Budget Request: CeloPG Season 0 (DRAFT)

Governance Governance Proposals
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Proposal Details
Receiver Entity: Celo Public Goods
Status: [DRAFT]
Title: Budget Request: CeloPG Season 0
Authors: @LuukDAO, @MontyMerlin, @NikoG
Type of Request: Funding
Funding Request: 282,000 cUSD + 700,000 CELO

1. Summary
This proposal aims to fund CeloPG, a Celo Builder team on a mission to accelerate the Celo ecosystem in line with the priorities of the Ethereum and Superchain ecosystems - in line with the Celo Governance Seasons Strategy. We contribute to Celo’s vision of becoming a digital regenerative economy with a budget of 282,000 cUSD and 700,000 CELO for the period of until July 31st. Any unspent resources will be returned to the Celo Community Treasury, as in H1 and H2 2024.

2. Context (Motivation)
As Celo transitions to Ethereum L2 and the Optimism Superchain, it is more important than ever to double down on our unique position to lead Ethereum’s real-world adoption and become a hub for impactful blockchain applications. To do this, we need a diverse ecosystem that can quickly innovate and experiment with new ways to allocate capital, ensuring long-term sustainability and a regenerative digital economy.

5.The Role of CeloPG in the Impact Age
Celo’s governance and ecosystem have evolved significantly, driven by initiatives like Celo Mondo and progress toward CEL2. In 2025, Celo enters the Impact Age, as best articulated by Rene—a phase focused on scaling ecosystem projects, achieving product-market fit, and driving environmental, social, and economic impact.

CeloPG supports this transition by accelerating the ecosystem toward the Regeneration Phase: a self-sustaining, decentralized, and community-governed future --realizing its vision.

As recognized in the Celo Governance Seasons, a conversation about Governance Evolution ahead of the Cel2 Migration thread, further evolution of Governance and streamlining of treasury management are required to continue decentralizing and growing the community and ecosystem around Celo.

This CeloPG Season 0 plan builds on the progress made in 2024. CeloPG will continue to focus on supporting builders in the Celo ecosystem by running programs that reward and incentivize impactful contributions leveraging the latest frameworks, AI, and onchain tools.

Funding what matters
A key part of the CeloPG strategy is ensuring Celo continues to act as a live player in the Superchain, Ethereum, and Public Goods ecosystem while optimizing the resources and guidance provided to the Celo ecosystem. By aligning our initiatives and objectives with the strategies of some key stakeholders—including the Optimism S7 season and Gitcoin 2025 Strategy—CeloPG can nurture our role in these ecosystems while increasing the resources available to Celo-aligned builders. We are dedicated to building, experimenting with, and advancing blockchain-based public goods funding mechanisms on Celo to make a regenerative digital economy a reality. This season, we’re doubling down on past learnings and enhancing our tools with Common Impact Data Frameworks, AI agents, and onchain impact certificates to accelerate the Celo Public Goods ecosystem further.

7. Budget Breakdown
A detailed breakdown of the Season 0 and Ops budget + 2024 numbers of CeloPG can be found in this dashboard.

Initiative Category cUSD CELO
A CeloPG Program Management and Operations Operations $83.500,00 75.000
B CeloPG Brand and Website Development $24.500,00 0
C Infrastructure development and grants Development $25.000,00 0
D Celo Governance and Treasury Support Ecosystem Services $21.000,00 0
E Celo Event Services Ecosystem Services $28.000,00 0
F Celo Ecosystem Round Builder Program $0,00 500.000
G Regen Coordination Builder Program $50.000,00 0
H Community Round Matching Builder Program $50.000,00 0
I Season 0 Contributor Retro Builder Program 125.000
TOTAL $282.000,00 700.000

3. Specification
Program Management and Operations: The CeloPG Team will be responsible for the management and operations of the CeloPG Builder Programs in addition to developing the CeloPG brand in line with the evolution of Celo.

  • A: Budget to pay for CeloPG Program Management and Operations, including legal, software, and contributors costs.

Development: To expand the reach and impact of the Celo Builder programs, we’ll continue to build on the solutions created by CeloPG, such as CeloPG.eco and Prosperity Account and support teams that are building solutions that accelerate Celo and the CeloPG programs with advice and resources.

