[FINAL] Creation of Celo Philippines DAO | Regional DAO

Governance Governance Proposals
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Funding Request: Creation of Celo Philippines DAO

Authors: cryptodayph, @maximpact , @nauman, @minmaxi

Budget Request: cUSD 35,000

Proposal Type: CPG Funding Request | Regional DAO

We’re excited to share our Draft proposal for Celo Philippines H2 2024 in line with the Celo Public Goods Funding proposal for stakeholder input and early collaborations.

Aligned Public Goods Bucket: Regional DAO

Summary: This proposal seeks funding to establish the Celo Philippines DAO, aimed at expanding and educating the local community about Celo and the Mento Protocol. With Celo recently listed on PDAX, a prominent local exchange, establishing a dedicated DAO is crucial to foster community growth and awareness. The funds will support initiatives like creating a Twitter handle, setting up a Telegram bot for community engagement, arranging a local meet up of the community and securing a presence at the Philippines Blockchain Week in Manila. The DAO will serve as a pivotal entity in enhancing Celo’s presence and adoption in the Philippines, leveraging the country’s active engagement in digital assets and substantial inbound remittance volume.

Motivation: The Philippines ranks among the most active countries globally in Web3 games adoption and memecoin speculation, signaling a strong interest in digital assets. Moreover, the annual inbound remittance volume exceeds $30 billion, underscoring the potential for Celo as a preferred platform for cost-effective, crypto-based remittances. Establishing a local DAO will facilitate targeted community outreach and educational efforts, driving adoption and integration of Celo and the Mento Protocol into everyday financial practices.

Specification: The Celo Philippines DAO will initiate community-building activities through social media channels, engage with local stakeholders at industry events like the Philippines Blockchain Week, and collaborate with PDAX to enhance liquidity and accessibility of Celo tokens. The DAO will leverage its team’s expertise in blockchain education and community management to ensure effective implementation and measurable impact.

Current status: The Regional DAO for Celo in the Philippines does not currently exist. This proposal marks the initial step towards establishing an official presence and executing targeted initiatives.

Metrics and KPIs: To measure the success of this initiative, we will track the following Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):

  1. Community Growth:
  • Telegram Group Membership: Achieve a membership of 10,000 within 6 months.
  • Twitter Followers: Reach 5,000 followers within 6 months.
  1. Event Participation:
  • Local Meetups: Host 3 meetups with an average attendance of 100 participants each.
  • Workshops/Webinars: Conduct 4 workshops/webinars with a minimum of 200 participants per event. This event will be done in collaboration with PDAX and any other local exchange/wallet that lists Celo and Mento tokens.
  • AMA Sessions: Organize 2 AMA sessions with an average of 250 participants each.
  1. Event Presence:
  • Philippines Blockchain Week: Secure a prominent booth position and gather 2,000 interactions.

Budget Breakdown

  1. Social Media and Community Engagement
  • Twitter Handle Creation: cUSD 2,000 - Includes setup, branding, initial content creation, and promotional activities.
  • Telegram Bot Development: cUSD 2,000 - Development, deployment, and maintenance for community engagement.
  1. Event and Community Outreach
  • Philippines Blockchain Week Participation: cUSD 10,000 - Booth rental, promotional materials, and logistics for the event.
  • 3 Local Meetups: cUSD 4,000 - Venue booking, catering, and promotional materials for community gathering.
  1. Educational Initiatives
  • Workshops/Webinars: cUSD 4,000 - Content development, speaker fees, and platform costs for hosting educational events.
  • AMA (Ask Me Anything) Sessions: cUSD 1,000 - Organizing sessions with Celo and Mento Protocol experts for community interaction.
  1. Operational and Miscellaneous
  • Hiring a part time person to manage all DAO related work being paid monthly = cUSD 1,500 per month (cUSD 7,500 total)
  • DAO Establishment Costs: cUSD 2,000 - Legal fees, administrative costs, and initial setup expenses for the DAO.

Total Budget: cUSD 35,000

This detailed breakdown ensures that the funds are strategically allocated to maximize impact across community engagement, educational efforts, and operational setup of the Celo Philippines DAO. The remaining cUSD 2,500 could be allocated as contingency or used to enhance any of the specified initiatives based on initial progress and feedback from the community.

By structuring the budget in this manner, the proposal aims to effectively utilize the funds to achieve measurable outcomes such as increased community growth, engagement metrics, and educational outreach, thereby laying a strong foundation for Celo’s adoption and integration in the Philippines.

