Celo IndiaDAO (Regional DAO) Proposal

Hi @Chitty, if you’d like to discuss this proposal 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

Thank you @Chitty. Can you please elaborate how will you measure success of your initiatives? And what is the time frame of this proposal? How will you report on these initiatives to the community?

How will you determine which conferences to sponsor and what is the ROI of the sponsorship?

What is the goal of the workshops and training programs? Who is the audience, how will this impact # of active developers, # of users, # of projects built in the Celo Ecosystem? What are the costs associated with running these workshops and how is the 200k budget allocated.

This number seems high for what I’ve seen allocated to swag in other proposals, what is the NFT cost related to this?

Would love some clarity on what these two points represent.

I’m very supportive of regional DAOs but I would love to see more of a comprehensive strategy for how you plan to develop the grassroots ecosystem in India and how the different verticals you proposed in this budget fit together.

Hey @chitty @Shaun @annaalexa @olarte , thought I could share an idea, which I think would be very useful to promote community initiatives for Celo at the grassroots across different states throughout the country, which can also run in parallel with the University Guild Program in India.
We can have an advocate groups across the country to elect student/community advocates across various states in the country, on a voluntary basis. The enthusiastic advocates can be onboarded to the program via an interview

These advocates mostly students, would be responsible for holding community meetups at the grassroots at prominent locations in their respective states, to promote community education about blockchain, smart contracts, mobile dApps, Celo and its mission. Every meetup would have a different agenda, and people from local communities would gather at the decided location to network, brainstorm and learn during a happy hour, once a month or once every two months.

Maybe we can talk about community developments happening in Celo, discuss ideas and reach out to participants building at ongoing Celo hackathons and guide them, provide ideas, and solve problems. In a similar program in Goa, India, I have noticed that the attendees come from different backgrounds, finance, real-estate, law, blockchain, schools, academia, startups, community, DAOs, NGOs and so on. These small steps continue to evolve and people start developing genuine interest and contribute.

4 Likes

@lopeselio this is a great idea! We have been working on something similar to this to develop an Advocates and Meet Up program, I would love to brainstorm with you how we can make this a success! Let’s set a call to brainstorm to make it happen. I’d love to help support you to lead a student advocate network in India!

2 Likes

Definitely, yes, I think it can be a good initiative and I am open to chat!

“Apologies for posting the updated proposal as a new thread. We meant to post it on this thread itself.
The updated proposal is as below:”

Hey everyone :smiley:,
I am putting forward our updated proposal, based on the feedback and suggestions from the Celo community. As a team, who have been active part of the Celo founders, developers and community ecosystem, we aim to strategise through a 3 month pilot program. We believe that through small initiatives at the community grassroots levels, we will significantly create a big difference and help us to achieve our long-term vision in the country. @annaalexa @willkraft @olarte

CELO INDIA DAO Proposal


A group of us that currently work as a part of Celo’s ecosystem and believe in its huge potential, have joined forces to **snowball Celo’s adoption in India*. With extensive experience of both Celo and India, our team is designing a framework to discuss with the Celo community our strategies to establish Celo in the 6th largest economy in the world. It is estimated that there are *115 million crypto-users in India, alone.

This regional DAO will aim to achieve these goals:

  1. Rapidly establish a presence for Celo’s ecosystem in India through local builders, crypto-user networks, financial institutes, tech companies, academic institutes and social impact interventions.
  2. Onboard and inform Indian builders, funders and crypto-enthusiasts, at large, to Celo blockchain.
  3. To expand and grow the Celo community in India using educational tools about Blockchain technology, Celo’s ecosystem and projects, and support the innovation of new projects that are in line with Celo’s mission.

CELO’s vision of ‘Prosperity for all’ and its position as a ‘mobile first’ blockchain makes it a perfect fit for India: an emerging market where nearly everyone has a mobile phone but does not have access to financial aid and inclusivity.

  • Students in India often lack blockchain knowledge and skills despite the presence of over 50,000 higher education colleges across the country.
  • Celo India DAO aims to bridge this gap with a data-centric and community-participation model.
  • The DAO will engage youth communities directly and inspire them to innovate in the CELO ecosystem, as well as, support them in their innovations by mediating with relevant Celo community members.

