Celo Africa Regional DAO Proposal

Governance Governance Proposals
21

Great work guys. Im excited to see CELO engage at the grassroot level. This will help us build a strong community and solid products that solve contextual challenges.

1 Like
22

Really love this proposal and very supportive of this direction for the Celo Ecosystem! I’m personally very optimistic about a future where Celo Foundation becomes a network of service DAOs that fulfill growth and maintenance functions of the protocol and report directly to the community.

I also think engaging at the grassroots level is the best path forward for our ecosystem, because the communities know best what is needed for their region and DAOs will give agency and resources to act on it.

However in order to make this truly successful and decentralized I think we need to be thinking about how will you operationalize this DAO to be an independent entity. I see a section for Ops but I’d like to see you expand on the on do you have an operational budget?

  • What are you planning to use to set up this DAO as a legal entity to be able to pay it’s contributors and comply with local law? Where will the DAO be incorporated?
  • What will you use to set up the multisig?
  • Is there a buffer for legal and compliance fees? Will you hire a separate agency to do due diligence on your grants?
  • Budget for a separate Docusign or other software that you’re planning to use to send agreements.

Love the experimentation with decentralized payments tools, but would love for you to expand how are you planning to use these?

Lastly, what is the thinking around gradual decentralization of this regional ecosystem growth in general, is there a plan in the future to fully transition Africa Eco Leads to be employed directly by the DAO instead of the Celo Foundation? As I understand this proposal is a joint effort between Foundation and community, with @Aliu being employed by Foundation and with ability to employ community members directly by the DAO. I think this is a great first step but how does the community feel about fully transitioning all members to be employed directly by the DAO in the future?

Edit: Wanted to clarify, the reason I ask this is I see a great parallel here to what has happened in other Foundations that decentralized to a DAO. The parallel is these regional DAOs take over functions that used to be performed by the Foundation and report on it to community directly. In this scenario, I see a network of DAOs all preforming different functions that teams at the Foundation used to preform but are now directly funded by the Protocol. While this is not the plan for this iteration of Africa DAO, I’m wondering if this is a direction you are looking to take down the line?

This is also a question to our Celo Community, is this a path we should explore as part of our Road to Decentralization?

3 Likes
23

This great i believe this whats’ needed for African adoption into the CELO ecosystem, I would to be involved on-boarding the SADC region, especially on Education initiatives & Dev studios for web 3

1 Like
24

Hi @annaalexa Thank you for your input!

  • As stated in the proposal we have set aside 10% of the total budget to pay people running the DAO except for myself who’s employed by the foundation.

  • We are planning to setup the DAO on XDAO, a multichain supported DAO that also has support for Celo

  • As we are still gathering feedback from the community, we are realising the needs to add a buffer for other additional running cost that may include platform cost and any other software that would be needed for the success of the DAO

  • Currently, the plan is to utilise the Celo Jura to cover all legal and compliance aspect (We welcome additional feedback on this)

  • While this is a great first step in using the DAO to decentralise the Africa ecosystem, we still have a lot of learning process in order to take steps forward to fully decentralise the region activities. To start with, we have provided buffer for 2 ambassadors to be paid by this DAO while we take the chance to learn and grow from the experience it will give us at the end.

3 Likes
25

Hi @Aliu,

I like the above. For the upcoming LatAm DAO the approach is also asking for a grant to Celo Jura for legal and compliance advice and services, relying the decision-making process to the community+DAO+legal experts chosen to help structure.

Hi @annaalexa,

I understand how the idea of several “service DAOs” w/ “employees” was the method chosen by different Foundations to explore new models of organizing their grant activities. The idea of eventually reaching a level where “Foundations” do not exist (irrespective of the path) is super interesting to me, and the broader perspective of automated systems, societies, orgs (…) is what brought me to Blockchain in the first place. So super interested in seeing this concept evolve and flourish in different levels.

But I think the case at hand may be different from what your comments outline above, and extremely interesting as ignites a community-led DAO operating on a grassroots level (listening and acting closer to the local community), not as a way to render “services”, but rather to allow for learning and building opportunities closer to the community. I think more in the lines of allowing for “public goods” to be created rather than rendering XYZ services. I also don’t think that the DAO should necessarily have employees – but this is a longer conversation that may be impacted by different factors (organizational to legal and budgetary). As I am external to African ecosystem would rely on the local experts + community to design, test and implement the best structure.

