Community delegation programs

Governance
1

Authors: Volpe, Rica Amaral, Joan de Ramón

Problem:

Governance participation is low and concentrated in a few active whales. This further disincentivizes retail voters to engage, as they are under the impression their vote “doesn’t count”.

Context:

There have been initiatives to use Celo Community Fund (CCF) assets to delegate to individuals. The authors of this text find this unfair, as people would get voting power disproportionate to their economical exposure in Celo. It is a classical example of “politicians voting themselves more power”, as only people who have more time for politics than they do for building will have the time dedication to engage. Such a proposal would set a dangerous precedent, as nothing would prevent these entities to vote more voting power to themselves, or fund their own initiatives. This can very easily spiral into regulatory capture.

Such programs will always have the problem that delegation will always be, at the end of the day, arbitrary. Why should one person receive delegation and another wouldn’t? Why would a DAO created and funded by CCF less than a year ago receive more voting power without economical exposure, than someone working on Celo before mainnet launch who decided not to sell? It’s not up to the authors of this proposal to give a moral judgment of what is the right thing to do, but to point out it’s not a trivial question to answer.

The fact that Celo Governance is only binary further complicates this problem, as the members included in the proposal are up to the authors of the program.

These can be more dangerous if implemented by sending Celo to a multisig, as the CCF will not be able to reclaim these assets without collaboration of the multisig signers, on top of general risk of a multisig, like UI vulnerabilities or failures in signer management or key handling. Nobody really has an incentive to return the funds upon program completion.

Proposal:

Instead of using Celo in the Community Fund to delegate to individuals or organizations, we propose to create a program to match Governance delegates with Celo holders.

With this approach, the voting power remains with the holders, and delegates are accountable because holders can individually end delegation as they see fit. It incentivizes competition, as all the delegates compete for the same voting power, using more from the CCF is not an option.

A small committee will take on the task of creating public forms where delegates and holders can sign up to be part of the program. The committee will make sure to scout for holders to make them aware of the program, and every member of the community is invited to collaborate to get as much delegated Celo as possible.

  • Sources of potential delegates: Celo regional DAOs, Governance contributors, Celo Forum users.
  • Sources of potential delegators: early Celo contributors (for example folks that have worked atCelo Foundation, Valora, Mento, cLabs, etc), investors and validators.

Both ends should be allowed to participate anonymously, but delegators are not encouraged to do so.

Success Metrics: more than X million Celo delegated, duplicate average active voting Celo on proposals

Budget: the funds required for this program would be minimum, can probably be funded by PG or some other initiative.

Next steps: recruit a small team interested in this program.

(this is not a governance proposal)

10 Likes
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I agree with the big picture here; it’s long overdue that Celo governance be rethought, ideally from the ground up. I’ve made a related post myself, focusing more on revisiting core governance parameters.

You raise several important points:

  1. Touching the CCF is a slippery slope, even if technically safe, it signals poor optics externally. The idea of using locked CCF CELO to vote on proposals that release unlocked CELO from the same fund already feels self-serving.
  2. Borrowing from the CCF under promises of future return should generally be discouraged. While precedent exists (e.g. the Stabila-Aave liquidity proposal), the outcome remains questionable (Aave remains underutilized and capped in my specific example). There’s simply no guarantee that such initiatives generate meaningful value, and as you rightly pointed out, the risks are asymmetric.

Now, regarding your proposal: I think it’s a sound idea in theory. Delegation driven by the community rather than centrally distributed voting power is the right direction. But execution is where it will struggle.

There’s little to no incentive for major stakeholders to give up their control, especially when some are directly or indirectly involved in proposals. Realistically, few will voluntarily part with influence.

Programs like these also have a tendency to fizzle out. A good example is the Celo Foundation’s delegation to (single region) college groups. While well-intentioned, it’s hard to call that objectively successful in my opinion. From inactivity to rushed and poorly informed voting, it’s been underwhelming. Anyways, that’s a separate rant, but relevant nonetheless. Even if we hit the target of X million delegated CELO, we risk winding up with disengaged or performative participation after a few months.

Unless there’s some real, upfront commitment from potential delegators, the initiative risks becoming a well-meaning exercise with limited impact. That said, your proposal is a good starting point. But to make it work, we need a much broader overhaul of governance from modifying core parameters to delegation mechanisms like the one you’ve outlined.

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The problem is not that whales will not give out their voting power, is all the whales and voters that are no voting at all. Only about 16M of the around 300M supply show up to vote.

I think that being involved and persuasive enough to get votes, and keep them, should be the bare minimum to get delegation.

I also do not understand how is that you point out that using CFF for voting “signals poor optics”, but the conclusion is that we should do it. Quite frankly, I get a vibe that this response was written by AI.

| But execution is where it will struggle.

I think that’s purely speculation, we don’t know until we try. This proposal is innocent enough that we don’t lose anything trying, and we can win a lot.

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At no point did I conclude that we should move forward with using the CCF for voting. In fact, I am clearly against using the Community Fund for voting-related purposes. If there’s a specific part you interpreted that way, I’m happy to clarify.

Quite frankly, I get a vibe that this response was written by AI.

Yes, I do use an LLM to help transform my text, primarily for privacy reasons (Adversarial stylometry). But to be clear, the content and intent of the response is entirely mine. Suggesting otherwise, especially in a way that seems to discredit my contributions on this forum, feels both unrelated and unnecessarily personal.

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If there’s a specific part you interpreted that way, I’m happy to clarify.

Then I don’t understand what point you’re trying to make.

