Investigation into CeloPG

[etherlens]

Investigation into CeloPG: Part 1

This is the public summary version of Part 1.

Introduction

This report is submitted in the public interest to place before the Celo community a concise but evidence-based account of financial movement irregularities and reporting discrepancies associated with CeloPG.

This version is intentionally compressed for publication constraints. The full transaction history, wallet tables, ledger traces, and supporting evidence have been moved into the detailed dossier on Codeberg archive referenced below.

Disclaimer

The following statements are provided to make the methodology and intent of this report explicit:

1. Public Interest & Pro Bono Work: This report is prepared solely in the public interest for the benefit of the Celo community. It is non-commercial, pro bono work. No personal payment, financial benefit, or private consideration has been sought or accepted for its preparation.
2. Methodology, Objectivity & Address Attribution: The findings in this report are derived primarily from public on-chain evidence. Claims are grounded in verifiable transaction data, contract interactions, public governance posts, and openly available supporting materials. Where wallet ownership cannot be established with absolute certainty, the report uses careful language and identifies the basis for reasonable attribution, including OSINT linkages such as forum posts, social profiles, project documentation, ENS names, and other self-published records.
3. Adherence to Community Standards: This report is intended to comply with the Celo Code of Conduct, the Celo Forum Terms of Service, and the norms of fair, evidence-led public accountability. Its structure draws on established investigative and oversight models, including public grant-misuse reporting frameworks adapted to the Celo context.
4. Evidence Provided Up Front: The supporting evidence for this report is being provided up front alongside this publication. The Codeberg archive and the detailed dossier contain the underlying ledger extracts, transaction references, wallet mappings, report snapshots, and processed evidence relied upon here.

History of CeloPG

CeloPG (Celo Public Goods) was formally established in February 2024 through CGP115, following the Celo Governance Development Sprint.

The relevant governance progression is straightforward:

1. H1 2024: broad steward model, 5-of-9 multisig, initial public-goods rollout.
2. H2 2024: leaner steward structure, 4-of-7 multisig, expanded operational discretion.
3. Season 0 and Season 1: narrower core operating group, 3-of-5 multisig, increased concentration of execution and control.

Across those periods, CeloPG controlled a core budget of approximately 2,927,500 cUSD, 2,585,000 CELO, and 250,000 OP, excluding the inactive H2 matching allocation.

Summary Findings

H1 2024

No material discrepancies were identified in H1. The balances appear to have been returned correctly to the Celo Community Fund at the conclusion of operations.

H2 2024

The principal concern in H2 is the transaction 0x51f17697713d2cbd8c8a7092beedad54d5361f7207c288d21ba21e471063ec5f, labeled on the CeloPG ledger as “BioFi Regen Coordination Ops.”

Based on the traced flow presented in the detailed dossier:

1. 5,000 cUSD moved from the H2 multisig into an intermediary multisig linked by attribution evidence to Monty, Niko, and Luuk.
2. An additional 10,000 cUSD from the Season 0/1 multisig was consolidated into that same intermediary wallet.
3. 12,500 cUSD was then sent onward to the RefiDAO multisig.
4. Those funds were subsequently disbursed to individuals within the RefiDAO orbit, while only 2,500 cUSD was sent to what appears to be a Gitcoin Grants multisig.

The governance concern is not merely that funds moved. It is that they appear to have moved through an intermediary insider-linked structure without equivalent clarity in the public reporting record.

The questions raised by this pattern are direct:

1. Why was an intermediary insider-linked multisig used at all?
2. Where was this routing clearly disclosed in public budget reporting?
3. What conflict-management controls were applied?
4. Why did this pattern emerge after governance control had narrowed?

This is not a minor documentation issue. It is a material governance concern involving the routing of community funds through opaque, insider-adjacent pathways without matching clarity in the public record.

Season 0 2025

The Season 0 review reveals another pattern that is difficult to reconcile with the public-facing mission of the program: a substantial share of the budget appears to have been consolidated, through multiple intermediary steps, around a single individual, Luuk Weber, before being bridged out through Optimism to Lisk.