Timeline and Milestones

  1. Month 1:

  • Social Media Presence:

    • Create and launch the official Twitter handle for Celo Philippines. (Estimated completion: Week 1)
    • Develop and deploy a Telegram bot for community engagement. (Estimated completion: Week 2)

  • Educational Initiatives:

    • Launch a series of educational workshops and webinars about Celo and the Mento Protocol. (Scheduled throughout Month 2)
  1. Month 2:

  • Partnership Development:

    • Initiate discussions with PDAX for a strategic partnership:
      • Define collaboration terms and integration possibilities. (Estimated completion: Week 2)

  • AMA Session:

    • Organize an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session featuring Celo and Mento Protocol representatives. (Scheduled: Week 4)
  1. Month 3:

  • Event Participation and Community Outreach:

    • Secure participation at Philippines Blockchain Week:
    • Finalize booth arrangements and promotional materials. (Estimated completion: Week 3)
    • Conduct initial community outreach through event presence. (Event date: End of Month 1)

This timeline ensures a structured approach to establishing the Celo Philippines DAO, focusing on building a robust online presence, engaging the local community through events and educational initiatives, and forging strategic partnerships. Each milestone is designed to contribute to the overall goal of enhancing Celo’s adoption and visibility within the Philippines, leveraging the allocated budget effectively.

Payment Terms: The funds would be received in a multisig Gnosis Safe wallet:

celo:0xe5A68a7C29Dd1F9a4d256704e26eC18D090edd88

Team: The proposal is spearheaded by cryptodayph, supported by a team with extensive experience in blockchain education and community management in the Philippines.

Links:

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The Mento Labs team supports the proposal for the creation of a Celo Philippines DAO. As you mentioned, the Philippines is one of the world’s top recipients of remittances, which account for a substantial percentage of the country’s GDP. These remittances are primarily used for household consumption, so more cost-effective remittance solutions can have a broader economic impact.

Remittances are among the core use cases for stablecoins, and we believe that the establishment of a Celo Philippines DAO is a great initiative.

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Hello Community,

I have a contrary opinion, especially when it comes to the creation of country/region/continent-based DAOs. I will highlight my concerns across three points:

  1. Continent-based DAO or Country-based DAO:

The whole of Africa has about 52 countries, but just one DAO, similar to Europe and Latam. Don’t get me wrong, what I am saying is that we should ensure equal representation across the ecosystem. What are the metrics for justifying the creation of a new regional DAO? Population, country size, transaction volume from the region, influence, etc.?

  1. DAO or Local Nodes:

We should have a clear objective for these DAOs. These DAOs should have voting powers in global governance. Maybe we can start by delegating a certain amount of voting power to regional-based DAOs. The term “DAO” in this case seems more like a local Celo Node. What power do members of these DAOs have? If you look at the activities of these DAOs and their structure, it’s more like a local Celo community than a DAO.

  1. Adopting Better Governance:

Before now, I have been intending to post that the current Celo Gov call seems centralized. Let’s emulate the approach used by Arbitrum and Optimism by encouraging the likes of L2BEAT, etc. to host calls on the proposal. This will lead to active participation. However, if regional DAOs can host their own gov calls and interact with those submitting proposals, the ecosystem can make more informed decisions.

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Hey there @iamoracle,

thanks a lot for your thoughtful comment!

As Celo Guardian, I always aim to increase governance participation and awareness.

Can you please tell me more about the point 3 of your comment?
It is thanks to feedback from community members like you that we can improve the system in place, and I would love to learn more about your feedback :pray:t3:

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Supportive of this initiative! Philippines has always been dear to Celo - the first humanitarian aid pilot plus other projects with Grameen Foundation happened in the country. This DAO can help reignite our footprint in the country and the region, which will be advantageous for the growth and scaling of our ecosystem.

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Instead of holding only the usual general call, we should also allow DAOs to hold their governance calls independently and conduct due diligence on those putting out proposals.Validators can also delegate their voting power to these DAOs. This will also improve the governance participation rate.

In summary, those putting out proposals must be able to convince the smaller DAOs to vote.

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Hi @cryptodayph,

Thanks for writing up a Regional DAO Draft - and welcome to the Celo ecosystem!

Before moving to a vote, you’ll need at least two Celo PG stewards to signal readiness to move the proposal forward. The proposal must also have been on the forum for at least seven days. All process details can be viewed in the CeloPG Hub.

My initial feedback
I’ve reviewed your proposal and have the following comments/questions:

  • Given that this is your first Celo proposal, I believe the total requested budget is on the high end. I would rather see a sharper proposal that allows you to showcase the potential of the region and your team (~25-35K).
  • I don’t believe projects should ask for a (large) surplus. I would remove the additional 15,000 cUSD requested.
  • Can you provide a detailed breakdown of the Local Meetup costs? From my experience, 4k per meetup is quite a lot, especially if you intend to pay someone to do the work and have Celo Philippines pay for it.
  • The creation of the Twitter Handle seems a bit pricey. From my experience, the Telegram Bot should cost a couple hundred dollars at most.
  • I assume the AMAs will be hosted by the person hired to do the work for Celo Philippines. What extra costs are you making to justify a $2k ask for that?

With the upcoming launch of the Philippine Peso stablecoin and DevCon, I see a lot of value in having a good presence in the Philippines; however, I would like to see the proposal reduce its scope and budget—if you reduce the costs and remove the surplus, you should be able to create a proposal in the ~30k cUSD range, which, if split in two parts, could be a good scope for a first proposal.