A DAO in India is best positioned to equip the talented and tech-immersed Indian community with blockchain skills and inspire them to create web3 applications employing the use of Celo blockchain, CELO, cUSD and interact with our blockchain.


Amount Requested:

Annual Budget: $200K worth of CELO
Reporting Success Metrics: Quarterly


Areas of Focus:

Focus Area 1:

Builder/Developer Growth

A) Hackathons:
The objective is to attract and retain individuals and projects that are interested in building on Celo. The aim is to help initiate and then support successful projects through funding and training.

Description Cost
Prizes ($7k, $5K, $3K, $2K,1k x 3) $20,000
Venue $8,000
Food (Dinner/Lunch x 3days x 100) $5,000
Media & Promotion $3,000
Platform & Administration $4,000
Total per Hackathon $40,000
X2 Hackathons per Year $80,000
Extras (extra hands/eventualities) $5,000
Total $85,000

Success Metrics:

→ 50 - 100 hackathon participants per each hackathon
→ 30 submissions per hackathon
→ Local Demo Day held with local VCs scouts invited to attend.
→ Goal: Explore partnerships with regional VCs/funds/equity-free grants in India, funding for promising projects per each hackathon and also encouraging startups to participate in Celo web3 incubator programs, like Celo Camp web3 accelerator by Upright.



Focus Area 2: User & Community Growth

A) Building Market and Brand Awareness

  • The objective is to build and expand our local communities. 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.
  • Creation and promotion of Celo India social media presence on all crypto relevant platforms: Twitter/ Telegram/ Instagram etc. Regular online events such as AMAs, spaces, talks will be carried out to engage and expand the communities.
  • Collaborating with local personalities that have a strong voice in the industry to attract more users/developers to Celo. Sharing the latest news/developments in the ecosystem and showcasing local and other new projects building on Celo to maximize exposure and visibility.
Description Cost
Content Coordinator Stipend $400
Content Creation $300
Paid Ads/Rewards $100
Total (X 12 months) $9,600


B) Community Meetups 🤝 Celo India Advocates Program

The objective is to help increase the Adoption of Celo among crypto enthusiasts through organizing regular meetups & events in collaboration with other local event organizers if needed.

  • This would involve hosting meetups, airdrops, workshops, etc., on a regular basis.
  • The meetups would be a great platform to network & collaborate with other crypto enthusiasts.
  • The regional advocates appointed would be responsible and accountable for execution and recording results.

Celo India Advocates Program

The Celo India Advocates program will establish the foundations for meetups across major cities through a dedicated student network.

Currently, we are proposing holding meetups & growing communities for 10 major regions in India.

We envision the program to go hand in hand with the Celo University Guild Program, initiative in India, previously introduced by the Celo Foundation earlier, in the year, where advocates belonging to the earmarked regions are also able to participate in college events, meetups, and roadshows that take place across campuses in the region, and help with logistics.

To start with, we will try to set up a network of student advocates from these regions, so that they can lead initiatives for these local meetups.

  • Kochi (Kerala)
  • Chennai (Tamil Nadu)
  • Bangalore (Karnataka)
  • Panjim (Goa)
  • Mumbai (Maharashtra)
  • Hyderabad (Telangana/Andhra Pradesh)
  • Ahmedabad (Gujarat)
  • Delhi (Delhi)
  • Jaipur (Rajasthan)
  • Kolkata (Bengal)

The process:

  1. The advocates network will be set up by the stewards of the DAO, through a process of online interviews, after shortlisting a list of candidates selected earlier using typeforms.
  2. The advocates will majorly be college youth community members from these local communities, with previous experiences in managing student communities in colleges on campus (Google Developer Groups, Facebook Developer Circles, ACM, IEEE), previously volunteered to conduct community/NGO/meetups initiatives.
  3. These advocates will be responsible for local event management, and requesting the necessary logistics, & invoicing which will be presented to the stewards for every meetup.
  4. India has a vibrant student community actively doing state wise meetups, for major tech groups. We seek strategic partnerships with these communities so that we can reach out to a wider audience and make impact at the grassroots level.