Bridge exit:

1. AxelarScan, Celo - Optimism
2. LayerZero, Optimism - Lisk

This is not a minor accounting curiosity. It goes directly to whether the operational reality of the program matched the stewardship story presented to the community.

The questions raised are straightforward and severe:

1. If a large portion of the budget was routed through a chain of intermediaries toward a single destination, how were subcontractors, service providers, and distinct budget lines actually paid in the manner represented to the community?
2. If the observable flow shows significant budget concentration around stewards or steward-linked entities, what documentary record exists to justify that concentration and distinguish legitimate program administration from insider-directed control?
3. CeloPG’s stated mandate was to strengthen Celo, including improving Celo TVL. Why, then, did Season 0 funds that reached the consolidating safe subsequently move off Celo and toward the Lisk network (a competing chain) via Optimism? A public-goods program funded by the Celo community is expected, at bare minimum, to act with fidelity to the ecosystem it was created to serve. When community assets are seen moving away from Celo and into another Layer 2 environment, the burden is on program leadership to explain why that conduct was consistent with the mandate they were entrusted to execute.

Detailed dossier with full ledgers and transaction tables: etherlens/celopg-review: The is public interest review and investigation of CeloPG on-chain activities - Codeberg.org

Part 2

Part 2 will examine additional evidence concerning Season 0 and Season 1, including the use of the Celo Community Fund in connection with validator and Community RPC-related extraction pathways.

[MontyMerlin]

I’m addressing this to clarify the record.

The transaction you highlight labeled “BioFi Regen Coordination Ops” is what it says it is — operational funding that supported a series of Gitcoin / Allo-based regenerative funding rounds and related coordination work that ReFi DAO and Regen Coordination helped design, operate, support, and fundraise for. Those activities were publicly described in CeloPG reporting, including the CeloPG H2 2024 Progress Report.

Further public documentation of this work exists across multiple forums:

• BioFi Pathfinders Round Proposal

• BioFi Pathfinders Retrospective

• AI ImpactQF / Regen Coordination Global GG23 Retrospective

• AgroforestDAO Round

• ReFi Mediterranean

• REGEN Rio

• Regen Citizens

Across these rounds, relatively modest CeloPG contributions were used to unlock significantly larger pools of capital from partners including Gitcoin, Ma Earth, BioFi, and others. For example, BioFi Pathfinders received 25k cUSD from CeloPG and raised an additional ~$43k. More broadly, further Regen Coordination–supported programs mobilised over $236k in funding with only ~$80k from CeloPG (~2.95x multiple). These rounds funded real projects and communities building on Celo, onboarded new users, and piloted new capital allocation mechanisms such as quadratic funding, cluster matching, AI-assisted impact evaluation (ImpactQF), and retroactive public goods funding. They also included clearly defined operational budgets (typically ~5–10%) to support coordination, delivery, and ecosystem development.

The suggestion that this involved an “intermediary insider-linked structure” is a mischaracterisation. In practice, this was the operational flow across collaborating teams and multisigs. There was no attempt to obscure or extract value, the funds were used for the purposes described. As mentioned here, I also believe that this operational work was delivered at a rate that I believe is below market relative to the scope and outcomes achieved.

From my side, I’m highly confident in the integrity of this work and the value it delivered to the Celo ecosystem. I support transparency and accountability, and I’ve provided context here to clarify the record. At this point, I consider this matter addressed and would like to be focusing my time on continuing to build and contribute.

[etherlens]

You are attempting to conflate legitimate, traceable grant streams with the specific funds identified as missing or misrouted in this investigation. Let me be precise so there is no confusion.

