Hi everyone,
My name is Nikhil, and I work on the Strategy, Research, and Innovation team at the Celo Foundation. I’d love to give an update on the DeFi for the People program and where we are to date.
For context, DeFi for the People supports project launches through the following ways:
- Grant/liquidity incentives
- Security audit by the Celo Foundation
- Usability review and testing
- Co-marketing (Medium announcement, Twitter spaces, etc.)
Upcoming Launches
See below for the latest anticipated launch dates below. Please note, however, that these are subject to change based on developer timeline updates, security audit feedback, and other general market conditions. I will keep you all updated as any items in this list change, as well as new launches.
- ReSource: Early June (mainnet launch)
- Hosting a Twitter spaces the week of June 6
- Revo: Week of June 13 (Finalizing marketing content and pools)
- Masa: June (Launching credit builder loan)
- EntropyFi:
- Just launched on Celo in partnership with ImmortalDAO
- Discussing supporting stablecoin prediction games as part of D4TP
- Uniswap v3: June (cLabs working on governance bridge)
- Curve (Ethereum and Celo): June
- Finalizing gauge proposal
- Flow Carbon: Late June (in partnership with Climate Collective)
- Toucan: July (in partnership with Climate Collective)
- Symmetric v2: June/July
- EthicHub: June/July
- Double: TBD (waiting on security audit)
- Chee Finance: Already launched on Celo but discussing collaboration opportunities with D4TP
Here’s also an update on other major items:
- Just shared the Aave governance proposal draft with the Aave team. Waiting for feedback.
- Hosting a Twitter spaces the week of June 20 to discuss Chainlink integration updates
Updating the Incentive Model
LIquidity incentive models in their current design are not necessarily designed for real world use cases and sustained user acquisition. Given the current market climate and the emphasis of DeFi for the People to address real world needs, we are exploring how the Celo Foundation can better support DeFi projects on Celo. Designing a new model will take some time and we’ll keep you updated on the latest thinking, but in the meantime we’d love to get feedback from you all on what works, what might be better, and how we can together build better DeFi. Please reach out!
Celo DeFi Consortium Call
Each month the Celo Foundation convenes a call for DeFi projects on Celo to:
- Elevate awareness of DeFi to the Celo Foundation
- Collaborate and share resources
- Better integrate projects
- Respond to and resolve key issues
This is a closed private conversation given the sometimes sensitive topics brought up. The Celo Foundation convenes the call, puts together an agenda based on input from others, and moderates the conversation. The call, topics, and final decisions are governed by the DeFi builders, not the Celo Foundation. New members are added following approval by existing DeFi Consortium members—primarily based on active participation in the Celo ecosystem and launch/close to launch on Celo. We held our June call this week where we discussed the following items:
- Bridging
- ReFi
- Building with purpose in a down market
If you are a DeFi builder who has launched on Celo or are launching soon, please reach out to discuss joining the Celo DeFi Consortium. Similarly, please do reach out or comment if you have any follow up questions or concerns. I’m also active on Twitter (@pumpernikhil) and the Celo Discord, and happy to connect anytime. Thank you to everyone in the Celo community.
To prosperity for all,
Nikhil Raghuveera