Local regional meetups groups, will include the following activities:

  1. Presentations of most happenings in the Celo ecosystem.
  2. Onboarding participants to Valora and other projects in the ecosystem through a referral program.
    Inviting local founders in the ecosystem to discuss what they are building and why they are building on Celo. (ImpactMarket, Swap Bitssa, IntoTheVerse, DappLooker)
  3. Mentorships for student communities (local workshops, roadshows – where the advocates take on a small stack - like React Celo, or Celo Composer, Contract-Kit and teach budding developers in these communities to build dApps, and projects.
  4. Developing Web2xWeb3 synergies - communities exchange ideas on how web3 stack can aid problems faced in web2 stack
  5. Local Developer Communities do a demo of their projects and explain the working of Celo and all information related to Celo Devrel. Also discuss ideas and problem statements provided in regional and international Celo hackathons.
  6. Networking and seeking opportunities in the ecosystem
  7. Watch Parties for major Celo Conferences like Celo Connect
  8. Collaborations sought with other web3 communities active in various parts of India, like Polygon Advocates, PuneDAO, Solana India, Buildspace India, and LearnWeb3DAO India.
  9. Periodic Newsletters related to major events, and news in the Celo ecosystem translated to local languages.
Regional Celo Advocate stipend (10 advocates x $100 per meetup) $5,000
Max Expectations:
(5 meetups/region per year, total 50 meetups per year across all regions)
One-time Shipping cost for 2 Celo Standees each for 10 regions, (which are to be kept for every community meetup) $600
Total $5,600



Community Meetup Cost
Description Cost
Venue (preferably screen & AV setup) $100
Marketing and Promotion

(inc. shipping Celo standees/banners/misc. To every region)

$50
Food (Dinner or Lunch) $350
Celo Wallet Registration Onboard Bonus/ Loyalty SWAG $200
One meetup cost: $700
TOTAL x 50 meetups $35,000


Success Metrics:

→ Onboard 3-5 new members each meetup each region - (Valora wallet, Node Wallet registration)
30-50 participants expected per meetup
→ 40+ Members onboarded to the community - 750+ Members end of 12 months across India
→ 100% new followers on social media
→ Cross community collaborations and partnerships for future meetups.
→ Onboarding people from traditional web2 space, professions to web3 space.

Structure & Mult-Sig

Role Name Multisig
Community lead, Training & Research Chitty Babu
Marketing and Business Development Shaun
Technical Development and Developer Relationships Elio Jordan Lopes
Program Coordination and Impact Reporting Avina Ajit
UX Design and Research Nikki
TBD Aswini Nunna TBD

Compensation ----------------------------------------------------------------------- TOTAL
(Equivalent $1000 worth of cUSD per month). ------------------------------> $60,000

Travel/Housing Allowance : -------------------------------------------------------> $4,800

This is the link for kuneco presentation

Thank you for the opportunity to present at kuneco

2 Likes

Great presentation by Avina :grinning:

2 Likes

Hi, I was Yesterday on the Kuneco call and I didn’t fully understand all the drama around the 2 different Celo India DAO, can please both @Chitty and @Monish016 (I think was you the other proposer) give to the community more explanation about it? Thanks

4 Likes

It was really great presenting at the last kuneco to some super cool people in our community! I strongly believe a DAO like can be a powerful tool in India. I’m excited to hear about what the community thinks of it. :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Hey everyone, below is a brief history of our Multi Sig Members:

Chitty Babu @Chitty : Involved with Celo since Jun 2021; Founding member of Blockcash that participated in Celo Camp and also Won the first prize in devpost Celo mobile Hackathaon and also represented Celo as an ambassador and local educator.

Shaun Joseph @Shaun : Growth Lead at SwapBitssa - a Celo native stable coin to fiat offramp launched out of Celo Camp 4. Worked closely with rural communities to help the operations of ImpactMarket in India also represented Celo as an ambassador for India between Jan2022 - Jul2022. An active member in the Celo India Ecosystem.