Finally, it’s also possible to apply for the Regen Coorindation Gitcoin Grants program as a Celo Regional DAO - to get started with that read this announcement and register your DAO here.

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Gm :green_heart:

Lots of great memories from the Philippines, but I agree with @LuukDAO. Maybe you could narrow down the proposal focus entirely on Philippines Blockchain Week and 1-2 meetups?

And, as a suggestion, maybe Mento team could contribute $ on top since Mento is directly mentioned in the proposal 5 times?

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Thanks for the thoughtful comments. Allow me to elucidate on why country-based DAOs need to come first.

Taking your Africa DAO as an example, let’s consider the parallel for our region. For the sake of argument let’s call it the ASEAN DAO. The region in question has 650M people, 13 major languages, and every religion on Earth represented within. English is only a major language in Singapore and the Philippines; in every other country in this region it’s a distant second or even third.

Launching a Philippine DAO (or any other country-based DAO) is therefore a practical strategy.

It allows us to target efforts to a market that we are deeply familiar with and more importantly, people who we can communicate with directly. I was born, raised, and educated in the Philippines and have lived here my entire life. But I am more of a foreigner in neighboring Thailand, Indonesia, Laos, or Vietnam (3000km away), than I am in Canada (16000km away). I love visiting our neighbors but my cultural connection to them is limited; I suspect the feeling is mutual. Primarily it’s because we don’t speak the same language, but it’s many other things as well.

I’m not saying regional DAOs won’t work, but I think you start at the local level first and perhaps organize regionals when you have more constituents. Doing it in the reverse order will make it far more challenging to form a team that has practical knowledge of on-ground efforts, since you’d need a handful of representatives for each language and culture.

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Thank you for the comments. We’ll update shortly. May I know what the preferred method for editing the draft proposal is? I couldn’t find a way to edit the original post, but I have a new version ready to replace it with, incorporating the feedback from the comments.

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gm @iamoracle @LuukDAO @pcbo Markus and everyone else on the thread! After conferring with my co-authors, we’ve reduced the budget across most of the initiatives outlined above and have substantially downsized the contigency fee. We didn’t eliminate it entirely as working in countries like the Philippines just introduces a level of uncertainty that can never be fully accounted for.

The final budget is now at cUSD 35,000.

While I’m here, I’d like to introduce my co-authors. We’re all friends and business contacts from the Philippines, although not all of us reside there at present.

nauman – CFO of Celo Foundation, ex-CEO of largest Philippine crypto exchange
maximpact and minmaxi – senior team of second largest licensed Philippine exchange
cryptodayph – (me) head of crypto division at the Philippines’ largest mobile wallet

We’ve worked in the Philippine crypto industry for many many years (I’ve personally been building crypto businesses since 2014) and have a very deep understanding of the local market and its specific nuances. We look forward to working with the organiation further on this proposal!

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Hey everyone, this is @maximpact , one of the co-authors of this Proposal. Thank you to everyone who have provided their constructive comments.

I believe that @cryptodayph has already addressed most of the outstanding concerns, so I’ll keep my post brief and more as an introduction about myself: as mentioned above, I am part of the senior team at a licensed Philippine exchange, and have worked here on various initiatives, from working on NFTs, to community building, to more recently liquidity and trading. Worked in the financial services sector before this as well.

Excited to be a part of this initiative in helping educate the community about Celo and Mento Protocol!

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Thanks for iterating on the proposal. The total in the thread shows 25,000 - while I believe this should be 35,000.

Please update that and make any final updates you think would increase the strength of this request. Once you feel ready to move to a vote, please change the title to [FINAL]

Also, it’s still possible to apply for the Regen Coorindation Gitcoin Grants program as a Celo Regional DAO to get additional support and resources - to get started with that read this announcement and register your DAO here.

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Thank you, I’ve just adjusted the typo now!

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Hi @cryptodayph, We’ve just submitted this proposal for a vote in the Celo PG snapshot space. If the proposal receives at least 4 votes from the current CeloPG Stewards, with the majority in favor, it will pass.

We’ll update you on the outcome after the voting period ends in five days.

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Hi @cryptodayph, congratulations! The Celo Philippines DAO proposal was approved by the CeloPG stewards (3 accept—1 abstain).

Before we can distribute the cUSD budget, we need to confirm that you have access to the provided Celo Safe wallet.

Can each signer confirm here that they have control over the associated addresses?

  • celo:0x12B4c31Ea068857d86F778903c4E1464838A5b71
  • celo:0x47d544473819299B2b7f579b27E10220268eaD1D

Once that is confirmed, we will move forward with the transfer!

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I confirm that I control the celo address ending in 8eaD1D!

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I can confirm that I control the celo address 0x12B4c31Ea068857d86F778903c4E1464838A5b71

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NIce !
Are you considering any additional regions in the near future?