Celo Regional Council — H1 2025 Report

Ecosystem DAOs
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Celo Regional Council — H1 2025 Report

Author: @ricaax @Joan_DeRB @szapelao @Vow @Brisa @0xj4an-work

Note: This report covers the period from January 2025 to July 2025, and should be considered a living document. It reflects the evolving discussions, proposals, and governance decisions unfolding on the Celo Forum and throughout the broader ecosystem.

TL;DR

In H1 2025, the Celo Regional Council matured into a core coordination layer for the ecosystem—aligning regional HUBs, standardising governance and budget processes, and producing key documentation for long-term decentralisation. This report captures major insights, structural improvements, and strategic next steps to increase alignment, transparency, and sustainability across regions.

0. Methodology & Source of Insights

This report is grounded in seven months of hands-on experience leading and coordinating the Celo Regional Council. It synthesises learnings and insights from:

  • Weekly ecosystem-wide coordination calls.
  • One-on-one conversations with HUB leaders and ecosystem stakeholders
  • Live proposal presentations and budget reviews
  • Strategic alignment meetings with Celo Foundation (DevRel, MKT, and Governance), Prezenti, and others

It also draws from a series of internal documents authored during this period:

  1. Understanding Celo’s Regional HUBs: Structure, Evolution & Open Questions :gear:(Draft) :globe_showing_europe_africa: Doc 1, Overview. Understanding Celo’s Regional DAOs: Structure, Evolution & Open Questions
  2. Regional Council: Structure and Election :gear:(Draft) Doc 2: Regional Council, Structure and Election
  3. Defining Regional Hubs and Local Nodes Relationships :gear:(Draft)Defining Regional Continental and Country DAO Relationships
  4. Aligning the Celo Ecosystem :gear:(Draft) Aligning the Celo Ecosystem

These materials provide the analytical and strategic foundation for the reflections, proposals, and roadmap presented throughout this report.

1. The Starting Point: Heterogeneous Realities, Shared Aspirations

Seven months ago, the Regional HUBs were a heterogeneous mass of teams: some well-established and funded, others just beginning their journey. Each came with its structure, funding model, level of maturity, and strategic focus.

One of our core priorities was to establish a clear line of communication between the Regional HUBs, the Celo Foundation and the broader ecosystem. Weekly coordination calls have played a central role in this, fostering shared visibility, alignment, and the early seeds of collaboration.

However, this diversity also surfaced several operational challenges, including:

  • Lack of standardised tools and workflows
  • Fragmented budget frameworks
  • Varying levels of public engagement and reporting capacity

From the beginning, we committed to a model of global coordination with local autonomy. We have remained true to that principle—strengthening it with a shared methodology while ensuring everyone’s representation.

2. Identified Challenges and Key Learnings

Throughout H1, as we engaged with regional leaders and mapped ecosystem realities, several key challenges emerged:

  • Alignment Gaps: Many Regional HUBs found it difficult to fully align with the newly introduced intent-based funding logic. While their local activities were often impactful, they weren’t always framed in ways that clearly contributed to global KPIs such as total value locked (TVL) or transaction volume (TXs).
  • Perception and Visibility: The value of Regional HUBs was occasionally questioned by ecosystem stakeholders, due in part to inconsistent reporting, lack of visibility, or the challenge of attributing off-chain efforts to measurable on-chain results.
  • Coordination Complexity: Varying levels of maturity, organisational structures, and operational capacity across HUBs made it difficult to adopt unified workflows or planning cycles. This created friction in aligning seasonal timelines and ecosystem-wide priorities.
  • Governance Fatigue: A recurring theme was the low engagement of builders in governance processes. Political complexity, budget uncertainty, and lack of clarity around overall ecosystem direction contributed to a sense of disempowerment—especially among early-stage or resource-constrained teams.
  • Strategic Positioning: Several HUBs struggled to clearly define their unique value within the broader ecosystem. Without identifying their comparative strengths or niche, some teams found it difficult to justify their role or articulate a long-term vision for growth.

