Dear Celo community,
On behalf of Golem Foundation, we’d love to introduce Octant and explore positive-sum synergies with Celo ecosystem.
Introducing Octant
Octant, part of Golem Foundation, is a project that facilitates sustainable, community-coordinated impact funding at scale. We’ve demonstrated the power of sustainable funding of impactful projects by staking 100,000 ETH (~$360M as of today) and using much of the yield to fund broad based public goods in the Ethereum ecosystem.
Over the past year, we’ve distributed millions of dollars to hundreds of open-source and impactful projects builders, supporting important projects such as Protocol Guild, Tor Browser, Funding the Commons, L2BEAT, BuidlGuidl, and many others.
Need for Sustainability
Our experience has shown that most impactful, open-source projects / initiatives lack sustainability, often relying on one-time (grant) allocations without a sustainable flywheel.
We aim on solving this by:
- Creating a provably fair, open, and minimally biased funding mechanism
- Leveraging substantial treasury resources and funding streams for maximum impact, powered by the Web3 ecosystems native value generating streams
- Fostering a sustainable ecosystem for open-source, real-world impactful projects development
- Rewarding users for participation in the sustainable impact funding ecosystem
- Coordinating with other web3 ecosystem on funding specific deliverables/initiatives
By staking 100,000 ETH and donating the yield, we’re not just talking about change — we’ve actively started driving it. Our goal is to contribute to a better, more accessible, fair, and open world by making funding impactful projects truly sustainable.
Alignment with Celo
Celo has always been a pioneer in sustainability, financial inclusion, and regenerative finance. Celo’s commitment to environmental stewardship and ReFi is clear through many efforts — from launching Celo on Earth Day, to fostering inclusive ecosystems around the globe, driving real-world impact at scale, to becoming a carbon-negative blockchain, among others.
Moreover, initiatives such as CeloPG and Celo’s decision to become L2 on the OP Stack, with its pledge to contribute % of sequencer fees to fund public goods, are strong testaments to Celo’s values. These are just a few examples of Celo’s ongoing initatives.
We believe that Celo’s mission to build a more inclusive, sustainable future — bringing prosperity to all — directly aligns with Octant’s mission to create the self-sustaining global public goods funding ecosystem that balances the common good and individual financial empowerment.
Octant V2 Vision
The DeFi space has largely been disconnected from regenerative models (ReFi) and use cases such as impact investing and public goods funding. We need to bridge this gap and align incentives in a way that benefits both individual users and impactful projects.
The image above illustrates Octant V2 flywheel, which brings together diverse ecosystem participants and creates incentives for collaboration. Our goal is to align ecosystem players with varying motivations, fostering cooperation to achieve a balance between individual rewards and funding for impactful projects.
The diagram above illustrates the workflow of a Dragon (project with substantial principal capital) engaging with the system. The protocol allows individual Dragons to join and deposit capital into their own Dragon Vaults, while all Dragons contribute a percentage of their yield to the Sustainability Pool.
You can think about the Sustainability Pool as a Sovereign Wealth Fund that is used to fund public goods and impactful projects across the broader Ethereum ecosystem.
The Dragon Vault deploys that capital into yield-generating strategies. These strategies may include ETH staking protocols, DeFi protocols, etc. The Vault distribution is decided by the Dragon and can be divided between the Dragon Pool, Sustainability Pool, Regen Vault, and other pools/vaults the Dragon wants to utilize.
The community creates funding rounds from the continuously flowing funds into the Dragon Pool. Regens (community members) then vote with the accumulated tokens using an allocation method, and these votes determine how the funds are distributed.
Opportunities and Collaboration
We’re openly inviting the Celo community to share your feedback and suggestions on this intro forum post. We see this as the beginning of our long-term, positive-sum collaboration that will directly benefit Celo ecosystem and beyond.
We recently had great conversations with @LuukDAO and @MontyMerlin at CeloPG, as well as @marek and other members of the Celo team, both in Bangkok and online. We’re grateful for the opportunity to present Octant v2 at Celo Gather Bangkok — it was amazing to hear community feedback in person. These discussions have further strengthened our belief that the synergies between Celo and Octant can drive meaningful and lasting impact.
With that said, here’re some collaboration opportunities:
- Community Activations
Creative, meaningful community initiatives to drive prosperity for all - Sustainability-focused Octant Epoch
Co-leading an Octant funding round, encouraging Celo builders to participate - Sustainable Impact Funding
Allocating a % of the Celo treasury to generate yield in the Protocol, and streaming a portion of those rewards to the Sustainability Pool - Integrations with the ecosystem
ReFi integrations possibilities and beyond - Governance Contribution
Contributing to collaborative governance, driving positive-sum outcomes
It’s time for sustainable evolution
Our industry desperately needs bold experiments in sustainable funding for what truly matters. While experimental approaches may not always succeed, our efforts since Octant launched in summer ‘23 have already shown tangible results and meaningful impact.
We believe that co-creating and nurturing impact funding flywheel will lead to the evolution of how impactful projects and initiatives are funded, laying the groundwork for a sustainable future across the entire ecosystem.
We look forward to collaborating with the Celo community to build a better, more sustainable future for all.