Elio Lopez @lopeselio : Elio, CEO of IntoTheVerse Inc. started his web3 journey as one of the ten students from India at the celo india fellowship. Thereafter he contributed to engage with the celo community, delivering technical workshops on Celo at YBlockchain Tech Summit. On his building journey, he was part of Celo camp batch 4, and also graduated as winner of Celo camp gaming track, and make crypto mobile hackathon. Since then he has been building his project as a company and as a founder in the Celo and Flori ecosystem. An active member of the Celo ecosystem, who has attended Celo Connect Barcelona and is always looking for ways to contribute to the Ecosystem.

Avina Ajit @Avina : Inspired and involved in the introduction of Blockchain UBI to over 6000 refugees in Ghana and Kenya, and later joined ImpactMarket as a Country ambassador for India and now have been promoted to as Impact measurement lead. Also very involved with local NGO work and an active promoter of ReFi initiatives in the region.

Nikki @barracuda : UI/UX designer for KreskoFi, an open platform for synthetic stocks, commodities, and crypto on the Celo Blockchain.

3 Likes

Thank you for the opportunity to present in the governance call, and for all questions and feedback.

2 Likes

Exciting proposal! :slight_smile:

  • Lot of blockchain talent in India and Celo will be a stepping stone for many of them. Shaping the future and transitioning India into Web3.
  • Celo is accessible to anyone with a mobile phone with a possible Gpay like impact on the country.
  • Encouraging businesses and consumers to adapt to this ecosystem where they get incentivized/rewarded for participating and where they can earn through staking and other earning mechanisms.
3 Likes

Go team! You’ll are working towards a better future.

Keep it up :clap:t4: :star:

3 Likes

Hey everyone, we are pleased to say that we have completed the PR submission. Taking into account the feedback from the governance call, there were a few revisions made that are detailed below:
@annaalexa @willkraft @olarte

PR - Name changed from “CGP - 0064P” to " CGP - 0064"

Hackathons - We’ve decided on hosting 1 hackathon this year instead of 2, and reduced the prize amount from $20,000 to $10,000. This event would be executed in Q3 - Q4 of the year, after adequately promoting Celo in the first 2 quarters and building a strong presence and engaging community. The structure of the event would involve two days of the actual hackathon and one conference day where speakers would share information and education on Celo blockchain.

Budget - We are proposing a quarterly budget of $36.25k; totaling $145k annually. Reporting will be done quarterly as well. The first quarter is proposed as a pilot program so we can gauge viability and make budget changes as needed.

Below is the complete revised budget as submitted onchain:

CELO INDIA DAO Proposal


A group of us that currently work as a part of Celo’s ecosystem and believe in its huge potential, have joined forces to snowball Celo’s adoption in India. With extensive experience of both Celo and India, our team is designing a framework to discuss with the Celo community our strategies to establish Celo in the 6th largest economy in the world. It is estimated that there are 115 million crypto-users in India, alone.

This regional DAO will aim to achieve these goals:

  1. Rapidly establish a presence for Celo’s ecosystem in India through local builders, crypto-user networks, financial institutes, tech companies, academic institutes and social impact interventions.
  2. Onboard and inform Indian builders, funders and crypto-enthusiasts, at large, to Celo blockchain.
  3. To expand and grow the Celo community in India using educational tools about Blockchain technology, Celo’s ecosystem and projects, and support the innovation of new projects that are in line with Celo’s mission.

CELO’s vision of ‘Prosperity for all’ and its position as a ‘mobile first’ blockchain makes it a perfect fit for India: an emerging market where nearly everyone has a mobile phone but does not have access to financial aid and inclusivity.

  • Students in India often lack blockchain knowledge and skills despite the presence of over 50,000 higher education colleges across the country.
  • Celo India DAO aims to bridge this gap with a data-centric and community-participation model.
  • The DAO will engage youth communities directly and inspire them to innovate in the CELO ecosystem, as well as, support them in their innovations by mediating with relevant Celo community members.

