| cgp | title | date-created | author | discussions-to | status | date-executed | governance-proposal-id |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
38 |
The Celo Ecosystem Treasury |
2021-08-30 |
Yaz Khoury (@YazzyYaz), Jarrell James, Gab Micheletti, Eric Nakagawa, Medha Kothari, Maya Zehavi, Elizabeth Barnes, Cassidy Daly, Tux |
EXECUTED |
43 |
The key objective of this proposal is to aggressively position Celo at the forefront of the crypto space. To this end the Celo Ecosystem Treasury will energize activity around research and development in open-source, as well as through local communities and special projects utilizing this technology.
The truest spirit of crypto and cypherpunk values is in embracing free and open source software (FOSS) technologies that can enable both the freedom to build and empowerment of humanity. This technology creates the foundation for everything we rely on in Web3, and that includes protocols like Celo and even Ethereum — which need vital support. Projects fostering more financial inclusion globally through crypto especially depend on open-source software at their foundation. The purpose of the Treasury won’t focus on looking for a call to grants to evaluate and fund on a specific funding category. Rather, this Treasury will focus on funding research and special projects based on what is most critical to grow a crypto-native community globally, from developers to end users.
It will also be experimenting with ecosystem development by empowering locals in emerging markets who are leaders in their field to manage on-chain governance specific to their regions, using resources of the fund and boots-on-the-ground support.
There are four key areas this effort will focus on (see Appendix for more information on targets).
Mission: To generate developer interest in Celo at a core level, and position Celo as a central player in the EVM community
Target Outcomes:
By 2 years from now:
- To have at least 50 people attending governance calls regularly
- Have at least half of people attending governance calls be non-cLabbers
Examples:
- Double down on identity research
- Push forward cryptography for privacy and compression
- Push forward an EIP that we can sponsor
- Improve EVM for things that are useful to Celo
- Support projects like Geth, Erigon, Hyperledger Besu
Mission: To increase community by pushing the envelope technically and making people say “wow, Celo is doing really cool things and I want to be involved with that community.”
Target Outcomes:
By 2 years from now:
- Bring the 5 most innovative, underfunded projects in crypto to Celo (for example, kyc-compliant privacy; novel ideas for real-world adoption like kong.cash; we’ll ask the community for what they want to see)
- Bring at least 3 innovative new ideas to bolster stability
- Bring the 10 most innovative independent core developers to Celo (for example, people like Or Neeman)
- Introduce at least 1 new standard (for example, erc20 contracts with allocation of transaction fees to reserve)
Mission: To have local autonomy in each country where Celo has a presence, by funding a DAO where the eco-lead and local crypto thought partners / influencers can make decisions on bootstrapping a Celo ecosystem in that country.
Target Outcomes:
By 2 years from now, for each country where Celo has an Ecosystem Lead:
- Have at least 10 technical projects funded per country, built on Celo, that would otherwise not exist, at least 1 of each of them becoming major projects in the community.
- Have the top 10 university communities be aware of and excited about Celo because of a university event/hackathon funded by the DAO
Mission: Encourage the community to create more community-led projects by sponsoring hackathons, college blockchain club events, holding crypto-native community-building functions (example, League of Bridges) and providing support to all those who come.
Target Outcomes:
By 2 years from now:
- Have 3 new externally proposed CGPs
- Have 5 new non-country-specific DAOs on Celo with substantive engagement (social daos, investment daos for celo ecosystem, mission-related DAOs e.g. regenerative finance DAOs)
- In countries where there are large crypto developer communities and Celo has a large presence, but no eco-lead (for example, US, Germany),
- Have a talk at the top 20 college blockchain clubs
- Have 5 Celo hackathons
- Have 25 new projects built on Celo arising from hackathons/college blockchain talks, at least 5 of which become major projects in the community.
The Multisig contract address is 0x0D8b5f1CD567656b6Ad4c88e8F082F1f694e5Bb5 and found here.
5 out of 9 multisig controlled by the following individuals:
- Lead - Yaz Khoury, cLabs (Address: 0xC574BC344Bb8d38aa08553F1b24D7cAB8c9818B2)
- Jarrell James, cLabs (Address: 0x9E044E8e921c6E8b5FD30810914EC44BaDa7FdA6)
- Eric Nakagawa, cLabs (Address: 0xD437b43B79a6da9a2CB01a9BccC5DAAE33D906C1)
- Gab Micheletti, Independent (Address: 0x5c1E76BC987aCC7a71EE6119FCA59609cC6b9caE)
- Medha Kothari, Variant Fund + she256 (Address: 0x8ff83Ec2fB127A247212d76F72c05d34b6a4B02A)
- Maya Zehavi (Address: 0x0152CF0a4bADBd57f406ab2037c304dd5F463edB)
- Elizabeth Barnes, Figment (Address: 0x8255b271AeC9761Af7B05c90D2A97EFaA1daB851)
- Cassidy Daly, Centrifuge (Address: 0xa6d7227BFEfb0ac94E4E0C5829608d5215351c5a)
- Tux, Entropy (Address: 0x8901B61f53122a11600D2dd0949b2b3672413C4b)
The CGP is requesting 3 Million CELO from the on-chain governance Community Fund.
