Introduction
Greetings, Celo community! As part of our commitment to enhancing transparency and gathering insights, we’re excited to unveil a snapshot of our endeavors over Season 0 with Prezenti. We’re eager to hear your thoughts and perspectives on our grant initiatives as we continue to move into Season 1 and Celo’s first targeted intents.
Project Duration: March - June 2025
Project: Prezenti - Celo direct grants
This report outlines the progress, achievements, and outcomes of Prezenti’s latest Almond round of grant funding, as per our latest forum post. This round was the biggest ever and proves there is a growing appetite to build on Celo particularly after the transition from L1 → L2. We were thrilled to see a marked improvement in the quality of applications, a real testament to the ever growing ecosystem.
Achievements
GRANTS: Almond Round
We successfully launched, reviewed and granted all $271,000 cUSD for the Almond round in Season 0.
Almond round saw our highest number of applications yet! With 122 across all three pools. From this we gave a total of 18 grants in the following Pool categories:
- 3x Micro grants
- 9x Pilot grants
- 5x Growth grants
- 1x Scale grant
You can see each of these grant teams here on Charmverse or our website.
Prezenti Showcase
We ran two virtual seminars highlighting the projects of some of our past grant recipients. Pretium, GloDollar, Canvassing, Ubeswap spoke in April and Regen Atlas, Dapplooker and Celo en Acción in June. It was great to hear some of the possible synergies and collaboration opportunities between some of the teams. Both showcases were carried out on Forti, also a previous Prezenti grantee.
Prezenti Pledge
We launched the Prezenti Pledge, a social initiative designed to deepen the impact of the Celo ecosystem. We invited (and will continue to do so) grantees and builders to commit 1% (or more) of their future revenue or Token Generation Event (TGE) tokens back to the Celo Community Fund. In doing so we hope to ensure its longevity and continued support for innovation.
Metrics
| Metric/KPI | Update: June 2025 | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 122 applications received | 122 applications reviewed and feedback given to all Growth applicants. | 100% complete |
| 18 grants offered in Almond round [$271k cUSD] | 18 grants offered and accepted. KYC’ed and legal contracts issued. | 100% complete |
| Multisig Transaction Logs | Can be found here | 100% complete |
| Governance Engagement | We continued to engage with the Celo Foundation, Regional Hubs, Celo PG and Celo Camp on ways to continue striving for better and more cohesive collaboration to support the launch of Season 1. We reached out to and engaged with the Optimism Grants team to understand their processes and methodologies when working in Seasons. | 100% complete |
| Grantee feedback - post grant surveys | Waiting for Almond round grantees to end. Most are planned to complete in Sept 2025. | Ongoing |
| No. of projects completed | 5 projects completed in 2025 to date. We have a further 24 active grants still ongoing, due to end by September 2025 if grants complete on schedule. There are a number of projects needing time extensions. | Ongoing |
| % of active projects after one year | This metric will be measured at the end of 2025 as data will be collected from the latest cohorts. | Ongoing |
| Total blockchain transactions driven by grantees from Almond round onwards. | This metric will be measured at the end of 2025 as data will be collected from the latest cohorts. | Ongoing |
| Additional funding secured by grantees | This metric will be measured at the end of 2025 as data will be collected from the latest cohorts. | Ongoing |
| Success stories highlighting transformational outcomes | This season we published 1 case study, the 2nd is still in production. Wayst who received our first Scale Pool grant and coming soon Forti, a media platform we have used for our showcases. | 50% complete |
| Bi monthly showcasing calls highlighting previous grantees as they complete their grants | We hosted two grantee showcases [on a Celo built platform], in April and June showcasing 7 stellar grantees, across verticals such as stablecoins to waste management illustrating their diverse range of products on Celo. | 100% complete |
| Include two external reviewers to the Almond Review team | Ronald Nzoki (Africa DAO) and Cristobal Piera (Latam DAO) successfully supported us to review all 122 Almond round applications. Both expanding the diversity of reviewers and fusing the regional DAOs with Prezenti | 100% complete |
*Many of our metrics are ongoing due to the nature of grants. Because they run for 4+ months our ability to measure these KPIs at a given point in time is dependent on the grantee. Hence a number are still ‘ongoing’.
Feedback
Here is an extract from the latest feedback survey:
“While the support from Prezenti has been valuable and greatly appreciated, there is room for enhancement through more structured technical feedback and strategic guidance on market positioning.”
“The grant has provided us with critical resources to accelerate product development, which in turn has opened doors to upcoming beta stage launch opportunities.”
Operations
- Season 0 included ongoing use of the Charmverse platform for transparency and as it is used by Optimism and we are now an Op chain.
- We used Forti as the interactive platform to showcase our grantees to dogfood a previous Prezenti grantee and help them grow.
- We inaugurated the utilisation of KarmaGAP. This supports Prezenti being streamlined with Celo Public Goods and the Celo Dev Rel teams, ensuring Celo builders are starting to build a centralized profile of their work.
- We now have over 800 followers on X.
- We’ve applied for AWS credits to allow grantees to get added support in their early stages of growth where infrastructure costs can be a burden for some teams - watch this space if we’re successful!
- Engaged the support of 2x ecosystem reviewers for the 2nd time.
- Need to submit our tax filing and financial reporting in September
- Have been meeting with the Celo Foundation and other key stakeholders to prepare an updated application process fit for purpose for Season 1.
Costs & Operational Efficiency
Prezenti Season 0 operated with a lean and transparent budget, ensuring the majority of funds reached builders.
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Total Program Budget: $307,463
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Grants Disbursed: $271,000 (88.2%)
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Administrative Spend: $36,463 (11.8%)
The program maintained a low operational overhead of just 11.8%, covering legal, KYC, reviewer stipends, coordination, and community tooling (Charmverse, Forti, KarmaGAP, financial software, accounts team).
As we move into Season 1, we aim to further optimize costs while maintaining strong governance, legal compliance, and user support.
Conclusion
Season 0 for Prezenti was excellent. After a record number of applicants (thank you move to L2!) the review team were thrilled by the higher than usual calibre of applications which is a really excellent temperature check for how the ecosystem is doing. Our collaborative discussions with the Regional Hubs have been strong, and we have plans for further joint work with Celo Camp in Season 1 (watch this space!)
Looking ahead, Prezenti remains truly committed to the smooth delivery of Celo grass roots builder grants in Season 1 and beyond and deepening collaborative partnerships.