A DAO in India is best positioned to equip the talented and tech-immersed Indian community with blockchain skills and inspire them to create web3 applications employing the use of Celo blockchain, CELO, cUSD and interact with our blockchain.


Amount Requested:

We would like to conduct a pilot program for a quarter with an initial budget of cUSD 36.25k.

Our ask for a quarterly pilot program: $36.25k cUSD
Annual Budget: $145K cUSD
Reporting Success Metrics: Quarterly

Areas of Focus:

Focus Area 1:

Builder/Developer Growth

A) Hackathons: The objective is to attract and retain individuals and projects that are interested in building on Celo. The aim is to help initiate and then support successful projects through funding and training.

Description Cost
Prizes ($4k, $2K, $1K, $500 X 6) $10,000
Venue,Summit & Logistics(Travel & Lodging [Speaker]) $6,000
Food (Dinner/Lunch x 3days x 100 participants) $5,000
Media & Promotion $3,000
Platform & Administration $4,000
Total per Hackathon $28,000
Extras (extra hands/eventualities) $2,000
Total $30,000

Success Metrics:

  • 50 - 100 participants per hackathon
  • 30 submissions per hackathon
  • Local Demo Day held with local VCs scouts invited to attend.
  • Goal: Explore partnerships with regional VCs/funds/equity-free grants in India, funding for promising projects per each hackathon and also encouraging startups to participate in Celo web3 incubator programs, like Celo Camp web3 accelerator by Upright.

Focus Area 2: User & Community Growth

A) Building Market and Brand Awareness

  • The objective is to build and expand our local communities. 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.
  • Creation and promotion of Celo India social media presence on all crypto relevant platforms: Twitter/ Telegram/ Instagram etc. Regular online events such as AMAs, spaces, talks will be carried out to engage and expand the communities.
  • Collaborating with local personalities that have a strong voice in the industry to attract more users/developers to Celo. Sharing the latest news/developments in the ecosystem and showcasing local and other new projects building on Celo to maximize exposure and visibility.
Description Cost
Content Coordinator Stipend $400
Content Creation $300
Paid Ads/Rewards $100
Total (X 12 months) $9,600

B) Community Meetups 🤝 Celo India Advocates Program

The objective is to help increase the Adoption of Celo among crypto enthusiasts through organizing regular meetups & events in collaboration with other local event organizers if needed.

  • This would involve hosting meetups, airdrops, workshops, etc., on a regular basis.
  • The meetups would be a great platform to network & collaborate with other crypto enthusiasts.
  • The regional advocates appointed would be responsible and accountable for execution and recording results.

Celo India Advocates Program

The Celo India Advocates program will establish the foundations for meetups across major cities through a dedicated student network.

Currently, we are proposing holding meetups & growing communities for 10 major regions in India.

We envision the program to go hand in hand with the Celo University Guild Program, initiative in India, previously introduced by the Celo Foundation earlier, in the year, where advocates belonging to the earmarked regions are also able to participate in college events, meetups, and roadshows that take place across campuses in the region, and help with logistics.

To start with, we will try to set up a network of student advocates from these regions, so that they can lead initiatives for these local meetups.

  • Kochi (Kerala)
  • Chennai (Tamil Nadu)
  • Bangalore (Karnataka)
  • Panjim (Goa)
  • Mumbai (Maharashtra)
  • Hyderabad (Telangana/Andhra Pradesh)
  • Ahmedabad (Gujarat)
  • Delhi (Delhi)
  • Jaipur (Rajasthan)
  • Kolkata (Bengal)

The process:

  1. The advocates network will be set up by the stewards of the DAO, through a process of online interviews, after shortlisting a list of candidates selected earlier using typeforms.
  2. The advocates will majorly be college youth community members from these local communities, with previous experiences in managing student communities in colleges on campus (Google Developer Groups, Facebook Developer Circles, ACM, IEEE), previously volunteered to conduct community/NGO/meetups initiatives.
  3. These advocates will be responsible for local event management, and requesting the necessary logistics, & invoicing which will be presented to the stewards for every meetup.
  4. India has a vibrant student community actively doing state wise meetups, for major tech groups. We seek strategic partnerships with these communities so that we can reach out to a wider audience and make impact at the grassroots level.