On the CeloPG public ledger, you list a 5,000 cUSD transfer to the counterparty “Regen Coordination Ops.” The following day, exactly two safe transfers matching 5,000 cUSD appear on-chain. One is easily identified and eliminated. That leaves the other. When we trace those funds, we find they combine with an additional 10,000 cUSD from the Season 0 multisig, totaling 12,500 cUSD (the other 2,500 cUSD flowed to a GG identified multisig as shown in the diagram in my original post) flowing into what is demonstrably a ReFi DAO-controlled multisig and from there, onward into ReFi DAO members personal wallets.

I have no issue with the 10,000 cUSD sent to BioFi to what is clearly a BioFi-controlled multisig, nor with the cumulative 15,000 cUSD directed to Regen Coordination GG23 rounds: those funds are provably traceable on-chain to their intended destinations. The issue is the 12,500 cUSD that terminates in ReFi DAO member private wallets through a routing structure that your own reporting does not disclose.

Now, some pointed questions that your response conspicuously failed to address:

1. ReFiDAO is not listed as a counterparty in your own ledger. If these were legitimate, planned disbursements, why does the entity that actually received the funds not appear anywhere in the record you published for the community?
2. Neither the Season 0 proposal nor final report make any mention of RefiDAO or a 10,000 cUSD allocation to it. Could you explain why this is the case and also how this aligns with the S0 stated mandate of increasing Celo TVL and transaction activity?

@MontyMerlin

The suggestion that this involved an “intermediary insider-linked structure” is a mischaracterisation.

Is it really mischaracterisation if funds provably flowed from CeloPG to a multisig controlled by you, Luuk and Niko, then to RefiDAO (You are the Founder), and then to personal wallets of RefiDAO individuals including yourself? That is an insider pathway, and denying it in the face of immutable on-chain attribution is unfounded.

I am also challenging CeloPG to publish full ledger sheets for Season 0 and Season 1 with its original edit history. If your internal accounting matches the public reporting, and if the routing of these funds was truly above board, this should be a trivial exercise. If you refuse, the community can only conclude that the internal records reveal exactly what the on-chain analysis suggests: a misappropriation of funds and a failure of fiduciary duty.

I would also like to respectfully invite the remaining multisig signers @sophia and @Sov to share their perspective on these transactions. As co-signers, they would have reviewed and approved these fund movements before execution. Specifically:

• Were the routing paths and end recipients made clear to all signers at the time of approval?
• Were any concerns or questions raised about the use of an intermediary multisig linked to fellow stewards?
• Were conflict-of-interest considerations discussed before signing?

[ddd]

Thank you, @etherlens, for the rigorous, methodical work you have put into this investigation and the work done pro bono, over months, in service of the community’s right to know where its funds went and for doing what CeloPG’s own stewards wouldn’t want to do.

You asked reasonable questions in the S1 Impact Report thread. Nobody answered - and often silence speaks louder than anything else. So you traced it yourself, onchain, pro bono. Thanks to you, @yomfana @mbarbosa and everyone else who keeps pushing for accountability and transparency, even if it is met with silence and resistance

I want to believe I speak for the core of the Celo community when I say: we deeply value all of your work you have put in and we stand behind you and your values

[MontyMerlin]

ReFi DAO is one of the three core member organisations within Regen Coordination, and in this case was the entity leading operational delivery for various Regen Coordination rounds. The funds in question were used to support the operational work of designing, coordinating, and delivering the funding rounds, as already outlined previously in this thread.

These activities were approved within the broader CeloPG strategy to run and support aligned funding rounds that mobilised additional capital and funded ecosystem growth. I have a high confidence that this work was carried out in good faith and the funds were used for the purposes described in CeloPG’s seasonal proposals.

It’s fair to say that this could have been labeled more explicitly in the ledger (e.g. referencing ReFi DAO directly), and that accounting and operational processes could have been more clearly structured, tracked and presented. However, your framing implies that funds were routed in a way intended to obscure or extract value which is not the case.

