Proposal Key Aspects
- Receiver Entity: Celo Governance
- Status: [DRAFT]
- Author(s): @nauman
- Type of Request: Funding
- Intent: Season 2
- Funding Category: Direct Grants
- Funding Request: $2,700,000 cUSD equivalent to 21,738,286 number of tokens using the 90-day average price ($0.1242 per Celo updated at time of submission)*
Price Calculation Updated 2026-02-19
Summary
Season 1 marked the first full governance season in which CICLOPS operated as Celo’s infrastructure support and coordination mechanism following the network’s transition to an Ethereum Layer-2. During this period, CICLOPS supported the stabilization, scaling, and continued upgrade of Celo’s production infrastructure, ensuring uninterrupted operations through multiple hardforks and periods of elevated technical risk.
As Celo enters Season 2, the network is no longer in transition but in sustained operation and forward evolution. The focus now shifts from standing up L2 infrastructure to operating, upgrading, and scaling it safely in line with Celo’s technical roadmap and growing real-world usage.
This proposal requests continued funding for CICLOPS during Season 2 to ensure that the critical infrastructure the Celo network depends on every day remains reliable, adequately resourced, and aligned with upcoming protocol milestones. As in prior seasons, all funds will be used exclusively for infrastructure and paid directly to vendors. CICLOPS contributors will continue to serve in an oversight and coordination capacity without compensation.
Background & Motivation
CICLOPS was launched in December 2024 to address a structural need within the Celo ecosystem: ensuring that essential infrastructure is funded, coordinated, and managed in a consistent and sustainable way, with a clear path toward increased community governance.
Season 1 validated this model. Throughout the July–December 2025 period, CICLOPS:
-
Maintained uninterrupted operation of critical infrastructure including explorers, indexers, bridges, oracles, wallet support, and upgrade coordination.
-
Supported multiple protocol upgrades and infrastructure changes without disruption to users or builders.
-
Centralized vendor coordination and contract negotiation, reducing overhead for internal teams and improving cost efficiency.
-
Helped ensure infrastructure readiness during milestones that historically represent heightened operational risk for live networks.
At the same time, Season 1 surfaced important lessons. CELO price volatility complicated long-term planning, infrastructure demands increased faster than anticipated following the L2 transition, and the community expressed a desire for clearer cadence and reporting around infrastructure funding. Season 2 will build on this feedback.
Alignment with cLabs’ Technical Roadmap
Season 2 of CICLOPS is explicitly aligned with cLabs’ H1 2026 technical roadmap, which builds on a year of heavy execution in 2025 and introduces the next phase of protocol evolution.
The roadmap outlines a series of concrete milestones, including the Jovian upgrade, preparatory work toward Fusaka enablement, ongoing efforts to improve finality and confirmation latency, continued performance and scalability improvements, and the migration and long-term stewardship of critical ecosystem infrastructure such as Valora.
While cLabs leads protocol development, the successful delivery of this roadmap depends on the readiness and reliability of the surrounding infrastructure layer. Many of these milestones involve changes to core clients, consensus components, gas pricing mechanisms, and finality assumptions, all of which place increased demands on explorers, indexers, data availability layers, wallet infrastructure, monitoring systems, and downstream integrators such as bridges and exchanges.
CICLOPS exists to ensure that this infrastructure is in place, upgraded, and coordinated ahead of protocol activation, so that roadmap execution is not slowed or put at risk by operational constraints.
Scope of This Proposal
This Season 2 funding request covers January–June 2026 and will support:
-
Renewals and upgrades for existing infrastructure providers critical to network operations.
-
Continued support for infrastructure categories introduced during and after the L2 transition.
-
Select onboarding of new infrastructure where required by evolving protocol requirements.
-
A modest strategic buffer to respond to urgent or unplanned infrastructure needs arising from roadmap execution or ecosystem growth.
As in prior seasons, CICLOPS contributors will not draw compensation for coordination or management. All funds will be deployed directly to infrastructure vendors or service providers.
Infrastructure Focus Areas
Informed by the technical roadmap and real-world network usage, CICLOPS will prioritize infrastructure across the following categories during Season 2:
| Infrastructure Category | Description |
|---|---|
| Wallet Support, Account Abstraction & Infrastructure | Ensures secure user interactions, supports growing MiniPay adoption, and maintains critical wallet tooling such as Valora. |
| Oracles & Indexers | Provide reliable data access and integrity for applications, developers, and ecosystem tooling. |
| Data Availability Infrastructure | Supports scalability, cost efficiency, and verifiability as the network evolves. |
| Explorers, Monitoring & Transparency | Maintains blockchain explorers, monitoring systems, and public dashboards essential for trust and observability. |
| Strategic Infrastructure Buffer | Provides flexibility to respond quickly to unforeseen needs, incidents, upgrades, or emerging technologies. |
Specific vendor names and contract-level details are not exhaustively listed due to standard partner confidentiality requirements. Where applicable, CICLOPS continues to secure pricing at significant discounts relative to comparable market offerings.
Funding Request
CICLOPS is requesting $2,700,000 cUSD equivalent, to be held and disbursed by the CICLOPS multisig.
-
The CELO amount will be calculated using the 90-day average CELO price at the time of on-chain submission.
-
Funds will be disbursed gradually across Season 2, with an initial tranche of up to 50% to enable timely execution of renewals and upgrades.
-
Allocation decisions will continue to be based on infrastructure criticality, uptime requirements, and alignment with Celo’s roadmap.
Oversight, Execution & Transparency
CICLOPS recognizes the importance of this funding request and remains committed to strong governance, accountability, and continuous improvement. In Season 2:
-
The CICLOPS multisig will continue operating as a 3-of-5 multisig, with expanded community representation.
-
Multisig signers represent a diverse group of ecosystem contributors and stakeholders.
-
The Celo Foundation may continue acting as a legal counterparty for infrastructure agreements when required, without charging fees.
-
Any revenue generated through infrastructure partnerships will be returned to the Celo Community Fund for future community use.
Building on feedback from Season 1, CICLOPS intends to further strengthen transparency and reporting pathways during Season 2, including clearer high-level summaries of infrastructure categories, spend distribution, and operational outcomes, while respecting partner confidentiality.
Timeline
-
Coverage Period: January–June 2026
-
Initial Disbursement: Up to 50% upon approval to support continuity and upgrade readiness
Multisig
Address for the 3 of 5 Multisig: 0xd71efa410B6EaAB0bAc3b515B393C886BE70F09E
Closing
Season 2 represents a shift from transition to sustained operation and forward progress. The protocol milestones outlined in cLabs’ H1 2026 roadmap increase both the sophistication and criticality of the infrastructure layer supporting Celo.
This funding request ensures that infrastructure remains a stabilizing force rather than a bottleneck as Celo continues to scale as an Ethereum Layer-2 focused on real-world adoption and global impact.
We appreciate the community’s continued trust and welcome feedback on this proposal.