Budget Request: Prezenti Grant funding: Season 0

Proposal

  • Receiver Entity: Celo Governance
  • Status: [DRAFT]
  • Title: Prezenti Grant funding Season 0 2025
  • Authors: Prezenti (Aaron Boyd, Wade Abel, Maya Brown)
  • Type of Request: Funding
  • Funding Request: $335,000 cUSD

Summary

This proposal is a request for a continuation of funding for Prezenti, enabling us to provide the only regular grass roots grant funding within the ecosystem at present. This proposal acts as bridging, seeking Celo Community approval to provide one grant funding round during Season 0 [the first half of 2025]. This will ensure the continuation of Prezenti operationally, offering grants to builders while working closely with the Seasons initiative to see where/how Prezenti might fit into the wider strategy in H2. This interim period covers the runway until Celo’s Governance 2.0 is fully established following the L2 migration and the introduction of Celo ‘Seasons’.

Prezenti is central to the essence of Celo. We are a steady foundation—stable, reliable, and committed to directing community funds toward visionary individuals and projects that embody thoughtful innovation. There has, and always will be a need for small/medium sized grants within a blockchain ecosystem. Prezenti brings this to Celo.

In our 2024 retrospective, we highlighted the three phases of Prezenti, with 2025 identified as the year of "fusion."Below, we outline what Prezenti aims to achieve and support for the Celo Community in Season 0.


Motivation

The Prezenti team aspire to continue offering grass roots builder grants to the Celo Community for Season 0 so there is some grant funding available to the ecosystem. Due to new initiated discussions around Celo Seasons, this proposal is for the first half of 2025 only and for one grant round. We plan to:

  1. Continue to offer grassroots grants. Seeking an additional ‘Scale’ pool for 2025.
  2. Increase collaboration with key stakeholders, including (but not exhaustive) the Celo Foundation, Regional Hubs, Celo Camp, Venture Capitalists.
  3. Expand our reviewer team to reflect the increasingly cohesive and global nature within Celo.
  4. Input into the Celo ‘Seasons’ strategy and support the changes for Governance 2.0 and the L2.
  5. Help define and operate an Optimism-style “Grants Council” in conjunction with the Celo Foundation’s intents for ongoing Seasons

Specification

1. Expanded Grant Pools

Introducing a fourth grant category to our grant rounds, whilst continuing to administer these grant pools:

  1. Micro Pool ($2,000): Early experimentation

  2. Pilot Pool ($10,000): Prototyping and feasibility

  3. Growth Pool ($25,000): Scaling and development

  4. NEW: Scale Pool ($50,000): larger scale initiatives

    2. Global Collaboration

  • Continue to strengthen partnerships within the community, including Foundation, , Regional Hubs, Celo Camp, Celo PG, and others, by including additional stakeholders in our review and due diligence process.

  • Collaborate with VC funds (to begin with Verda Ventures and 0XLabs) to connect promising grantees with downstream investment opportunities.

    3. Expanded Reviewer Team

We believe it is essential now to decentralize aspects of Prezenti to incorporate flourishing initiatives within the Celo ecosystem to provide fresh, differentiated eyes on applications. With this, we have put the pieces in place to welcome 2 new review contributors:

  • CristĂłbal Pereira GarretĂłn (cLATAM Lead) joined as a reviewer for Mint 2024, with plans for Season 0.

  • Ronald Nzioki (Celo Africa DAO Program Manager) will join the review team for Season 0.

    4. Strategy input for 2025 and beyond

Prezenti to actively participate in helping shape the grant offering of the new Celo Seasons.


Metrics & KPIs

During this interim period (Season 0), Prezenti will focus on the following metrics.

  • Reporting: can be found here
  • Multisig Transaction Logs: can be found here
  • Governance Engagement - can be found here
  • Grantee feedback - post grant surveys
  • % of projects completed
  • % of active projects after one year
  • Total blockchain transactions driven by grantees
  • Additional funding secured by grantees
  • Success stories highlighting transformational outcomes
  • Bi monthly showcasing calls highlighting previous grantees as they complete their grants

Current status

At the present time Prezenti has no funding to open any more rounds/distribute any further grants. The team is delivering on supporting 19 ongoing grants, due to complete by 31 May 2025 at the soonest.

If no further funding was to be secured then once these 19 grants had completed, Prezenti would begin to close its company and cease trading.


Timeline and Milestones

Season 0 / 2025 PLAN
Jan Business as usual - support ongoing grants. Budget from previous round.
Feb Business as usual - support ongoing grants. Budget from previous round.
Mar Launch Almond Round
Apr Close Almond round / start reviews
May Finish review and begin KYC
June Grants activity - month 1
July Grants activity - month 2
Aug Grants activity - month 3
Sep Grants activity - month 4
Oct If no follow on funding begin closing Prezenti

Detailed Budget

We request a replenishment of the grant ‘pools’ and support funds with a top up from the Celo Community Treasury for Season 0.

