CeLatam Venture Studio

Governance Governance Proposals
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Proposal Key Aspects

  • Receiver Entity: Celo Governance
  • Status: DRAFT
  • Title: CeLatam Venture studio
  • Author(s): CeLatam team
  • Type of Request: Funding
  • Funding Request: Return of 347K Celo and receive $220K cUSD instead

  1. Summary

When CeLatam was created, a venture studio was outlined as one of the initiatives it wanted to pursue. The approved budget in CGP 76 for this initiative was $280K, equivalent to 424K CELO at the time (the Celo price used for reference at the time was approximately $0.67).

Since then, the price of Celo has dropped to $0.3246 (moving average of the last 25 days). The DAO currency holds 347,676.89 Celo staked and 65K Celo deposited into Aave, that adds up to a total of 412676.89 Celo, equivalent to $133,954 at the time of writing.

In order to pursue the venture studio, without being exposed to Celo price fluctuations, we propose to return 347K Celo to the community fund and request $220K to guarantee the funding of the venture studio. Budget is reduced from the original number ($280K) to be mindful of current market conditions, with the philosophy of doing more with less. This is more than a 20% budget reduction, without counting for inflation.

Direct investment and/or no-strings-attached advisory will be given to startups focusing on LATAM that are already building, or have an intention to, build on Celo.

65K Celo will be kept for long-term incentive alignment with the Celo Community, to be deployed only after the budget in stables has run out. It will be used to vote on governance, stake for validators and provide liquidity on Celo, particularly on project focusing on Latam.

  1. Motivation

The DAO can not guarantee that the Venture Studio will be able to fulfill its originally stated goals, because the budget now it’s reduced significantly, exposed to Celo price fluctuations, and we believe it is a bad time to sell Celo to fund operations and investments. Instead, it makes more sense to use the cUSD available in the Community Fund (>2 million cUSD at the time of writing).

In contrast to creating a for-profit structure, the idea is to create a foundation/NGO/non-for-profit to advise and invest directly in LATAM startups building on Celo. The final legal structure will be defined after the funding is approved. Control of the new entity will be managed by a board composed of current CeLatam multisig signers, and this board can be rotated on request of Celo Governance or CeLatam. The board will not hold equity directly in startups, but operational teams will be entitled to fees and carry related to the investments or advisory they are involved in.

The remaining capital after an exit (discounting fees and carry) should be used to fund more startups, thus creating an ever-green, self-sustainable fund.

The DAO has been using the Celo it holds responsibly, by staking to elect validators (and thus getting rewards) and depositing it into Aave.

  1. Specification

The proposal will send 220K cUSD to the CeLatam DAO multisig (celo:0x38DBAB5C651F352C8f5F765fDA292E9B92d850Ff) and will execute a transferFrom taking 347K Celo from the DAO multisig. The multisig would have previously executed an approval so that Celo Governance can execute the transferFrom and everything can be executed atomically (in a single tx).

  1. Metrics and KPIs

Create a Web3 Venture Studio to launch the next gen of Web3 initiatives by: (i) helping expressive Web2 companies launch on Celo and (ii) nurturing native web3 initiatives.

Founders active on Celo community may play a joint role in this initiative: either by providing services, collaborating and/or other formats that we feel may further advance the Celo mission.

Countries and initiatives that are more mature and show product market fit will be prioritized. LatinAmerica is a vast region and while we have representatives of different countries and aim to further increase reach, initial actions will focus on more mature markets and initiatives.

Key metrics: scout and support 10 entrepreneurs building on Celo.

  1. Current Status

The DAO has been active since October 2023 with five team members that all have been involved for more than a year, and two since the very beginning.

The budget is ready to be executed. Legal advice has been received about the legal structures and jurisdictions to incorporate the venture studio in LATAM.

  1. Timeline and Milestones

The CeLatam team is ready to start executing this budget right away.

4 weeks since approval: legal vehicle ready to execute, and formal internal governance processes in place.

8 weeks since approval: actively advising two seed or pre-seed startups.

