CELO MENA/APAC 2025 Q4 Season Report
- Season: Season 1 (2025 H2)
- Funding: 83,000 $cUSD + 34,000 $CELO
- Status: FINISHED
- Author(s): @Celo MENA&APAC, @taniostamar
TLDR/Summary
We successfully executed the proposal to consolidate and lead the CELO MENA/APAC Hub starting from this season, driving rapid growth in the regional developer ecosystem during Q4 2025 (October to December). Key achievements for the period include:
- Significant contribution to monthly active developers: The Hub’s activities accounted for 30% of Celo’s total active developers in November with 320+ monthly active developers.
- Developer onboarding efforts: In 2.5 months, we delivered 7 builder-focused events (6 IRL), secured 900+ talent registrations, and generated 330+ projects from developers.
- Impact on Proof of Ship: The Hub contributed 30% of all applications (84 out of 280 submissions) to Proof of Ship (PoS) Program #10**.** Additionally, 10+ MiniApps were developed.
- Startups onboarded to Celo: 5+ high-traction projects from the region were introduced with the Celo Foundation team. If these projects onboard the Celo ecosystem, they’ll bring 60k users, 6k MAU, and $15M in TVL combined.
- Onchain activity: CELO MENA/APAC projects collectively performed 30,000+ onchain transactions (39% of Proof of Ship Season #10 transactions).
Goals, Metrics & KPIs (Proposed/Achieved)
| Goal | Proposed | Achieved | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Developer Onboarding | Generate interest and introduce fresh builders to Celo. | Successfully strengthened Celo’s positioning in DeFi, AI, and MiniApps through successful roadshows, hackathons, and workshops. | Achieved |
| Converting Interested to Inspired Builders | Retain engaged developers and integrate them into Celo’s structured programs. | Ensured the flow of high-quality startups into the Celo pipeline via 1:1 mentorship, technical guidance, and project referrals. | Achieved |
| Regional Focus Markets | Initiate activities in Turkey, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, and UAE. | Successfully launched physical and online activities in India, Turkey, Vietnam, Egypt, Syria, Algeria, Sudan, and Saudi Arabia (Arabic-language workshop). | Achieved |
| KPIs | KPIs Description | Goal | Status as of today | % achieved |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Developer onboarded | Actively participated in the programs | 650 | 912 | 140% |
| Projects built | All tracked via KarmaGAP & Electric Capital | 250 | 342 | 136% |
| Impressions | Social media impressions of posts | 500,000 | 515,521 | 103% |
| High-quality startups funneled | Prezenti Grants, Startup Pathway, Proof of Ship and other Celo builder initiatives, tracked via KarmaGAP (The most important one is the proof of ship) | 30 | 80 | 267% |
Budgets / Expenses
We’ve deployed the total budget allocated to the region (83,000 $cUSD + 34,000 $CELO) through events, prizes for developers and teams, content production, devrel activities, and operational and marketing expenses as seen below:
| USD | |
|---|---|
| Build On Celo Hackathon Kolkata (including venue, prints, food and drink, merch etc.) | $9,043 |
| Celo Kolkata Hackathon Winners | $1,200 |
| Asia events (including venue, prints, merch, local team etc.) | $5,500 |
| Arabia events and activation partnership | $5,500 |
| Turkey events (including venue, prints, merch, local team etc.) | $7,980 |
| India workshops (including venue, prints, merch, local team etc.) | $4,500 |
| Travel of the team | $3,500 |
| DevRels, BD team, and mentors | $21,750 |
| Content development expense | $2,500 |
| India bootcamp marketing expense | $1,000 |
| Other marketing and design expenses | $9,500 |
| Operations team | $12,000 |
| Administrative costs for finance and admin teams | $4,199 |
| TOTAL | $88,172 |
Details
CELO MENA/APAC Hub was formed at the end of September 2025 and started community activities soon after. In its first 2.5 months until today, we’ve focused on the regions that had the potential to produce the biggest impact in a short period of time. We started with developer onboarding activities to bring a big volume of projects first, and then focused on 1:1 mentorship for the most promising teams and produce onchain value.
According to the Developer Report by EC, CELO reached its all time high in monthly active developers this November. And Rise In contributed that milestone with 322 monthly active devs.
This means: During November, MENA/APAC Hub accounted for ~30% of Celo’s active developers.