As we have discussed in open forums, LatAm DAO proposal is coming shortly with the approach above in mind: how to empower local communities in a grassroots level and with agile formats – and in local languages.

2 Likes
26

DAOs offer a more vanila method of reaching people on the ground. This proposal looks good.

3 Likes
27

Great initiative! I fully agree on the potential of empowering communities. Have you thought about governance<>sustainability? I would reinforce the roadmap related to bringing businesses to web3 through the Dev Studio. Powerful idea.

3 Likes
28

Hi Mila! Totally agree that we are at an early stage of decentralization.
I simply believe that everything we do should be in service of the community. Which is different than being a service DAO, which makes it sound transactional. And I believe regional DAO’s should be serving the needs of the community.

5 Likes
29

Totally agreed. And I think this proposal nails it.

1 Like
30

this great initiative to see - watching with interest as to how things shape up!

1 Like
31

Nice!

Which are these?

32

Just catching up on this thread here and really appreciate @annaalexa’s long-term sustainability questions. Also she has a great callout for the need for an administrator/ops role within the DAO. While Celo Jura helps to support legal set up and as needed legal assistance, I agree that the DAO should explore how it plans to run it’s own DD, sending agreements etc.

I’d be curious to hear from @nirvaan who recently went through this process with Climate Collective. Do you have any areas that you think the Africa DAO team should focus in on while planning/setting up?

2 Likes
33

Agreed with points from @annaalexa and @masha - I’d mainly add considerations for a “fiscal host” that allows DAOs/communities/admins to easily file expenses/reimbursements and convert back and forth from Celo-based assets to local currencies. We’ve found this particularly important when organizing events with fiat-based vendors as proposed, as highlighted by AllForClimateDAO.

I’d also like to see a metric of “community hires” eg. how many facilitators/advisors in the n+1th hackathon participated in the nth hackathon? How many participants in education workshops become devrel/ambassadors?

Overall I fully support this proposal!

2 Likes
34

Hey @Aliu, if you’d like to discuss in this month’s governance call on Thursday, feel free to add a comment here: Celo Governance Call #22 | September 22nd, 2022 · Issue #169 · celo-org/governance · GitHub

1 Like
35

Excited to see how we can support more founders across Africa. I’m also supportive of how we can create DAOs that more directly engage with and build ecosystems around the world. A grassroots approach is needed led by people familiar with the local conditions.

I also agree with @annaalexa raising the question on operations and how to make sure this initiative is successful. Similarly, I’d like to get more clarity and info on the strategy, roadmap, intention, and plan for success, but are operating with intention so that this results in strong project development and use cases. A few key items:

  • Funding hackathon projects: Hackathons are a good way to find developers and you note that you’re hoping to get VC funding for participants. Could you clarify how many VC funds you’re looking to partner with, funds who have committed, and roughly how much capital you’ll be looking to pull together? Do you also anticipate supporting builders with their pitch decks or do you anticipate that this will be on them?
  • Scaling hackathon projects: For hackathons to be successful you’ll need to ensure that participants have a good roadmap for growth. You note VCs but a second piece that might be helpful are finding (1) strong developers you can build out their own position; (2) bringing in traditional partners who would utilize the tech being built by hackathon participants; and (3) mentors who can support founders. Is there a plan for how to ensure projects scale and grow? I know @jason has also had to think a lot about this from the Celo Camp perspective.
  • Operating team: Is 5-10 hours per month enough time to support this? I imagine there’s a lot to do here including business development (builders, funders, and web2 partners) and helping projects scale. Also curious on how the hourly cost is higher than the hourly cost for devs.
  • Web3 studio for web2 partners: Related to the bullet above, will you all be identifying top tier partners to help onboard and scale web2 solutions? Do you have any sample partners already and what’s your plan for bringing in new partners. Additionally, will bringing web2 partners require a substantial project management and strategy lift—this has often been the case. If so, who will be doing this full time and how many hours will be devoted to this?
  • Reporting: Love the transparency. It may be helpful to add additional info from the ones you noted including details on the projects in the pipeline and their status updates so that we also have an idea of the likelihood of success of the projects and developers from this initiative. Number of developers is somewhat helpful but not a real metric since it doesn’t indicate how strong the projects actually are. There should be a mechanism for people to know more on project quality.
5 Likes
36

Hello again to the awesome Celo Community! It’s been 2 months since we posted our first proposal for your review and comments. We appreciate all your suggestions and reviews. For the comments we are unable to respond to yet, we promise to do so!