16 weeks since approval: two investments of at least $5K each deployed into two seed or pre-seed startups.

At a maximum of two years since approval: all investment capital deployed.

Long-term: upon exiting, return of capital or liquidity event, carry should be distributed to the team members involved at the time of engaging with the relevant startups, and the remained proceeds should be invested in a new batch of startups.

  1. Detailed Budget

Direct investments: $50K

No-strings-attached advisory: $50K

Marketing, events and sponsorship: $50K

Operations and team: $50K

Legal support: $20K

All numbers in USD.

  1. Payment Terms

CeLatam returns 347K Celo and receives $220K cUSD, executed atomically upon execution of this governance proposal.

  1. Team

CeLatam team: Susanne Zarpellon, Cristobal Pereira, Marcelo Silva, Gabriel Ribenboin, MartĂ­n Volpe

  1. Additional Support/Resources

Reports:

Season 0 (2023)

Season 1 H1 (1st Semester 2024)

Season 1 (2024)

Celo Incuba - 3 batches

Web3 Latin American Landscape Report

Hacking Growth in Latin America: Regenerative Finance, Real-World Assets, and Stablecoins

CeLatam’s Strategy in 2025

CeLatam’s Theory of Change

On behalf of the CeLatam team

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This reply intends to address the current and former leadership behind CeLatam and not necessarily @martinvol who seems to be a multisig signer in an advisory capacity.

To start off, I believe there’s crucial context missing, and I’d like to fill in some of the gaps through on-chain analysis, so the community can fairly assess this request.

CeLatam received 903K CELO on April 15, 2023, worth approximately $605K at the time of transfer. While technically this was an approval, the full amount was made available immediately at that moment in time. I’ll assume CeLatam’s treasury strategy was to retain the funds in CELO and draw down the approval over time.

It is also important to note that CeLatam’s multisig has been active nearly every month since its inception. The pattern of funds usage has been relatively consistent: withdraw CELO from the Community Fund, transfer it to an EOA, and then swap it on Mento for cUSD. The most recent such action suggests that CELO was locked and then gradually withdrawn and spent over time. At present, 374K CELO remains locked.

Based on transaction history, CeLatam has withdrawn CELO from the community fund across six separate transactions, and the combined USD value of CELO at the time of each withdrawal adds up to approximately $570K. From the perspective of community fund, it’s important to emphasize this point: once funds leave the Community Fund and enter a grantee’s custody, they are considered spent. How those funds are managed after is the responsibility of the recipient.

Yes, CELO has lost value since the initial proposal just as every holder has experienced. But that does not justify turning around and asking the community to compensate for that volatility. In fact, every grantee takes on some market risk when accepting CELO, and there’s nothing particularly unique about this case.

This proposal requests the return of 347K CELO in exchange for $220K in cUSD (The specification mentions $250k. Not sure which one is the correct value), valuing CELO at roughly $0.634 (The 1 month TWAP is hovering closer to $0.32). This is an absurd attempt to dump volatile assets back onto the community, at a valuation no one else in the market would accept (2x).

The team still held 500K CELO in January 2025, when they could have still been converted into $280K+. That window closed because of failure to act. Also, The venture studio was one of the core deliverables outlined 2 years ago. Why wasn’t it stood up earlier? Or should I say, as late as January 2025?

I appreciate CeLatam’s past contributions and the potential value of a venture studio. But this proposal sets a precedent that undermines transparency, fiscal discipline, and basic fairness. The community fund is not a convenient swap pool to turn to after what looks like a stream of poor decisions. I’m open to discussion, but the current framing of this proposal is financially unsound.

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Thanks for the heads up, the specification was wrong, I’ve just updated it.

To add context, CeLatam has not received any additional funding since the original 2023 proposal that I know of.

Once funds leave the Community Fund and enter a grantee’s custody, they are considered spent.

