Hello Celo community,
We’re Bernard, Sid, and Findlay from Areta, and we wanted to take a moment to say hello to the community!
Our work focuses on how DAOs and foundations can use capital allocation as a strategic tool for ecosystem growth, and to date, we’ve had the privilege to work with leading ecosystems like Uniswap, Safe, Aave, Polygon, and dYdX.
We’ve been active in the Celo ecosystem for a few months now, following conversations with Anna and Isha from the Celo Foundation, as well as Luuk, about the current state of the ecosystem. These conversations motivated us to take a closer look at Celo’s current funding initiatives, and to share some of these first perspectives with the community. Our hope is these views below can be helpful as a fresh insight or discussion starter - we’re always happy to discuss any of the findings.
Our Initial View
Celo has built a strong foundation with a number of active funding initiatives across key facets of the ecosystem—ranging from grants and public goods funding (RPFG and QF), to incubator support through Celo Camp, community-led efforts like Prezenti and GoodDollar, and more. These initiatives, stewarded by both the Foundation and independent contributors, importantly reflect a values-aligned approach from key stakeholders to tackle ecosystem support.
As Celo transitions to an L2, there is an exciting opportunity to evolve its governance model and reframe how funding is allocated. From what we have seen, efforts are already underway to consolidate and sharpen strategic funding areas to attract and retain high-quality contributors. Still, there are signs that more targeted support may be needed. According to the Developer Report, the Celo ecosystem has seen a 58% drop in total developers over the past two years, including a 41% decline in full-time contributors. We view this as a strong signal that the ecosystem should prioritize re-engaging and retaining builders through more robust support and aligned incentives.
Additionally, while Celo’s funding landscape includes strong programs for early- and growth-stage teams, there appears to be a gap in support for builders in the middle of the project life cycle (see our breakdown here). Without better mid-stage support, Celo risks losing high-potential teams with early traction to ecosystems that offer more comprehensive follow-on funding.
We’re opening this thread to introduce Areta and start a conversation about how to better support builders on Celo and help sustainably grow more great apps and active users in the ecosystem.
If you’re interested to learn more about our work, feel free to reach out online or on the ground at Berlin Blockchain week next week! We’re keen to meet more people from the ecosystem. You can also find more of our views on our blog, where we dive deeper into our approach to capital allocation.