Motivation
The Celo Infrastructure for Chain Lifecycle Operational Support, or CICLOPS, was originally launched in December 2024 to ensure that essential infrastructure supporting the Celo network would be sustainably funded and move towards eventual governance by the community. CICLOPS established a multisig with diverse actors across Celo Foundation, Valora, and cLabs, a transparent oversight process, and a pathway for progressively decentralizing infrastructure procurement and vendor management.
Since the launch of CICLOPS, it has accomplished several key milestones in the last 6 months, including:
- Funding infrastructure to support Celo’s L2 transition, including RPC endpoints, block explorers, indexers, bridges, oracles, wallet infrastructure, and community and dev tooling, which have been maintained without interruption and transitioned over to the L2.
- Streamlining coordination and negotiation with multiple providers under a shared operational structure, resulting in better outcomes for deals.
- Expanding developer and community tooling, including piloting new infrastructure like Karma GAP, which tracks the builder ecosystems under one platform.
One example of governance and community-facing tooling is the integration with Karma GAP, a public good infrastructure tool that enhances transparency to the ecosystem. Karma GAP aggregates and surfaces onchain activity, including governance participation and grant-funded project impact across multiple contributors in the Celo ecosystem. It is quickly becoming a widely adopted tool (287 total projects registered, 493 grants distributed, tracked across 18 programs) both internally by the Celo Foundation as well as by community-led initiatives like Celo Public Goods, Regional DAOs, and Prezenti Grants to evaluate the onchain footprint of grantees and contributors. It will continue to be an important public resource for the broader community to gain visibility into the impact of treasury funds over Season 1.
Over the last 6 months, CICLOPS has demonstrated its ability to identify and support high-leverage infrastructure strongly benefitting the Celo network. However, due to CELO token price depreciation since the original proposal in Q4 2024, the actual value of reserves held in CELO has decreased, while a concurrent demand to support new and exciting work as outlined by cLab’s roadmap has increased.
To support Season 1’s Intents of growing transaction volume and growing TVL on Celo, additional funding is needed to support the various infrastructure categories. Rather than wait until Q4 to reassess, we propose a Season 1 funding request to ensure continuity and maintain momentum, particularly in light of the ambitions and exciting milestones outlined in cLabs’ Season 1 roadmap.
Specification
Scope of This Proposal
This follow-up proposal will cover the following types of requests during Season 1 (July-December 2025):
- Renewals and upgrades for existing vendor contracts and operational agreements.
- Funding for new infrastructure categories (see below) that have become essential during the L2 transition.
- A modest buffer to respond flexibly to urgent or unanticipated infrastructure needs.
As before, CICLOPS contributors will not draw compensation for coordination or management. All funds will be deployed directly to vendors or infrastructure providers.
Infrastructure Recommendations
As Celo enters its first full governance Season as an Ethereum L2, CICLOPS Phase II will prioritize infrastructure support across the following categories. These align with the technical roadmap shared by cLabs and are essential to realizing Celo’s vision as a frontier chain for global impact.
| Infrastructure Category | Description |
|---|---|
| Wallet Support, Account Abstraction & Infrastructure | Critical for secure user interactions and simplified app transactions. |
| Oracles & Indexers | Oracles provide real-world data; indexers organize blockchain data. Both ensure system integrity. |
| Data Availability Infrastructure | Essential for scalability, DA layers guarantee data accessibility and verifiability. Advanced DA (e.g., EigenDA v2) optimizes cost and scalability. |
| Explorers, Monitoring and Transparency | Support blockchain explorers and the maintenance of dashboards and data vendors |
| Blockchain explorers build trust and inform parties by monitoring network health. |
Providing a Buffer for Rapid Ecosystem Response|A strategic reserve for agile resource allocation, enhancing resilience for unforeseen infrastructure needs, challenges, upgrades, or new technologies.|
Funding Request
CICLOPs Season 1 is requesting cUSD $3M to be held and disbursed by the CICLOPS multisig. The exact CELO amount will be calculated using the 90-day average CELO price at the time of on-chain submission.
Additionally, due to the large request and to support future ecosystem requests, the on-chain proposal will move a portion of the CELO returned by the Mento Resrerve to the main wallet prior to the main withdraw allowance request for the proposal.
Oversight and Execution
We recognize the size and importance of this funding request and are committed to ensuring that it is managed with the highest level of transparency, accountability, and operational best practices.
To reinforce decentralized oversight and security, CICLOPS shall expand the existing 2-of-3 multisig to a 3-of-5 multisig. This change introduces broader participation in the fund administration process and ensures that no single team holds majority control. Two new signers representing active contributors or ecosystem stakeholders will be added.
As with the initial phase, the Celo Foundation may continue acting as a counterparty for legal agreements when necessary, without charging any fees. All multisig signers and support contributors will remain uncompensated by this proposal. Any revenue generated by onboarding infrastructure partners shall be directed back to the Celo Community Fund wallet for future use by the community.
Timeline
This proposal covers Season 1 (July–December 2025). Funds will be disbursed in quarterly tranches or as-needed, with an initial disbursement of up to 50% to enable timely execution of agreements.
Stewards of CICLOPs Multisig
Eric Nakagawa has transitioned full time to Self. We shall also add CFO Nauman Mustafa to streamline funding for community projects and a fifth member to coordinate inbound infrastructure proposals and community requests. This boosts financial management, governance, and community engagement in the Celo ecosystem.
Self - Eric Nakagawa - CEO and Co-founder at Self a former Celo Foundation and active Celo community member
cLabs - Martin Volpe - Lead Engineer at cLabs (a Core contributor to the Celo Blockchain) and active Community Member
Valora - Silas Boyd-Wickizer - CTO at Valora (building Divvi) and a long time contributor to the Celo Community
Celo Foundation - Nauman Mustafa, CFO at Celo Foundation
Celo Foundation - Anna Kryukova, Head of Governance
Multisig
Address for the 3 of 5 Multisig: 0xd71efa410B6EaAB0bAc3b515B393C886BE70F09E
Signers
Eric Nakagawa - 0x9AD631ff4518d4a2a7276D2dF0803F37EfA52080
Martin Volpe - 0x1a96E07fa5A4801b4881C2DC7B953D7356e26495
Silas Boyd-Wickizer - 0x738D3e9A97D2E2aE6F404D381570E1fb112176BA
Nauman Mustafa - 0x0798934707B8Ab7ab4CF086D54FC92746B171a13.
Anna Kryukova -
CICLOPS has demonstrated a responsible and collaborative approach to funding critical infrastructure for the Celo network. We appreciate the trust of the community with the size of this request which will ensure that CICLOPS remains adequately resourced to continue serving the community.
Note: Exact dollar amounts and specific infrastructure partners are not listed purposefully due to the confidential nature of the agreements. CICLOPS aims to provide financial support on behalf of the community to any infrastructure currently supporting the Celo blockchain.