My limited engagement in ongoing back-and-forth reflects the reality that engaging in detailed, line-by-line reconstruction of historical transactions across multiple programs and entities is an extremely time-intensive rabbit hole. I support transparency and at the same time here I believe there is a point where continued iteration on the same set of interpretations becomes unproductive. From my side, I’m highly confident in the integrity of my actions, broader work, and the value it delivered to the Celo ecosystem. I consider this matter addressed and will be focusing my time on continuing to build and contribute going forward.

[NikoG]

Hey @etherlens, thank you for this extensive and time-consuming work. Sorry for not providing feedback earlier; I’ve slowly moved away from Celo Ecosystem roles over the last few months and have been extremely busy building my own endeavors. Celo is a great place, but I’m focusing these days on the intersection of tradfi payment and crypto beyond what Celo does today. However, still love the community and real-world POV we’re tackling here.

I think @MontyMerlin answered most of the questions. From my side, I don’t have much to add here or additional insights as there’s no concentration of funds around me as a steward or any entity I have direct directorship over. From my understanding, all of this research was briefed and delivered to the foundation and relevant stakeholders by your group at the beginning of the year for review (Please correct me if I’m wrong). The consensus of the foundation and relevant stakeholders was that there were no signs of misuse of funds, and the matter was addressed. I’m not sure why they never spoke up about this in the thread, but I guess they’re also trying to stay impartial publicly or avoid getting tangled up in public forums.

I admire this group’s perseverance and conviction to prove that funds were routed in a way intended to obscure or extract value but in the end it’s starting to feel as joint attempt to spread misinterpretation as the consensus narrative (Especially seeing how many anonymous “contributors” joined this dicussion). Besides not being involved on the receiving end of these funds and having 0 benefit beyond the reported funds attributed to the services I provided, I’m focusing on building. I can no longer continue engaging or explaining myself to a group committed to misinterpreting or misunderstanding the situation. Will occasionally keep checking the forum, but similar to @MontyMerlin , I consider this matter addressed, closed, and will be focusing my time on continuing to build real-world value.

[etherlens]

Investigation into CeloPG: Part 2

Before presenting the findings of Part 2, I need to address the responses from Monty Bryant and Niko da Costa Gomez.

@NikoG

The consensus of the foundation and relevant stakeholders was that there were no signs of misuse of funds, and the matter was addressed. I’m not sure why they never spoke up about this in the thread, but I guess they’re also trying to stay impartial publicly or avoid getting tangled up in public forums.

This is an extraordinary statement. Are you stating that the body responsible for oversight of community funds was presented with concerns of potential misuse, reviewed them, and chose not to address them publicly and cleared you of all wrongdoing in light of this new evidence?

@NikoG

I admire this group’s perseverance and conviction to prove that funds were routed in a way intended to obscure or extract value but in the end it’s starting to feel as joint attempt to spread misinterpretation as the consensus narrative (Especially seeing how many anonymous “contributors” joined this dicussion).

When the evidence cannot be rebutted on its merits, attack the messengers. The evidence in this investigation is on-chain. It is transaction hashes, timestamps, and wallet attribution. It does not matter who presented it, how many people are in the discussion, or whether they choose to remain anonymous. The transactions either happened or they didn’t. The routing either leads where I say it leads, or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, show me the transaction that proves otherwise. Nobody has. Not once. Across multiple posts.

@NikoG

I consider this matter addressed, closed, and will be focusing my time on continuing to build real-world value.

@MontyMerlin

I consider this matter addressed and will be focusing my time on continuing to build and contribute going forward.

You do not get to unilaterally close an accountability process. That is not how governance works. That is not how fiduciary duty works. And it is certainly not how justice works. When a steward of public funds is presented with evidence that those funds were routed through undisclosed intermediary structures, concentrated around a few individual, used to bootstrap private validator infrastructure, and extracted through exit addresses, the response cannot be “I’m confident in my integrity” and a walk-off. Confidence is not evidence. Declarations are not audits. “I consider this matter closed” is a statement of personal preference, not a resolution.

Neither Monty nor Niko have provided those answers with Luuk being completely absent from the conversation. Monty pointed to unrelated work. Niko pointed to the Foundation’s alleged private blessing. Both choosing to ignore. That is their right. But the questions remain. The evidence remains.

