Delegate Thread: yomfana

[yomfana]

TLDR: As a delegate, my goal is to champion transparent governance, advocate for accountability across the ecosystem, and support initiatives that drive meaningful adoption and impact.

Summary

Address: 0x214348e96A9F8ca3e4E7B02f668b9053803626F3
Mondo: https://mondo.celo.org/delegate/0x214348e96A9F8ca3e4E7B02f668b9053803626F3
Time zone: +2 GMT
Languages: English, Sesotho
Signal & PGP: paaster
Forum: Profile - yomfana - Celo Forum

Intro and governance ideals

Hi Celo community! I’m Ken, Former tech at Luno. Currently MSc at Wits. I am a strong advocate for privacy and meaningful blockchain adoption.

When it comes to Celo governance, I thoroughly scrutinize proposals/DAOs/projects that request community funding, both before and after approval, to ensure all stakeholders are held responsible for delivering real value. I have the expertise to independently track both on-chain and off-chain metrics and transactions to verify the claims made by any proposal/DAO/project and I’m not afraid to call out discrepancies. I will consistently advocate for initiatives that prioritize the end user over go-between “facilitators”.

I strongly support open-source-first projects. With a solid background in the EVM tech stack, I’m also well-equipped to engage in and contribute meaningfully towards technical governance decisions.

You can review my uncompromising approach to proposal scrutiny and ecosystem accountability through my contributions on the forum.

[yomfana]

CGP 179 (Restore Spend Allowance to Stabila): Abstain

While I appreciate the intent behind the proposal (technical correction), my concerns stem from Stabila’s historical performance. The potential impact that could be generated from the last remaining funds remains uncertain and so does my notion of supporting them.

CGP 180 (JPY & NGN Oracle launch): Yes

On-chain representations of various forms of fiat is always a good thing.

[yomfana]

CGP 176 (Celo Camp 2025 S0-1): No

After reviewing the past Celo Camp GitHub discussions, it’s clear that many of the past participating projects have not progressed. The archive resembles more of a project graveyard than a launchpad of ongoing innovation.

Additionally, the budget allocation is highly disproportionate where operations receive 2.74x more funding than the participating teams themselves (as investments). Not only is this imbalance questionable, but it’s also important to note that the funding to teams is positioned as an investment; implying an expectation of returns. This could potentially put early-stage teams on the hook.

Approving this proposal without addressing these concerns could send the wrong signal about values and incentives in the Celo ecosystem.

CGP 182 (Launch of JPY & NGN): Yes

Not much to add here. I supported CGP 180, and this follow-up is consistent with that direction.

CGP 181 (Extension of Score Management Committee): Yes

I support the idea of community-run RPC nodes and recognize the need for a committed team to drive this initiative forward. While there were lapses in the governance process, I believe the Score Committee is not at fault. That responsibility lies primarily with the Celo Governance Guild. In hindsight, the L2 transition period was a high-pressure moment for both the original proposer (Martin) and the Guild, and I now see that greater flexibility was warranted at the time.

I initially leaned towards voting against due to past coordination issues, but after reflecting on where the accountability truly lies, I changed my mind. To vote against this proposal solely on that basis, when those issues were largely outside the committee’s control, would be punitive and ultimately diabolical.

I reviewed one of the committee member’s response in the @PGov thread, and the additional context provided makes the scope of work clear. Compared to other proposals, many of which request budgets magnitudes higher for smaller teams over similar periods, this budget is reasonable and modest. Unlike proposals like Stabila or Celo Camp, where past impact can be directly measured, this initiative is still ongoing. It would be unjust to retroactively cut funding now before the concept has had a chance to mature.

[Thylacine]

What validator group is this?

[yomfana]

Flagged that comment for moderation due to spam/off-topic content.

[Thylacine]

Right I was confused, didn’t realise you were running a validator as well. But apparently it’s some spam bot.

[yomfana]

CGP 185 (CeLatam Venture Studio): No

I support the idea of a CeLatam Venture Studio. However, approving this proposal could set a precedent where other grantees seek similar bailouts if the value of their CELO grants decline, potentially undermining the principle that grantees are responsible for managing their own treasury and market risks. Additionally, I have voted No on proposals with questionable investment to self expenditure ratios, such as this one, where 23% of the budget is allocated to direct investments into startups.