Yes, I do use an LLM to help transform my text, primarily for privacy reasons (Adversarial stylometry). But to be clear, the content and intent of the response is entirely mine. Suggesting otherwise, especially in a way that seems to discredit my contributions on this forum, feels both unrelated and unnecessarily personal

You admit using AI in your post but then get offended because I suggested it lol

To clarify what I meant, it’s because your original response is well-written, but verbose and it doesn’t make logical sense to me.

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Thank you, @martinvol, for pushing this forward, and @yomfana for your comments.

It’s been over three months since we first began discussing this crucial topic: how to foster inclusivity on Mondo and boost community participation.

I remain deeply concerned about the current delegate distribution on Celo Mondo and the limited representation of Regional DAOs and other key ecosystem contributors.

As Nassim Taleb points out, academia often sits behind desks, disconnected from reality, and I must admit, this feels increasingly relevant when looking at how delegates are currently selected on Mondo.

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That said, this initiative requires community-wide effort and coordination.

@CPG_Stewards is doing great work by distributing Celo to builders, but I believe we also need clearer, more proactive steps from the Council to achieve similar goals, through a well-aligned and ecosystem-wide approach.

I’m looking forward to hearing feedback from others. It’s essential that we have these discussions openly on the Forum, with meaningful participation from local DAOs and ecosystem stakeholders. @CeloColombiano @celomexico @CeloAfricaDAO @CeLatam @celogovernance and others…

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I’m not offended but rather calling out your dismissive and inconsiderate tone (Celo COC). I’d rather not continue this meta-discussion and focus on the topic at hand.

I agree, I’d also rather see a geographically balanced delegate composition along with key stakeholders.

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If the problem is “getting a higher percentage of CELO utilized in governance”, then one middle-ground I can think of is that CCF is utilized, but only as a force-multiplier for existing non-CCF delegated votes. (So the CCF doesn’t need to take a biased stance and add more administrative work on selecting who gets extra CCF delegated votes and who doesn’t.)

It could be a matching program where a script every night checks the delegated votes (not including CCF) on all delegates, and simply 2x or 3x etc their delegated votes.

Then everyone is impacted equally, down to the smallest delegate.

The topic of whether the current delegate list is working well, could be reviewed separately.

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But then an alternative should be to just lower the threshold. I think that’s not a meaningful change as it just makes it easier to pass a proposal (which can be dangerous), but it doesn’t increase governance participation.

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So you want not only more tokens voting but more individual voices voting.

Makes sense, I don’t have a good solution for this, especially with how much reading and discussion it takes to actually understand many proposals.

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I agree, I’d also rather see a geographically balanced delegate composition along with key stakeholders.

I think geographical representation should be given according to traction in that area, and the involvement of individuals/teams in that are, not just because a team there wants the voting power.

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I guess this program I describe in the topic is something that can help making more voting active. In essence it’s just reaching out to holders, asking why they don’t delegate/vote and ask them to delegate to the members that are interested in receiving votes.

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This could make coordinated attacks on the CCF by delegates even more potent.

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Right, so the problem is more: how do we get more diverse governance participation rather than the usual list of commenters, delegates, OG whales, etc?

This problem persists throughout all of blockchain and even large protocols like Maker, Compound etc have had very thin governance participation for crucial decision points.

It shouldn’t be super surprising though. It is work, it’s often not fun or rewarding, and getting people to do work for free is very difficult.

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I think the first step is to take governance serious and understand what we stand for and why people should get engaged and I think it is up to the community to lead by example (and/or for the foundation to find a lead who cares about governance).

One thing we, at DeepGov, have started is to do is sense-making on Celo’s most important values and challenges: Towards Celo's Cultural Manifesto - why should anyone get involved if our culture and values are unclear?

As a second step, we are exploring if we can create representative AI politicians that are able to represent the opinions and values of more diverse groups without them needing to be fully active in the forum. The reality is that governance cost time, which not everyone, especially the opinions that matter, can afford.

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Reframing the Governance Problem

It’s often said that Celo governance is “concentrated in the hands of whales,” discouraging smaller holders from participating. While that may be technically accurate, framing it solely as a power imbalance misses something deeper … and risks undermining the very trust that holds this ecosystem together.

If we treat CELO not as a passive asset but as a living commitment, then holding it is not just a right — it’s a responsibility. Those with large stakes aren’t just powerful; they are stewards. And stewardship cannot be delegated. Responsibility isn’t something you can outsource .. it must be held, lived, and shown.

The real question isn’t just “how do we increase participation?” but:
How do we support all CELO holders , large and small … in fulfilling their shared responsibilities to the network?

That means making governance more accessible, yes… but also cultivating a culture that honors commitment over volume, presence over power. Rather than blaming large holders or falling into passive resentment, we need to invite one another into visibility, trust, and care.

For me governance isn’t about equal votes. It’s about mutual commitments to a living protocol. Let’s move the conversation from disempowerment and extraction to building co-stewardship and trust.

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I agree, I’d also rather see a geographically balanced delegate composition along with key stakeholders.

This is super important and we can enable this by integrating Celo Mondo with Self Protocol! Upon registration delegates can opt in to prove that they are from a certain county and we can display a flag by their profile and create a map that showcases geographic distribution.

One challenge I see is this would have to be voluntary and can’t prevent someone from registering at all so it may be challenging to get an accurate view. But it would be a step in the right direction to be able to use this in a future iteration of a delegation program.

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If we treat CELO not as a passive asset but as a living commitment , then holding it is not just a right — it’s a responsibility.

I think this is too much of a high bar for holders. The community should be welcoming to people that can provide all range of involvements. If someone doesn’t have time but is willing to delegate to another member that seems to know what they are doing, that’s enough for me.

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