The proposal will also have a quarter and mid point check in after a percentage of the Treasury.
The setup can mimic the CCF proposal where the on-chain Community Fund can withdraw those funds if they are left unused after a time by a future governance proposal.
Furthermore, there will be an open call for ideas from the community twice per year where the community can submit ideas of what the Treausry can target.
We propose for the equivalent of $100/hr payable in cUSD from the CET’s CELO holdings, within a cap of 40 hrs/week, be paid as compensation for the administrative operations of the CET. The funds for both the program and the administrative pay will be allocated upfront to the CET multisig from the on-chain Celo Community Fund treasury. In line with this proposal’s commitment to the community, all hours and activities of program operations will be logged publicly and transparently.
Given the Celo Ecosystem Treasury (CET) is going to focus heavily on funding large scale projects where other community funds and grant programs had a smaller scale, this is the plan for the first 30-90 Days with the activation of the CET.
The CET aims to immediately put the funds to good use funding ecosystem and open-source projects.
In the first 30 Days, the CET will:
- Reach out to 5 projects from the categories listed in the Appendix to begin conversation on support and scoping out funding requirements.
In the first 90 Days, the CET will:
- Fund at least 1 project in each high-level category from those listed in the Appendix.
Celo currently suffers from perception issues because we forked Geth and use shallow marketing terms like being EVM-compatible, without historically contributing much to improve the EVM. Donut added some new hash functions for Solidity developers, but we need to do a lot more than just that. This allows us to walk the walk. We also aren’t seeing enough projects with boots-on-the-ground engagements in emerging regions to foster education around how to use and build smart contracts, as well as how to best use on-chain governance for needs within those particular regions.
With this proposal, we will bolster marketing for Celo to crypto-savvy folks and locals in emerging markets, while promoting the on-chain community fund and encouraging more awareness of it.
We have identified the following risks:
- People may perceive a sponsorship or grant as “pay to play”. We must work to limit the perception of Celo’s monetary support of projects as a way to control a project’s roadmap. We would also specifically state in clear terms how such contributions are viewed, and that they are done without an expectation from the engineering team to prioritize Celo specific interests.
- Another team tries to turn this effort into a marketing effort. The contributions are for the benefit of the entire developer community and the ecosystems we are focused on, so we should use this to show our leadership in the crypto space and for emerging regions.
- Another risk is performance risk based on where the Treasury is allocating capital. This is mitigated by quarterly and middle checkpoints to check in with the community.
- Conflict of Interest Risks: In the case of a conflict of interest with one of the multisig signer, the COI will be disclosed and the multisig signer will not participate in voting on that specific proposal.
[
{
"contract": "GoldToken",
"function": "approve",
"args": [
"0x0D8b5f1CD567656b6Ad4c88e8F082F1f694e5Bb5",
"3000000000000000000000000"
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"value": "0"
}
]- https://gov.uniswap.org/t/rfc-uniswap-grants-program-v0-1/9081
- https://compound.finance/governance/proposals/40
- https://gov.near.org/t/near-ecosystem-treasury-dao/2946
- https://thegraph.com/blog/wave-one-funding
- https://forum.celo.org/t/the-celo-ecosystem-treasury/1313
- Yaz Khoury
- Jarrell James
- Gab Micheletti
- Eric Nakagawa
- Medha Kothari
- Maya Zehavi
- Elizabeth Barnes
- Cassidy Daly
- Tux
- Blockchain
- New clients
- Supporting Upstream Geth
- EVM Improvements
- Smart Contract Support
- Consensus Research
- Layer-2 Activation and Support
- Cryptography
- Zero-knowledge research
- Threshold cryptography research
- Mobile-First
- Decentralized Identity Improvements and R&D
- Attestation Incentives
- Native mobile SDKs
- Developer Improvements
- Decentralized Computing
- JSON-RPC Improvements
- Supporting popular tools based on Gitcoin CLR round winners
- Security
- Support auditing community-focused projects
- Support Dapp security initiatives
- Community
- Regional-specific community support grants in Latin America, Africa and/or Southeast Asia.
- Sponsoring EIPs and CIPs that improve Web3 for Celo and Ethereum.
- Supporting forkable vs. forked projects.
- Stewardship of the Celo Core Community
- Supporting working groups in Celo's community
- Ecosystem
- Experimenting with DAOs and governance in local languages in emerging markets.
- Educational programs that generate more developers onboarded to deploy their first smart contract in the local region.
- Open Source Governance Programs and Standard Bodies
- Membership in Web3-focused foundations and industries to have a Celo seat at the table.
- Membership in programming language steering committees.
- Marketing
- Deploy marketing campaigns to inform of the existence of the on-chain community fund and the activities of the Celo community.
- Sponsor hackathons and events at major Web3 conferences especially in emerging markets.
- CET will support student-led initiative programs in universities that promote open-source tools built in Celo and help in developing smart contracts by Celo.