We are here again with a careful review of the proposal, taking into consideration your suggestions and community needs. Please read through and again, do well to let us know your opinion at the governance call.

Goal

Our goal is to drive and create opportunities for web3 adoption across Africa through different lined up strategies, including dev workshop, community events and builders growth support on Celo blockchain for the most passionate developers, founders and creators to Grow the adoption of web 3 technology in Africa.

Celo has one of the most global communities in crypto. In order to further expand decentralization and the localization of the protocol in different regions and cultures, we would love to empower local communities to lead local growth. We believe that folks on the ground are the most equipped to do this and that a grassroots approach will benefit the growth of Celo and its community.

Amount Requested

$1.1M worth of CELO for Africa.

Areas of Focus

Focus Area 1: Attract emerging Web3 talent locally by focusing on local hackathons.

The primary objective is to support individuals and projects that are interested in building on Celo. We envision successful projects going on to receive funding from Celo Ecosystem.

Description Cost
Prizes (20k, 10k 5k x4) X2 $100,000
Venue & Food (Dinner/Lunch) X2 $ 20,000
Media & Promotion X2 $ 10,000
Technical Ambassador X5 for 12 Months $90,000 *
Platform & Administration (Gitcoin) X2 $20,000
X2 hackathon per year $240,000
  • Success Metrics:
    • 2 hackathon in Africa

    • 100 hackathon participants in total per each hackathon

    • 30 submissions per each hackathon

    • Local Demo Day held a quarter with Top VCs scouts invited to attend.
    • Goal: VC funding for 1-3 projects per each hackathon

Focus Area 2: Local Education

Help onboard new developers and guide them through the ecosystem.

Description Cost
Venue & Food (5 countries) $60,000
Marketing, Promotion, Gifts and Swags $12,000
Community Ambassador X5 $72,000 *
Total $144,000
  • Success metrics after 6 months:
    • 500 Participants (80 active participants per month)
    • 100 downloads of Contract Kit
    • 300 downloads of Celo Wallets
    • 350 new followers on social media

Focus Area 3: Local Web3 Dev Studio

Create a Web3 Dev Studio to help onboard successful Web2 projects that would like to make the transition to Web3. Help onboard projects through developer support
# Dev Hours 2000
$ Dev Hour 80
Total $160,000
  • Success Metrics:
    • 5 Web3 Dev Studio Participants across the region
    • 100% Project Conversion Rate to Celo
    • 3 Projects converted to web3 with volume >$1M

Focus Area 4: Building Market Awareness and Brand Positioning through content distribution.

Build our community locally and on the ground. This includes translation of ecosystem news into local languages. Hosting Twitter spaces and local AMAs. Educating the community on projects in the ecosystem and programs.

Description Cost
Content (Ambassador) $72,000
Swags/Paid Ads/Rewards $12,000
X 12 months $84,000
  • Success Metrics
    • 1 Twitter Spaces per Week
    • 4 Social Posts (Instagram, TikTok, Twitter) per Week
    • Monthly community recap forum post
    • 1 Community Meetup per Month per active market (see above for event estimates)
    • Ongoing management of local communication channels

Focus Area 5: Building Market Awareness and Brand Positioning through external events and Agency

The goal is to sponsor mission aligned events and paid agency communications to reach more founders and builders community members across Africa.

Description Cost
Event Sponsorship x6 $60,000
PR /Comms $25,000
Swags and branding $12,000
Total $97,000

Success Metric:

  • Over 1200 participants reach
  • Over 10 new partners who joins the Regional Alliance
  • Over 60 developers from technical workshops at the events.
  • Over 500k impressions across all PRs put out for the events

Focus Area 6: University Outreach

Help onboard community builders and new developers across universities and guide them through the ecosystem.

Description Cost
Venue & Food $60,000
Marketing, Promotion, Gifts and Swags $12,000
University Ambassador for 12 months $72,000 *
Total $144,000
  • Success metrics after 6 months:
    • 500 Participants (100 active participants per month)
    • 100 downloads of Contract Kit
    • 300 downloads of Celo Wallets
    • 350 new followers on social media

Focus Area 7: Junior Developer Network

Help onboard community builders and mentor new developers across universities, developer communities across Sub-Saharan Africa, including North Africa, through workshops.