  • B: Fund the advancements of the CeloPG brand, launch a new version of the CeloPG.eco website, and provide the Prosperity Account to provide effective communication and leverage the capacity of onchain solutions + AI Agents for alignment. We’ll increasingly integrate our solutions and programs with the Celo Devrel program and tooling such as Jokerace and Lemonade.
    We’re increasingly using AI tools and Agents in our solutions to help analyze program impact and support contributors. Safe, on which the Prosperity Account is built, is developing an Agent Kit we aim to use, and EasyRPGF can be combined nicely with agents to increase review effectiveness.
  • C: Budget to issue software development grants related to the operations of the CeloPG builder programs - based on H1 and H2 estimates.

Ecosystem Services: To support Celo Governance in decision-making and help unite the Celo Ecosystem around shared objectives, we will provide the following ecosystem services we successfully provided in 2024 across CeloEU and CeloPG.

  • D: Celo Governance and Treasury Support: On-demand R&D support to the Celo Foundation and Ecosystem regarding Governance and Tokenomics, such as the Governance Sprint and L2 evaluation research, Maintaining the Celo Community Treasury Accounting Sheet (view current version here) and publishing a Quarterly Treasury Report.
  • E: Event design and management budget: Lead the organization of a premier Celo ecosystem event in the Summer of 2025 to unite and accelerate the ecosystem after the CEL2 transition. This budget does not include venue, merch, etc., which would be separate as a follow-up proposal once we have aligned the proper event scope with key stakeholders. Estimate the number based on the Celo Connect Berlin and Settlement Day budgets.

Celo Builder Programs: Creating a culture of build and getting rewarded is one of the best ways to grow the ecosystem. To make building on Celo exciting, rewarding, and impactful, we aim to continue operating multiple Builder Programs that attract and nurture builders on Celo at various stages of their journey. By partnering with value-aligned teams and initiatives, we can significantly increase the resources available in the builder programs.

  • F. Celo Ecosystem Round: The Celo Ecosystem Rounds merge the CeloRPGF0, which retroactively rewards projects building on Celo based on key metrics, and the Real World Builders program, a proactive donor-influenced grants program, into one unified program. The Celo Ecosystem Rounds will be developed in collaboration with Gitcoin, which, as indicated in its 2025 strategy, is moving to multi-mechanism rounds where different allocation mechanisms that are increasingly data-driven, allowing for AI Agent automation are used depending on the type and stage of projects.

  • G. Regen Coordination: In 2025, we will build on the strong foundations of 2024—having supported four Gitcoin rounds that raised over $235,000, nearly triple the funding provided by CeloPG. We will expand partnerships with leading ReFi organizations such as ReFi DAO, GreenPill Network, The BioFi Project, Open Civics, Bloom Network, Ma Earth, Agroforrest DAO, Lets Grow DAO, Climate Coordination Network, and Octant, while forging new collaborations to bring regenerative projects to Celo and support the ecosystem.

  • H. Multiple community rounds: In addition to the above programs, CeloPG will have a budget of up to 50,000 cUSD to match value-aligned community rounds, allowing CeloPG to attract and nurture key sub-communities on Celo.

  • I. Season 0 Contributor Retro: Comparable to Optimism’s season rewards and inspired by the insights gained during the Celo Citizen Round, we will collaborate with the Celo Foundation and Feedback Committee to shape and operate a Celo Goverance Season 0 Retro program to reward active contributors in the transition.

6. Builder Programs 2025 Timeline

Month Activity
March GG23: Regen Coordination + 1-2 Community Rounds
June Celo Season 0 Contributor Retro Round
June Celo Connect event around ETHCC
July GG24: Celo Ecosystem Round + 1-2 Community Rounds

Legal Representation
The Celo Public Goods Steward operations will again be coordinated by the Regenerative Finance Foundation, a non-profit foundation mandated to support the experimentation and growth of Regenerative Finance and function as the counterparty for specific CeloPG programs.

9. CeloPG Team
Based on the current scope of CeloPG and our learnings from running two cycles, we identified that program execution is the most critical function in the CeloPG team, as such - we’ve gathered a balanced team of three contributors, all being builders themselves and two advisors who have deep context from the Celo Ecosystem and Public Goods funding at large.

8. Payment Logistics
CeloPG’s programs will operate its resources through a 3 out of 5 Safe on Celo Mainnet.
CeloPG Season 0 (Celo):0xtbd

Feedback Committee and Delegates as sounding board
Due to the maturity of the Celo Delegates and the upcoming formatting of a Feedback Committee, the focus of CeloPG can now shift to strategy and execution rather than gathering ecosystem feedback through group conversation. Instead, we’ll proactively engage with Celo Delegates, the Feedback Committee, and all other Citizens to define the best scope for our builder programs and solutions.