Regarding this, I want to emphasize this is your personal view and not necessarily the status quo. If I’m wrong, please send me the executed governance proposal where this is actually stated. You can also make a point that at the time of this proposal passing is considered spend (as Celo Governance in practice can not get it back without the multisig cooperating), or that it’s spent at the time of selling, because that is when liquidity is actually taken out of the market.

I guess we could have that theoretical discussion, but the reality is that now the budget is just not there, and the only way to materialize this vision would be by approving this proposal, or secure some other way to fill the gap.

But looking back, what would have been the alternative? Dumping it all to the market to guarantee the funding even if the team was not ready to execute? I think that sets a very bad precedent of expectation for people that receive funding in Celo, telling people that then they should dump it right away. I think that would have been a lot more harm than good if everyone operated like this.

This is an absurd attempt to dump volatile assets back onto the community , at a valuation no one else in the market would accept (2x).

I think it’s actually the opposite. This proposal is actually meant to avoid dumping Celo in the open markets, and thus making the asset less liquid for everyone else. It allows Celo Governance to spend Celo at a later time when the market impact will be a lot less significant.

Obviously, Celo Governance should not involved in trades. I think it is a mistake thinking about this as a trade, my simplified interpretation of this proposal would be instead: “We made sure to impact the Celo liquidity as little as possible, and because of that, we found ourselves in a situation where we need this funding to fulfil the goals confortably, and as an act of good-will, it makes more sense to return the Celo as well.”.

The team still held 500K CELO in January 2025, when they could have still been converted into $280K+. That window closed because of failure to act. Also, The venture studio was one of the core deliverables outlined 2 years ago. Why wasn’t it stood up earlier? Or should I say, as late as January 2025?

I fully see your point, in fact, I am personally not happy that CeLatam hasn’t been able to execute the budget related to the venture studio, and that is why I am trying to take a more active role now.

In January, the DAO pulled the funds to engage in staking to support validators based in Latam, and as you point out, it’s clear on-chain that the Celo has not been sold.

I appreciate CeLatam’s past contributions and the potential value of a venture studio. But this proposal sets a precedent that undermines transparency, fiscal discipline, and basic fairness . The community fund is not a convenient swap pool to turn to after what looks like a stream of poor decisions. I’m open to discussion, but the current framing of this proposal is financially unsound. I would also like to hear what the regional DAO committee has to say about this. I can see CeLatam has also received additional funding from that end as well.

I invite you to think about it from another angle. I really want to see this vision of having a venture studio focusing on Celo and Latam materialize, I think it will be of great value to the ecosystem. I could have just started this from scratch myself, and make a new proposal independent of CeLatam, in personal behalf. But I do believe in the importance of having an institution championing for Celo in LATAM, and I have full confidence on the current CeLatam team. At the end of the day, the Venture Studio we are proposing will be a public good, and not a private initiative.

I do not feel confortable sharing publicly why I think CeLatam found itself in this position, but I can say with confidence that now the main issue has been resolved, and I am doing everything I can to see CeLatam thrive.

All here is stated in personal behalf.

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You’re right, there is no explicit rule stating when funds are officially considered “spent” and I acknowledge that this is my personal interpretation. It would be valuable for Celo Governance to eventually clarify this ambiguity, perhaps even allowing for more flexibility in future frameworks.

I also do believe that there’s genuine value proposition here. The ultimate beneficiaries are the builders and communities in LATAM, and it would be unfortunate to see a potentially impactful initiative stall. Though I wonder if the community truly benefits if only 22% of the proposed budget is going directly towards investments? Anyways, I also appreciate your candidness and the acknowledgement of past inefficiencies that have eventually contributes to the current situation.

My main concern is the risk of setting a precedent that could seem unfair to other grantees and stakeholders who have weathered CELO’s volatility without seeking retroactive adjustments, Its not just a matter of goodwill, but also ensuring consistency, fiscal responsibility and fairness across the ecosystem.

I also hope the LATAM community feels confident that CeLatam (under its new leadership) is still the best suited entity to steward this vision. My role here is to provide accountability, not opposition. Ultimately trust from the community should be the deciding factor.

Thanks for clarifying. I’ll update my previous post.