Local regional meetups groups, will include the following activities:

  1. Presentations of most happenings in the Celo ecosystem.
  2. Onboarding participants to Valora and other projects in the ecosystem through a referral program. Inviting local founders in the ecosystem to discuss what they are building and why they are building on Celo. (ImpactMarket, Swap Bitssa, IntoTheVerse, DappLooker)
  3. Mentorships for student communities (local workshops, roadshows – where the advocates take on a small stack - like React Celo, or Celo Composer, Contract-Kit and teach budding developers in these communities to build dApps, and projects.
  4. Developing Web2xWeb3 synergies - communities exchange ideas on how web3 stack can aid problems faced in web2 stack
  5. Local Developer Communities do a demo of their projects and explain the working of Celo and all information related to Celo Devrel. Also discuss ideas and problem statements provided in regional and international Celo hackathons.
  6. Networking and seeking opportunities in the ecosystem
  7. Watch Parties for major Celo Conferences like Celo Connect
  8. Collaborations sought with other web3 communities active in various parts of India, like Polygon Advocates, PuneDAO, Solana India, Buildspace India, and LearnWeb3DAO India.
  9. Periodic Newsletters related to major events, and news in the Celo ecosystem translated to local languages.
Regional Celo Advocate stipend (10 advocates x $100 per meetup) $5,000
Max Expectations: (5 meetups/region per year, total 50 meetups per year across all regions)
One-time Shipping cost for 2 Celo Standees each for 10 regions, (which are to be kept for every community meetup) $600
Total $5,600

Community Meetup Cost

Description Cost
Venue (preferably screen & AV setup) $100
Marketing and Promotion $50
(inc. shipping Celo standees/banners/misc. To every region)
Food (Dinner or Lunch) $350
Celo Wallet Registration Onboard Bonus/ Loyalty SWAG $200
One meetup cost: $700
TOTAL x 50 meetups $35,000

Success Metrics:

  • Establish a robust network of Advocates in India, with a focus on promoting ecosystem awareness, localisation, local meetups, amplifying Celo’s mission devrel in the country.
  • Onboard 3-5 new members each meetup each region - (Valora wallet, Node Wallet registration) 30-50 participants expected per meetup
  • 40+ Members onboarded to the community - 750+ Members end of 12 months across India
  • 100% new followers on social media
  • Cross community collaborations and partnerships for future meetups.
  • Onboarding people from traditional web2 space, professions to web3 space.

Structure & Mult-Sig

Role Name Multisig
Community lead, Training & Research Chitty Babu
Marketing and Business Development Shaun Joseph
Technical Development and Developer Relationships Elio Jordan Lopes
Program Coordination and Impact Reporting Avina Ajit
UX Design and Research Nikki
Compensation TOTAL:
(Equivalent $1000 worth of cUSD per month) $60,000
Travel/Housing Allowance : (whenever required) $4,800

5 Likes

This proposal seems much better than the prior ones. :saluting_face:
good-luck-with-that-young-dylan

4 Likes

Hi @Shaun and team! Thank you for this proposal, I really appreciate how much thought you’ve put into it and the new edits you made.

I particularly like the focus on developing an Advocates network to host meet ups, this is something I’m really passionate about, so it’s great to see this. One thing perhaps that you could consider is partnering with Universities and students for the Advocate program and tapping into engineering clubs to host more technical meet ups.

One advice I have is perhaps putting an executive summary at the end of all the metrics that states clearly total budget and what you’re hoping to achieve in 12 months, for example:
x# of hackathon participants
x# of projects submitted
x# of meetups and attendees etc

I also really like that this proposal is quarterly reporting and accounting. Great job on submitting the PR!

1 Like

Thanks for your advice @annaalexa.

Thanks for your support @TanishKhanna19

1 Like

Thanks Anna, really appreciate your feedback. We are trying to reach out to a few students across technical clubs and chapters, in my college as well as many others. Chitty is also creating a network of students in the south.
We are planning our strategies to see how we can achieve this efficiently.

3 Likes

Amazing to hear this!