These learnings have informed a number of structural improvements:

  • Standardised Methodologies: Through DevRel and internal working groups, we began harmonising templates, timelines, and reporting frameworks across key workstreams such as marketing, DevRel, and ecosystem partnerships. This has helped set clearer expectations and streamline evaluations.
  • Peer Learning Networks: Cross-HUB learning has been actively promoted by showcasing successful strategies from high-functioning regions, including team structures, content distribution models, and event frameworks that drive measurable results.
  • Sustainability Mindset: All regional hubs are now encouraged to explore co-funding models and identify additional sources of income—reducing long-term dependency on Celo Treasury grants and enhancing financial resilience.
  • Strengths Identification and Strategic Focus: Teams are being guided to assess their unique strengths, local networks, and comparative advantages. This self-assessment is becoming the basis for more focused, niche-aligned strategies that improve differentiation and long-term positioning within the Celo ecosystem.

3. Toward a Scalable Model: The Regional Hub + Local Nodes

Through this process, one model emerged as particularly effective: the @CeloAfricaDAO structure. With a regional HUB coordinating several local nodes, Africa has demonstrated:

  • Efficient distribution of responsibilities
  • Clear coordination and reporting
  • Effective local activation via events, workshops, and protocol campaigns
  • Ability to both promote Celo and incubate new projects and contributors

This model now informs our strategic direction: a shift toward regional hubs with localised outreach.

Africa represents a unique case, with MiniPay actively operating and driving growth across the region, alongside a local team working closely with the Celo Foundation. This reinforces the potential of regional hubs to act as strategic extensions—or branches—of the Foundation itself.

As we transition into the intent-based season structure, this timing is ideal for reinforcing and expanding this model.

Regional Outlook

  • Africa: Already operating with high effectiveness. Provides a blueprint for others.
  • @Celoeu : Needs to open new hubs or activate a network of ambassadors and contributors.
  • LATAM: Coordination required between @CeLatam as a regional node and existing local nodes @CeloColombiano, celomexico. There is a shared desire among these groups to move into the same structure as other regions, and they will work together in the next season to come up with a plan.
  • Asia: The most challenging region due to the absence of a strong foundational node. Establishing an Asian presence requires appropriate time and resources due to the population size (greater than all other continents combined) as well as linguistic diversity. Country-specific HUBs across Asia currently exist, but there is no central Asian coordinator.

Diversifying income streams and reducing overdependence on Celo Treasury support is recognised as an important long-term goal for all HUBs. However, for most HUBs, this is not a realistic objective in the immediate term. Instead, it should be viewed as a strategic aspiration to be incorporated into future planning and sustainability roadmaps. In the current phase, the emphasis should remain on achieving concrete deliverables that align with the Intents defined by Celo Governance.

Hubs that successfully contribute to increased Transaction Volume (TXs) and Total Value Locked (TVL) are already playing a critical role in sustaining the ecosystem. This is because a portion of the gas fees generated by these activities flows back into the Community Fund. As such, by meeting their deliverables, HUBs are indirectly helping to offset the funding they receive. Prioritising these performance-based outcomes remains essential to the overall health and sustainability of the network.

4. Defining a Growth Strategy: Building With Users, Not Just for Them

The Council’s growth strategy focuses on fostering sustainable user acquisition, ecosystem alignment, and community resilience. Our work bridges local realities and global goals, ensuring that ecosystem programs not only reach the ground—but take root.

Direct User Onboarding

  • Outreach efforts target high-context builders and mission-aligned communities.
  • Educational efforts are grounded in real-world utility, making Celo’s value proposition relevant and accessible.
  • Hands-on sessions and in-person events reinforce the message with tangible onboarding experiences.

Community Building and Ecosystem Integration

  • The Council has played an active role in promoting and localising programs such as:
    • Prezenti: Helping builders understand and apply for early-stage grant funding.
    • Celo Public Goods (CPG): Guiding community contributors in proposing impactful initiatives.
    • Celo Camp’s Membership Program: Offering onramps for local teams into global mentorship and growth.
    • Celo Builders Program (Proof of Ship): Some HUBs (Like Colombia, Mexico, etc) have made Bootcamps in local languages teaching developers how to develop, use tools and participate in Celo DevRel programs.

