This thread aims to consolidate recent discussion in the We Need to Talk about Governance and Mento Reserve: Returning Celo and suggest the start of a Governance Sprint in the coming six weeks to create guidelines for Governance and Treasury Management to submit for review to Celo Governance ahead of the Celo Layer 2 transition and start of the new year.
Background & Rationale
As the Celo Ecosystem grows and becomes more distributed, it’s essential to have clear Governance guidelines, an overarching strategy to guide us, and pathways for Celo contributors across the board to collaborate effectively.
The current processes are sub-optimal and don’t clarify various Governance and Community Fund budgeting aspects. The recent We Need to Talk About Governance thread highlights some of the current limitations, including but not limited to Improving proposal quality, Overall Transparency, and approachability, Strategic Use of Funds, and Democratization of Votes.
As we’re at a critical crossroads, moving to an L2 soon and slowly coming out of a bear market, now is the right moment to iterate on the Celo Ecosystem vision and processes.
Initiating a Governance Sprint
I propose starting a Governance Sprint led by a small working group that would spend the next 6weeks iterating with all Celo stakeholders on improved Governance and Community Treasury (Fund) guidelines to have a clear framework ready for voting in the second half of November to serve as a common ground for Celo’s development in 2024.
What the Governance Sprint would tackle:
A. Urgently Improving the overall governance process: providing clear pathways for the various areas of Governance, comparable to Three Pillars of Polygon or the Optimism Collective.
Phase 1: The sprint will map existing Celo Governance stakeholders and infrastructure. An overview and comparison of Governance frameworks will be created, and learnings will be harvested.
Deliverable: Public Notion Workspace documenting the learnings and takeaways
Est Duration: 2 weeks from the posting of this thread
Phase 2: Improved Governance guidelines will be developed and proposed to Celo Governance to formalize. The improved framework will be based on the insights gained in the first phase of this sprint, the Celo Vision, and the technical capabilities of Celo.
Deliverable: CGP outlining new Governance processes and related changes to critical Celo Resources (governance docs/website/tools) submitted to Celo Governance.
Est Duration: 4 weeks from the end of Phase 1
B. Improving Ecosystem Strategy guidelines and measurables: To guide resource allocation and reward positive actions (e.g. RPGF as implemented by Optimism).
Phase 1: Setting up accounting for the Community Treasury (Fund) and providing a framework and tools for sustainably allocating resources.
Deliverables: A publicly visible Community Fund Accounting dashboard, CGP proposing Resource Allocation and Community Fund operation Guidelines.
Est Duration: 4 Weeks from the posting of this thread
Phase 2: Analyze and propose the following claim from the Mento Reserve as voted on in CGP 102 to increase the Community Treasury (Fund) size in line with Mento Reserve stability and CELO liquidity.
Deliverables: CGP proposes a specific claim from the Mento Treasury to the Community Treasury (Fund).
Est Duration: 2 Weeks from posting the draft Resource Allocation and Community Fund CGP.
How the Working Group would operate:
The working group will consist of three members with diverse relationships with Celo and experience with creating functional governance processes and programs. Luuk Weber will lead the active group.
- Luuk Weber, Founder Kolektivo Labs
- Aaron Boyd, Founder Vladiator Labs and Director of Prezenti
- Lau Namu, Governor Her DAO Latam / OP Badge holder
The working group members will actively seek input from the Celo ecosystem through the following means:
- Updates and threads in the Celo Forum
- Weekly open office session (Suggested time: Thursday at 3 PM CET - Join first call here)
- Hosting Workshops around specific topics with relevant stakeholders
If you’re a Celo stakeholder who wants to play a more active role beyond giving input through the forum in this sprint, please comment on this thread or shoot us a DM with your email & TG handle!
Timeline
We aim to submit draft versions of our proposals and recommendations on the forum by early November.
We also plan to host a workshop space in the morning of November 14th, during DevConnect week, for in-person discussions.
After a final round of feedback and polishing, we aim to submit the final version of the framework for a vote by the second half of November.
Note
While we understand that six weeks is a relatively short timeframe for such a critical Governance sprint and acknowledge it will be challenging to pull in all voices and balancer input perfectly, we’ll do our best to synthesize all input and make practical and value-aligned recommendations. This working group aims to start living Governance of Celo, where more iterations will be made in 2024 as the Celo Ecosystem matures.
Regardless of these challenges, I believe the Celo Ecosystem will get stronger and more capable of leading the development of Regenerative Finance and realizing prosperity for all.