Introduction

Part 2 examines the validator infrastructure, the reward extraction pipeline, the Season 1 continuation, and the governance architecture that enabled all of it. What emerges is not a collection of isolated accounting errors but a coherent, traceable system of misuse of community funds.

The Validator Setup: Community-Funded, Personally Enriching

CeloPG operated a validator group called Celo Public Goods (0x6F769BcC21A867b839b6cA59dDe6c6C90c1DF18D) with 5 validators, and a second private group called RegenerativeFi/EcoLabs a private company started by Luuk (0xEff3222c0c540618D5f10a98A40571db5f6397aa) with 1 validator. Each validator required 20,000 CELO in locked deposits. Total: 120,000 CELO locked.

Every single CELO used to fund these validators traces back to the S0/S1 multisig (0x85910bE70D7eBF149918ed96eF8BE175A0639c33), which received its budget from the Celo Community Fund. These are community assets. The validators were not disclosed in any Season 0 or Season 1 governance proposal as a budget item. They do not appear as a named line item in any subsequent published report.

This deserves its own spotlight: The RegenerativeFi/Ecolabs validator group is not a community asset. It is a private entity under the sole operational control of Luuk Weber. Yet 490,000 CELO redirected to a multisig under the full control of Luuk from the CeloPG treasury was used to lock and vote for this private group.

• Celo Transaction Hash: 0xfa8259b9a0... | CeloScan
• Celo Transaction Hash: 0xc3b8901948... | CeloScan

This is not a grey area. This is the use of public treasury assets to bootstrap private infrastructure that generates private revenue streams. Even if we assume, purely for the sake of argument, that the CeloPG validator group was legitimately established as part of the public-goods mandate, we would then expect the locked CELO to be used to vote for itself. But that is not what happened. Instead, 490,000 CELO was routed to vote for the private RegenerativeFi/Ecolabs group controlled by Luuk Weber. Not the CeloPG group. The private one.

It is also worth noting that Luuk Weber was extremely vocal and one of the primary proposers responsible for dismantling the broader validator infrastructure on Celo. Whether that was hypocrisy or an attempt to cover the tracks of his own validator operation, I leave for the community to judge. The timing and the incentive alignment speak for themselves.

The validator reward extraction pipeline

Celo validators earn cUSD rewards from epoch payments. The CeloPG and Ecolabs validators collectively earned approximately ~51,596 cUSD in validator rewards across their operational lifetime. Where did it go? Not back to the Community. The rewards followed a consistent pipeline into addresses and multisigs linked to or controlled by the stewards. Note the misreporting in the Season 1 Impact Report addressed below directly contradicts the on-chain destination of these rewards.

The secondary multisigs pattern continues

This is the pattern that runs through every layer of CeloPG’s operational infrastructure through it’s lifetime: the Safe presented to the community is theater. The actual dealings happen freely under secondary Safes some of which are under the effective unilateral control of a single actor. This is not only reckless from a security perspective. It is structurally suspicious, and it reinforces the intermediary control findings from Part 1: the governance facade exists for the community’s benefit, not for actual accountability.

Lies in the Season 1 Impact Report

The CeloPG Season 1 Impact Report (CeloPG Season 1 - Impact Report) contains statements about validator operations that are directly contradicted by the on-chain record. I will quote them precisely and address them one by one.

1: “100% assigned to the CeloPG budget”

“Net, we earn about $1800 per node per month which is 100% assigned to the CeloPG budget.”

We can trace ~80% of all the ~51,596 cUSD directly touching steward associated addresses either fully or partially and some rewards even exiting via a CEX. Only a small amount is sent to a Gitcoin Grants related Multisig, ~8k.

2: “No CeloPG contributors operate a personal [validator]”

“No CeloPG contributors operate a personal. The only node that contributors have indirect exposure to is the RegenerativeFi node which has been active for about 1 month and dedicates all it’s node revenue to incentives on Celo - to which anyone has equal access and no fees are charged.”