In 2.5 months, MENA/APAC Hub brought
- 7 builder-focused events (6 IRL)
- India: 1 IRL hackathon, 2 IRL workshops
- Turkey: 2 IRL community led workshops
- Asia: Vietnam IRL workshop
- Arabia: Arabic-language online workshop launched with Celo Arabia
- 900+ talent registered to our programs
- 330+ projects built & submitted to the Electric Capital Developer Report
- 30k+ on-chain transaction made by Celo MENA APAC projects
- Proof of Ship #10: 25,000+ onchain transactions (39% of total transactions)
- Proof of Ship #9: 2,200+ onchain transactions (12% of total transactions)
- After Proof of Ship: 3,000+ onchain transactions
- 80+ projects applied to the Proof of Ship Program (30% of all applications to the Proof of Ship Program #10 (84 of 280 submissions)
- 10+ Miniapps built
- 5+ high traction startups introduced to the Celo Devrel and Ecosystem team
Our programs led to the creation of several standout projects. Here are some highlights:
Teams introduced to the Celo Foundation team and will bring huge onchain value to Celo of they’re onboarded:
- XBank: A next-gen platform delivering seamless, regulated crypto on-offramp solutions with a global card solution to spend digital assets worldwide. 1200+ users, 800K Euro volume, $415K in card spendings.
- StableJack: Stable Jack is a yield, volatility, and points market for any assets. Currently, the team working on AI-powered trading platform that offers abstracted spot, perpetual, and options trading experience with AI as an personal fund manager. $13M TVL, 10000+ users (3500+ MAU), %80 retention.
- Blockera: Blockera is at the forefront of real estate innovation with Realty on Chain (ROC), a decentralized real estate marketplace that tokenizes realty investments from Dubai and Europe, enabling wealthy professionals and seasoned investors to invest in properties through crowdfunding. 2,5k whitelisted users, 1k beta users.
- Grand is a self-custodial investment app for on-chain finance built for users in MENA and emerging markets. Grand solves the fragmentation problem by bringing perps, tokenized stocks, T Bills, gold, and DeFi yield into one simple interface. The team has 48k+ users and 2500+ MAU.
- Rosetta: A non-custodial yield operating system that gives wallets, stablecoin issuers, and consumer apps a plug-and-play way to offer automated, policy-safe on-chain yield. 2,5M TVL within the first week of launch.
Example Proof of Ship Projects
Snehendu Roy, KarmaGAP Link
Project Name: Statik Uptime
(9.3k onchain transactions)
A uptime-monitoring systems rely on centralized providers, creating single points of failure, limited regional coverage, and high recurring costs
Giovanni KarmaGAP Link
Project Name: RealMind
(4.9k onchain transactions)
RealMind is a gamified quiz platform built for the Farcaster ecosystem where users compete daily in interactive quizzes to earn rewards and climb leaderboards.
Team Iqra KarmaGAP Link
Project Name: Iqra Arena (2,4k onchain transactions)
IqraArena is a digital reading ecosystem designed to transform how readers interact with books, authors, and communities.
Salil Saha, KarmaGAP Link
Project Name: Earno
(5.4k onchain transactions)
Earno is a decentralized gaming dApp built on the Celo blockchain. Players connect their wallet, place a CELO bet, and test their memory skills by matching card pairs before running out of flips.
Sounak Dey, KarmaGAP Link
Project Name: Gooz
(3.9k onchain transactions)
Gooz is a Web3-powered multiplayer board game inspired by Monopoly, where players stake tokens, compete in real time, and use strategy, luck, and property management to outlast each other.
Project Name: Celo Engage Hub (600+ onchain transactions)
A community hub where Celo builders and creators can share their posts and projects (X, Farcaster, GitHub, etc.) to gain engagement and visibility from the Celo ecosystem.
Closing Remarks
We have successfully translated the developer interest across the MENA/APAC region into outcomes for Celo during Q4 2025. The results validate our ability to rapidly mobilize the developer ecosystem. Going forward, in the next 6 months, we’re looking forward to activating more countries and scaling our proven model:
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Scaling the pipeline: The three-stage funnel established in 2025 (Fresh → Interested → Inspired) proved highly successful. In 2026, we are committed to maintaining and expanding our initiatives in new regions to ensure a continuous influx of new developers.
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Geographic expansion: Building upon our initial success, we will actively work to activate and scale operations into additional, high-potential MENA and APAC countries throughout 2026, leveraging the tested model to grow Celo’s footprint across the entire region.