Description Cost
15 Junior Developer Ambassadors $90,000
Total $90,000

  • Success metrics after 6 months:

    • 30 Technical Workshops targeting over 300 active developers.
    • 60 Technical articles targeting over 500 developers.

  • Multisig holders payment - $54,000

  • Operational cost (including legal, Tooling, Administrative fees and other miscellaneous etc) - $87,000

Transparency & Progress

We commit to posting monthly updates on our progress. We plan to measure success by developing a set of reports that we will share quarterly tracking the progress of:

  • Community members over time
  • #Active Developers over time
  • #Projects submitted in the end of the hackathon
  • #Successful project launched from the DAO

Reports will be shared in the forum.

Useful Links

Structure & Mult-Sig

Role Name Multisig
Local Developer Relations TBC
Local Marketing & Social Noah Baalessanvu
Local Event Lead Chimezie Chuta
Local Business Development Aliu Musa

Compensation

  • Equivalent $100 worth of CELO per Hour, expectation is 10-15 hours per month
  • Less than 10% of overall budget should go towards compensation (capped at $54K WORTH of Celo )
  • Regional Eco Leads will waive compensation since they are employed by Foundation

Regional DAO Operations

1 Like
37

Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda and South Africa and of course every other countries we could touch.

4 Likes
38

Excited to see a proposal like this! I will keep my feedback focused on what I think are areas for improvement (most notably, cost controls):

  • You increased proposal by 2x from ~$500K to $1M and went from 4 to 7 focus areas. I would encourage the opposite (fewer focus areas, smaller ask)
    • 7 focus area = lack of focus imo
  • $120K per hackathon is pretty liberal spending imo
    • Example: we held a 3-day hackathon in Berkeley CA and it cost $39K total:
      • $20k prizes ($10k, $5K, $3K, $1K X2)
      • $2k food (3 days)
      • $17k for a 10,000 sqft coworking space near UC Berkeley campus (3 days)
      • This resulted in 21 project submission from in-person participants (50+ students)
    • I would imagine your costs would be notably lower in Africa compared to Berkeley, CA.
    • Imo your prize amounts are way too high; consider doing the prize breakdown we did (it worked well…I would maybe even make the $10K prize $7K and add some smaller $200-$500 prizes)
    • It is not clear why additional technical ambassadors need to be hired (Celo org has hackathon / dev rel support teams, right?)
  • $80/hr for a local dev studio seems a bit high, unless it includes more than 1 dev at that price.
  • $100/hr — I hope this is spread across multiple leads? If this is per person, I would be strongly against this (as I was with the original Celo Community Fund proposal)

If properly amended for cost controls, this could be a great template for others teams to follow in other regions.

8 Likes
39

I am also excited to see this proposal getting traction and attention from the broad community, and I’d like to offer my comments.

  • I find it very interesting that we are discussing at least three similar proposals in nature that aim to decentralize ecosystem growth activities in three regions of interest (Africa, India, and Latam). I would love for these three teams to create an open space to discuss their goals and find opportunities to collaborate, at least at the level of funding requests, shared transparency, and accountability.

  • I want to second @0xhuman thoughts. I think the proposal’s funding request is very high, and the focus is sparse. I would encourage reducing the focus areas and the funding ask.

  • My main concern is the team’s short experience working together as a DAO/organization. My suggestion again is to reduce the scope of the proposal, and the funding request, and to show evidence of completion before a consecutive proposal

  • I also want to echo @annaalexa thoughts on supporting this DAO to become independent. For that, I would like to see the other members of the multisig present in the conversation. I really appreciate @Aliu’s leadership here, and to me, it is really valuable that Regional Ecosystem Leads are part of DAOs to bridge decentralization efforts with Foundation goals. However, we need to make an effort to develop leadership outside the Foundation orbit. This is also a good moment to raise the issue of the lack of female and non-binary representation in the multisig.

7 Likes
40

Similar to my comments for Latam. I am in support of this. However let’s not just focus on builders. We should also leverage protocoals that are already in Celo and can help power communities

3 Likes