Celo Developer Relations 2024 Report

Developers
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Celo Developer Relations 2024 Report

Hi Celo Community!

Sophia, Lena, and Viral here from the Celo Foundation DevRel team. As 2024 comes to an end, we’re excited to share with the community an overview of what we accomplished and learned along the way.

First, a big thank you to Anna, Daniel, and Eric for all of your incredible work in the DevRel team! We wouldn’t be where we are today without all of you.

A Year In Review

In 2024, the DevRel team grew our global developer community and strengthened our builders funnel. We started the year organizing hackathons and workshops around the world, and evolved to supporting apps on MiniPay, promoting open-source contributions, and improving our developer resources. Throughout the year, we continued to support builders at every stage of their Celo journey!

Kickstarting the Year with Hackathons

The year began with a focus on engaging builders through hackathons and events. We continued our “Build With Celo” online hackathons series, participated in numerous ETHGlobal in-person hackathons, collaborated with regional DAOs, and supported projects to build for MiniPay. Key highlights include:

  • 11 Hackathons (7 IRL, 4 Online) engaging over 900 participants and 314 submitted projects.
  • Represented Celo in 17 in-person talks, 47 online workshops, and 8 Twitter Spaces.
  • Collaborated with DAOs like Celo Africa DAO and organizations like Iceaddis to strengthen the builder ecosystem amongst regional hubs.
  • 44% of hackathon winners stayed active, with 7 teams entering Celo Camp, and 5 teams securing Prezenti grants or launching on MiniPay.

Using Data to Build Community

We introduced OpenQ and Lemonade Social to track on- and off-chain metrics, giving us actionable insights into the ecosystem. These tools improved our ongoing engagement strategy and support for long-term contributors.

  • 80% of teams we engaged with post-hackathon kept building, contributing to a 34% increase in monthly active builders.
  • 718 Builders registered for Celo Developer events, 62 events created, and 700+ Collectibles distributed on Lemonade Social.
  • Grew the CeloDevs X account to over 10.2k followers with most of our new followers coming from Nigeria, Kenya, United States, and India.

Advancing Developer Resources

As the L2 migration approached, our team shifted focus to updating and expanding our developer resources. The Build for 5 Million initiative was spearheaded to support targeted MiniPay apps in scaling transaction throughput. Additionally, we rehauled our documentation, advanced the capabilities of Celo Composer CLI, developed starter kits, onboarded new tooling, and supported partners with integrations.

  • 4,000 downloads of Celo Composer CLI
  • 3 new starter kit templates for MiniPay, Valora, and Social Connect – with the Social Connect starter template reducing setup time from 5-6 hours to 5 minutes.
  • Supported 5 key projects to scale their DApps on MiniPay through strategic technical support.
  • Collaborated with 4 infrastructure partners (Thirdweb, Goldsky, Chainlink, and Olas) to produce technical content.

Championing Open Source

Open source contributions proved to be essential for providing data-driven insights, reputation, and streamlining funding for builders. To strengthen open-source engagement, we piloted the Scouts Game, a program to promote continuous active contributions on Celo.

  • 8 ecosystem projects participated, including GoodDollar, Ubeswap, Gitcoin, Valora, GloDollar, Capsule and Celo.
  • 700 builders registered and 20 PRs were successfully merged.

Welcoming Sophia to the Team

This summer, the team welcomed Sophia as the new DevRel Engineering Lead. With her prior experience developing Public Goods Network, one of the first Superchain L2s, she brings a passion for advancing real world use cases, growing open-source collaboration, and supporting a global community of developers building on Celo.

Insights & Learnings

Traveling to various conferences and events gave us the opportunity to connect in person with builders on the ground. We conducted interviews with over 40 Celo ecosystem builders across Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, South Africa, Warsaw, and Bangkok to gather feedback and improve the developer experience. Key insights revealed:

  • Personal Connections Matter: Builders often join the ecosystem through personal connections, learning about Celo from someone they already trust and admire. Supporting individuals to champion the ecosystem and share their personal stories helps attract more builders. We are lucky to have valued community members (such as Jordan, Pablo, and more) represent Celo in their respective communities.

  • Narrative Attracts Builders: The Crypto Is Useless* campaign at Devcon solidified the narrative that Celo is the chain to build apps for real world use cases, resulting in higher-quality submissions and attracting mission-aligned developers.

  • Collaboration is Key: We all have the same goal. Working closer together with Regional DAOs, accelerator programs, and ecosystem partners can help us move faster and expand reach. This was demonstrated by the BWC mentorship program, where builders helped one another with answering support questions, product feedback, leading local code jams, and more!

  • Consistency Builds Trust: Our long-term collaboration with builders in Africa (shoutout to Celo Africa DAO) helped create a thriving community and foundation of trust.

  • Funding Drives Growth: Engagement is built through consistent and regular funding opportunities. These include bounties, onchain badges, retroactive funding rounds, grant programs, etc., create a culture of build and get rewarded.

  • Build in Public: Community testing and activation campaigns significantly improved the quality of products and adoption.

  • Track Reputation Onchain: The more data-driven insights we can gather, the better we can reward. Tracking activity like transaction volume, POAPs, and attestations helps identify and reward the most active contributors.

  • Experimentation is Essential: Builders thrive on exploring new technologies. Providing quickstarts for new tech, like AI agents, encourages innovation and keeps Celo at the forefront of future-focused development.

Our Asks

Join the builder community – and encourage your friends to do so as well :slight_smile:

We want your feedback to keep improving! Whether its an infra request, clearer documentation, or new areas of experimentation, let us know:

Big Thanks!

Thank you for building on Celo, for your involvement in the community, and for supporting each other’s projects. Celo wouldn’t be the same without all of you. We are so grateful for everyone in the Celo ecosystem and look forward to all that’s to come!

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