These programs offer tremendous value—but require boots-on-the-ground support to become truly accessible. The Council is actively facilitating this access through workshops, curated content, 1:1 guidance, and proactive ecosystem matchmaking.

Localised Events, Content and Support

  • Educational resources are adapted to local languages, cultural references, and real-life contexts.
  • Social media in local channels like Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp making technology accessible for common people and taking it mainstream.
  • Support is decentralised and contextual, with contributors available across time zones and regions.
  • This ensures that global initiatives are interpreted through a local lens—maximising relevance and uptake.

Bridging Global <> Local

  • The Council acts as a translator between the intent-based governance structure and regional HUBs.
  • Intents are mapped into region-specific strategies with actionable steps.
  • Grassroots insights are continuously surfaced to inform Celo-wide priorities, improving relevance and adaptability of global programs.

Our vision of growth is not transactional—it’s relational. We are not just attracting protocols; we’re anchoring them. We are not just onboarding users; we are turning them into contributors.

5. The Future of the Council: From Experimental Governance to Ecosystem Infrastructure

As Celo enters a new era of intent-based, outcome-driven governance, the role of the Regional Council becomes more critical—not less. What began as an experimental coordination mechanism has now evolved into a foundational governance layer, capable of translating global strategies into locally relevant action.

While Intent Season 1 prioritises metrics like transactions (TXs) and total value locked (TVL), these metrics cannot be sustainably achieved without a solid base of active, mission-aligned users. This is precisely where the Council delivers value: it not only amplifies top-down incentives but creates the bottom-up infrastructure for long-term ecosystem resilience, connecting them with the existing ecosystem rewards and mechanisms for onboarding and retaining users, builders and projects.

Anchoring Intents in Local Realities

The Council’s role is to anchor high-level intents in local contexts—connecting Celo’s global priorities to grassroots ecosystems through:

  • Direct user onboarding, targeting communities that are often overlooked by traditional growth strategies

  • Localised education, making the value of Web3 tangible and accessible to real-world users

  • Community trust-building, which turns short-term engagement into long-term contribution

This approach doesn’t just increase usage; it builds loyalty, retention, and relevance.

A Scalable Framework for Coordination

The Council has also proven to be an effective laboratory for governance innovation. Through shared budget frameworks, common reporting structures, and cross-regional alignment calls, it has laid the groundwork for a more modular and scalable model of ecosystem growth—one that balances regional autonomy with strategic alignment.

The emerging model—regional hubs supported by local nodes—enables:

  • Agile experimentation with protocol growth strategies
  • Faster feedback loops between local activity and global governance
  • The seeding of ecosystem contributors and public goods builders across diverse geographies

Looking Ahead

In the coming seasons, the Council will deepen this work by:

  • Formalising its structure and governance mechanisms to ensure continuity and accountability with only 3 (or 4 representatives).
  • Institutionalising onboarding pipelines for contributors, ambassadors, and local leaders

The Council’s mission is not just to facilitate operations—it is to cultivate the conditions for sovereign, self-sustaining regional ecosystems within Celo. In doing so, it becomes not just a support system, but an engine of ecosystem expansion.

6. Funding Alignment & Voting Process for Season 1

The culmination of H1 2025 has been marked by a coordinated, community-led effort to assess and approve funding proposals aligned with the Season 1 Intents. This cycle has emerged as one of the most rigorous and transparent to date.

The process has included:

  • A full review and comment round on all submitted proposals
  • Application of a Intents Aligment check to evaluate clarity, coherence, and strategic alignment
  • Joint assessment of each proposal’s potential to advance Season 1 Intents, particularly around key metrics such as transaction volume (TXs), total value locked (TVL).

Only proposals that have met both qualitative and strategic standards have been advanced to the final voting phase.

Celo Regional Council Proposal for H2 2025 will be post during the upcoming hours.

We believe this funding outcome lays a strong foundation for Intent Season 1.

7. H1 2025 Reports

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