520,000 CELO of community funds were used to vote for this private group. The community did not have “equal access” to 520,000 CELO of voting power. That was public treasury money, routed through a Luuk-controlled multisig, used to prop up a private validator. The setup fee for this validator can also be back-traced to the S0/S1 multisig.

3: “$12,000 cUSD projected” in validator rewards

“…with an additional $12,000 cUSD projected to be generated until the end of the year through our CeloPG Validator nodes.”

Validator rewards is a predictable metric. The actual validator rewards earned by CeloPG and Ecolabs validators total approximately ~51,596 cUSD across their operational lifetime. The report projects $12,000 for the remaining portion of 2025, while omitting entirely the rewards already accumulated and routed to potential personal infrastructure.

4: The RegenerativeFi/Ecolabs group is “1 month old”

The S1 response states the RegenerativeFi node “has been active for about 1 month.” On-chain data shows the RegenerativeFi/Ecolabs group was registered on October 11, 2025 and the validator was added on October 21, 2025 roughly two months before the December 17 response, not one. When the timeline doesn’t fit the narrative, apparently you just change the timeline.

Unanswered Questions

The following questions remain outstanding. They were either ignored in Part 1 responses or arise directly from the new evidence presented here:

• Where is the governance authorization for the validator infrastructure? In which proposal, budget line, or community vote was the use of 120,000 CELO for validator deposits approved? Why was the approx half million CELO used to vote for a private group using public funds?
• Where is the accounting for validator rewards? Approximately 51,596 cUSD in rewards was earned on community-funded validators. How much was returned to the Community Fund? Where is the ledger entry?
• Will CeloPG publish full ledger sheets for Season 0 and Season 1 ? This was requested in Part 1. It has not been done. When a multisig’s reported budget and its on-chain movements diverge this dramatically, the only responsible conclusion is that the reporting is unreliable.
• What did the Celo Foundation actually conclude when this was “briefed” to them? Niko stated the matter was previously delivered to the Foundation and that “the consensus was that there were no signs of misuse of funds.” On what basis? The on-chain evidence presented here directly contradicts that assessment. The community deserves to know: was the review rigorous, or was it a rubber stamp?

Call to Action: The Celo Core Co. Must Commission an Audit

The community cannot accept a private, undisclosed “consensus” as a substitute for a transparent accounting.

Because Niko has publicly stated that the Foundation cleared CeloPG of wrongdoing, I call upon the @CeloCoreCo to either publicly confirm or deny this in the interest of the community that funded this program.

I am also formally calling on the Celo Foundation to commission an (preferably but not necessarily) independent, third-party forensic audit of all CeloPG wallet activity from H2 2024 through the present in light of the above evidence. The audit should cover:

• All inflows and outflows from the H2/S0/S1 multisigs, including all downstream disbursements, intermediary hops, and terminal addresses
• All validator deposits, reward flows, and reward disbursement destinations
• All cross-chain bridge transactions
• The complete internal ledger documents
• Signer analysis of all associated Safe multisigs, including threshold configurations and transaction signing patterns

To the Celo Community

This investigation exists because you deserve to know where your funds went. Not the version in a curated impact report. Not the version filtered through a private Foundation briefing that conveniently found nothing wrong. The version that lives on-chain; immutable, timestamped, and indifferent to the preferences of those it implicates.

If you believe that stewards of public funds should be held to the same standard of accountability they agreed to when they accepted the mandate, then make your voice heard. On the forum. In governance. In every channel available to you. Silence from the community is the only outcome that benefits the people named in this report.

The stewards declared this matter closed. The chain says otherwise. So does the evidence. And so should you.

Part 3

This investigation is not concluded. Part 3 will examine additional evidence that has come to light from other whistleblowers and community members. It will be published when the evidence is ready. And it will not be silenced by declarations of closure from the people it concerns.

To The Celo Core Co: the ball is in your court.