We’re excited to go through this evolution with Celo and are ready to continue to commit ourselves to the growth and acceleration of the Celo ecosystem. Let’s build the Regenerative Digital Economy!

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A, B and C represent 133K cUSD + 75K Celo (aprox 42K USD) = 172k. Over a total budget of 282K + 700 K Celo (392K) = 674K, that’s an overhead of more than 25%. Feels off.

On the other side, there have been funding for regen projects in the past, it would be great to investigate how much network activity it has driven before doubling down in that vertical, I feel the effort should be in StableCoins and payments because that’s where I see the traction coming.

I am also not sure why we need to create a new brand for these kind of initiatives.

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Hi Martin,

This is not a new brand; CeloPG has existed for over a year and coordinated multiple Celo ecosystem programs over the past year.

The costs you indicate are not purely “overhead” as they include the development of open-source software, public goods frameworks, Celo Governance and Treasury support, and significant BD efforts.

In H2 2024, we attracted over USD 150,000 in third-party matching into our program, multiplying Celo’s capital by 1.7x. The additional capital we’re able to attract for Celo Public Goods and its Builders nearly completely offsets any spending on personnel, grants, and operations—in addition to bringing positive PR and new builders to Celo.

The Regen Coordination is one of the programs; the other programs focus on Celo Builder support, of which Stablecoin-related activities are a great share. We’re also already collaborating closely with MiniPay, Mento, and Valora to accelerate their builders, users and products through our programs.

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Hey @LuukDAO @CPG_Stewards

I would like to respectfully share some thoughts about this proposal.

In my opinion, it doesn’t seem solid enough at this stage.

It feels like it may have been put together rather quickly. Additionally, it doesn’t appear to follow the established structure for submitting proposals that request funds from the community fund.

Do you plan to align your plans with the Regional DAOs? Given that the community will need to craft a new governance framework over the next six months, I believe it’s essential to ensure proper alignment with the overall vision.

Also, Could you provide more transparency on the budget allocation?

Here is the template used by the Celo Regional Council—feel free to use it.

I think it is important to better understand how the funds will be distributed across the team, similar to the chart attached from Celo EU for the H1 2025 season.

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image2245×625 106 KB

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this.

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Helo @CPG_Stewards

After reviewing your proposal, it seems to be missing some of the suggested bullet points outlined in the Formats for Celo Governance & CeloPG Proposals.

To ensure consistency and clarity, please update your proposal to align with the recommended formats. You can find a helpful template for Celo Governance Proposals here.

This will make the proposal easier to evaluate and follow. Thank you!

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Hi @Joan_DeRB

We’ve added the required proposal details following the guidelines.

This proposal is an adjustment from the CeloPG 2025 draft we’ve worked on since December last year. The trigger to iterate on the scope of CeloPG was the Celo Governance Seasons, a conversation about Governance Evolution ahead of Cel2 Migration thread - which we feel is the right step forward for Celo. As such, we adjusted our scope to better fit in the new framing.

In 2024, CeloPG collaborated closely with all Regional DAOs. We remain committed to collaborating with and integrating approved regional DAOs into our programs.

We added a sheet with a more detailed breakdown of the Season 0 program and ops budget + the numbers of CeloPG 2024 for reference.

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Thanks for sharing the Formats thread, we’ve updated our draft to include the proposal details. Please let us know if there’s any additional elements we should add or steps to take. Thanks!

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Please fix:

  • Receiver Entity: Celo Governance (Is the entity where you are aiming to present the proposal, in this case is Celo Governance)

Additionally, please ensure your proposal is structured using the suggested format and subtitles listed below. This standardization will ensure that all Governance Proposals submitted follow the same structure, making it easier for members to review them effectively.

Feel free to expand as much you need in any item and also add subitems if you need to include some other info you consider relevant for your proposal.

1. Summary
2. Motivation
3. Specification
4. Metrics and KPIs
5. Current Status
6. Timeline and Milestones
7. Detailed Budget
8. Payment Terms
9. Team
10. Additional Support/Resources
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Hi @celogovernance, we reviewed our proposal and labeled all sections to match the suggested proposal sections (using the numbers you assigned each section). The standard order is, however, suboptimal for our proposal. Hence, we’ve kept our current structure.

We’ll create a detailed KPI sheet based on our specifications and add it to the proposal before the Governance call tomorrow to have each of the suggested sections​ included in the proposal.