The token is used in the protocol’s governance system, allowing community members to participate in decisions around the development of the platform.
The governance structure includes veMENTO, which users receive by locking MENTO tokens.The system gives token holders a mechanism to participate in proposals covering areas such as stablecoin additions and protocol parameters.
This governance model reflects Mento’s origins as a community-driven project within the Celo ecosystem while giving it an independent structure for managing the protocol.
Connecting developers and financial applications
Developers can integrate its stablecoins into wallets, payment applications, DeFi protocols and other financial products. The platform provides documentation, software development resources and access to its stablecoin ecosystem for builders.
This infrastructure approach is important because Mento does not need to build every financial application itself. Instead, its role is to provide the currencies, liquidity and exchange infrastructure that applications can use.
A developer building a remittance application can integrate local-currency stablecoins. A DeFi protocol can use them for lending or liquidity. A business can use them for cross-border settlement.
Mento’s growth
The protocol processed $18.5 billion in trading volume in 2025 and 277 million transactions during the year. Its current website also reports more than 12 million users across more than 140 countries.
The growth has come alongside a significant expansion in the number of currencies supported.
Mento’s stablecoin portfolio now spans currencies across six continents, while its multichain strategy is taking the protocol into ecosystems beyond Celo.
The project has also continued expanding its partnerships and infrastructure. Its use of Wormhole for cross-chain connectivity, Chainlink data infrastructure and integrations with applications such as MiniPay have helped connect its stablecoin markets to a wider blockchain ecosystem.
What comes next for Mento
Mento’s current direction is centred on turning onchain foreign exchange into financial infrastructure that can operate across different currencies and blockchain networks.
Mento V3 provides the technical foundation for that strategy through CDP-based issuance, Fixed-Price FX markets and automated rebalancing. The deployments on Monad and Polygon also show how the protocol is expanding beyond its original Celo environment.
The stablecoin portfolio is also expected to continue growing as the protocol adds more currencies and markets.
For Africa, that means the infrastructure already includes digital representations of currencies such as the naira, cedi, shilling, rand and CFA franc. For global markets, Mento is building connections between those local currencies and major currencies such as the dollar, euro, pound and yen.
Instead of currency conversion existing only inside banks, brokers and payment companies, Mento is building an onchain layer where currencies can be represented as stablecoins, traded through decentralised markets and integrated directly into financial applications.
Its next phase is about expanding that infrastructure across more currencies, applications and blockchain networks, with the goal of making global currency markets accessible through the same programmable financial infrastructure that already powers other parts of the digital economy.