Also, at the end of the day in whatever angle you look at it from, the exchange is unfavorable for the community fund ( ~$0.634/CELO).

[yomfana]

CGP 183 (Kreiva DAO): No

The funding request is too high for a pilot initiative that majorly contributes to cultural capital. This is a new DAO with no previous grants cycles or retroactive validation i.e. a pilot or proof of concept. I would prefer to see credibility being established on a small budget first. My other concerns are addressed here.

Another concerning aspect is how the proposers disregarded direct community feedback on the forum. The proposal is mostly unchanged except for a few aesthetic tweaks. If the proposers don’t value community input, they should expect a measured reciprocal response during referendum.

[yomfana]

CGP 186 (Mento Oracle Migrations): Yes

Not much to add here. High value technical proposal.

[yomfana]

CGP 216, 217, 218 (Validator cuts): No

I voted no on all three because this is a fundamentally flawed and coercive governance exercise masquerading as choice. It attempts to simulate ranked-choice voting while explicitly discarding dissent and consent. All three options are austerity-only outcomes with no legitimate status-quo baseline (with Option #2 being the closest), forcing voters to pick a form of degradation rather than express genuine preference.

The timing makes this worse. Rushing this through before Season 2 effectively disposes of validators before any serious scrutiny of other ecosystem projects can occur, preemptively shifting the burden onto a single group while others escape comparative accountability.

Approvers will only approve the one with more “yes” votes. In case the proposal with more “yes” votes doesn’t meet quorum to pass, it will get re-submitted on-chain immediately after the winning proposal expired.

“No” votes will not be counted for the purpose of picking a winning choice, therefore voters can explicitly abstain by voting “no” on all three options. “No” votes do not affect quorum.

An “abstain” option can not be submitted as a separate proposal because governance is currently set to allow only three proposals dequeued per day, so the 4th option will be lagging the other ones by 24 hours, and that’s undesirable.

Governance rules are not something proposers get to redefine for convenience. Either show where this process is explicitly permitted, or follow the rules as written. There is no “special pass” for clever framing. Committing to immediate resubmission until something passes is an outright attempt to manufacture consent especially when the rules are explicit about this. I urge the community to act as watchdogs because normalizing this behavior opens the door to anyone defiling the governance process whenever the outcome they want isn’t forthcoming. These proposals deserves rejection not just on substance, but on principle.

@celogovernance should make sure that these conjured rules are not followed through (should have done it earlier in the repo submission phase) lest we continue to debase Celo governance.

Opinion piece: The way forward with validator reduction

The primary reason I do not support any of the above proposals is simple: the proposers have not been forthcoming. This process began as a so-called discussion on tokenomics, which quickly devolved into thinly veiled FUD blaming validators for CELO’s price decline: a claim made with zero supporting data and repeated despite being debunked multiple times. When that narrative collapsed, it was quietly abandoned.

The framing then conveniently shifted to “expenditure reduction”. However, during the 18th December governance call, the real motive finally surfaced: this was never about fixing tokenomics or meaningfully reducing spend, but about freeing up funds for reallocation to other ecosystem projects, exactly as I predicted early on. That approach solves neither the expenditure problem nor the tokenomics problem, and it certainly does not meaningfully extend the expenditure runway. It merely reshuffles recipients while pretending to be fiscal discipline.

This is precisely why a proposal like this cannot precede serious scrutiny of other ecosystem recipients. Making validators and RPC providers the first and, so far, only targets for cuts, while leaving the rest of the ecosystem largely untouched, is neither fair nor credible. If ex-validators/RPC providers are “fair game” then the same standard must apply across the board: equivalent cost-reduction efforts for all ecosystem recipients, including outright removal or replacement of underperforming projects and recovery of funds wherever possible.

Absent that, any claimed “savings” are not savings at all. If the intent is truly fiscal responsibility, then those funds must be treated as such; protected behind a timelock or burned outright. Anything else is just budgetary sleight of hand, dressed up as reform.

In my opinion such a proposal must come after Season 2 scrutiny in order to fairly and correctly balance the entire treasury expenditure.