Season 0 No. of grants Cost per Pool Round 1 All Q
Admin 54,000 54,000
Contingency 10,000 10,000
Micro 3 2,000 6,000 6,000
Pilot 9 10,000 90,000 90,000
Growth 5 25,000 125,000 125,000
Scale 1 50,000 50,000 50,000
335,000 335,000

Due to the nature of grants, we need budget to be able to support ongoing grants past the June/July season change.


Payment Terms

Upon approval, the total budget will be deposited to the Prezenti (2/3) Multisig in a single transaction from the Community Fund. From there, Prezenti will allocate to individual Pool SAFEs money for each round.

  • Prezenti ‘Master’ Multisig Wallet for receiving funds: celo:0xA5c9389A0Ce1bFe24FF883E761Ff313225C77D44

Grant ‘Pools’ Multisig Wallets:

  • Micro Pool: celo:0xa0BfA96a40Cb3aEaD1a34CFFc1301226dBc5D2EC
  • Pilot Pool: celo:0xdCc89C89c3705D90EebFF3db911CCefA8C0B8d5F
  • Growth Pool: celo:0x3C9a27cd6d3CaF595aa5088001482664215f8Da7
  • Scale Pool: to be created
  • Admin Safe: celo:0x03344b9FCDdE6BE2FEF42876dB8fDc0696Ec688F
  • ETH Safe: eth:0x03344b9FCDdE6BE2FEF42876dB8fDc0696Ec688F

Team

The team remains unchanged, although roles and responsibilities have become increasingly streamlined.

Aaron Boyd - Prezenti Founder, independent validator operator, Celo PG Steward,
Celo Terminal: 0x9Ea6dcaaD917ebc9ed15c35b85FF2d486CB2F242

Wade Abel - Prezenti Founder, independent validator operator, Celo Governance Guild,
Celo Terminal: 0x64ca92619d8263518Cc14B1B698312f36e249095

Maya Brown - Prezenti Founder, previous Celo PG steward, web3 grant proposal writer
Celo Terminal: 0x208D1CCc4877366216F3c0aBc22F3008ed12A926

CristĂłbal Pereira GarretĂłn - cLATAM Lead.

Ronald Nzioki - Celo Africa DAO Program Manager

For more detail see our website: About us


Additional Support/Resources

For more details, visit: prezenti.xyz

See our past alumni here: Funded Projects

Grant program history and information: charmverse.prezenti.xyz

Our initial proposal: Reopening of the Celo Community Fund

Our second funding proposal: Prezenti follow-on funding request

Our third funding request (with Celo PG (2024)): Prezenti funding 2024 H1

Our forth funding request (with Celo PG (2024)): Prezenti funding 2024 H2

12 Likes

Seems like the team are managing the program well.

Excited to see what the eco-system looks like a couple of yrs.

Very much in support.

5 Likes

We believe that @Prezenti.grants is an important part of Celo Ecosystem growth. Continuing to fund Prezenti = continuing to fund the Celo builders ecosystem.

At Glo Dollar we received a Prezenti Growth Grant to expand Glo Dollar and sustainable public goods funding within the Celo ecosystem. This grant has helped us launch v1 of our Glo Dollar Liquidity Flywheel For Celo Public Goods, while strengthening stablecoin diversity, resilience, and overall ecosystem growth. By fostering Glo Dollar adoption through protocol integrations, ecosystem partnerships, and community engagement, we have boosted TVL, increased transactions, and accelerated Celo’s development, while driving funding back into the ecosystem.

We used our Prezenti Growth Grant to:

  • Scale to 775k+ transactions on Celo (at time of grant submission - we are currently at 812k+)
  • Kickstart our Our Celo Public Goods flywheel which drives TVL and liquidity on Celo and with Celo based tokens and projects.
  • Grow our marketcap on Celo to $1.7M
  • Increase our unique holders on Celo to 1.1K+
  • Donate over $10,000+ USDGLO to Celo Public Goods and Celo Public Goods projects, with more funding going back into the ecosystem every month.
  • 11 Celo dApp integrationsYou can dive deeper into our Celo impact metrics on our Glo Dollar Prezenti Grant Retrospective on the forum.

Thanks for the great work @Prezenti.grants - we’re in full support of this proposal!

4 Likes

I believe Prezenti plays a pivotal role in supporting developers in the Celo ecosystem.

At Ubeswap, we were able to build Ubestarter with the help of @Prezenti.grants (x.com)

These resources also helped us build the Ubeswap dashboard (x.com)

We completely support any future grant program funding by Prezenti and believe this is an ideal way to help integrate & build new projects on Celo.

Keep up the great work @Prezenti.grants :clap:

5 Likes

Thank you for your support!

2 Likes

Great to see lots of new things coming out of Ubeswap recently, thanks for the shoutout!

4 Likes

Supportive of Prezenti and feel this Season 0 proposal is the right scope. In favor.

5 Likes

Absolutely in favor of Season 0.

Prezenti is an integral part of BitGifty’s success story as they have supported us from the beginning.

Amazing work by the @Prezenti.grants team

1 Like

Thanks for all the comments guys! much appreciated.