Proposal
- Receiver Entity: Celo Governance
- Status: [DRAFT]
- Title: Prezenti Grant funding Season 1, 2025
- Authors: Prezenti (Aaron Boyd, Wade Abel, Maya Brown)
- Type of Request: Funding
Funding Request: $811,200 cUSD
Summary
This proposal is a request for a further continuation of funding for Prezenti, enabling us to provide the only regular direct grant funding within the ecosystem in Season 1. This is a necessary and critical pillar to ensuring Celo’s continued growth, attracting and retaining top tier talent.
This proposal seeks approval to support the Celo Season 1 intents: grow daily transactions on Celo and Grow TVL on Celo. This approval is for $811,200 cUSD to support builders, founders and projects that align with Season 1.
Prezenti has become a trusted part of the Celo ecosystem. Over the last 3 years, we have offered a stable, reliable way to direct community funds to individuals and projects driving thoughtful innovation. Small and medium-sized grants are essential to any thriving blockchain network, and Prezenti has previously ensured this vital support is always available on Celo and would like to continue this mission.
In our 2024 retrospective, we highlighted the three phases of Prezenti, with 2025 identified as the year of "fusion."Below, we outline what Prezenti aims to achieve and support for the Celo Community in Season 1.
Motivation
The Prezenti team will continue offering direct grants to the Celo Community for Season 1. This proposal is for the second half of 2025 , July - December aligning with the Season 1 intent. We plan to:
- Continue to offer grassroots grants, fully aligned with Season 1.
- 100% alignment to supporting builders and programs on their journey and facilitating a strong builder funnel.
- Continue to increase collaboration with key stakeholders, including (but not exhaustive) the Celo Foundation (esp Dev Rel), Regional Hubs, Celo Camp, Celo PG venture capitalists.
- Continue to input into the Celo ‘Seasons’ strategy and support the changes for Governance 2.0, Season 2 and the L2.
- Refine and adapt our grant funding application process and funding mechanisms as needed.
Specification
Prezenti would run two grant rounds in Season 1, focussed on intents.
1. Refined Grant Pools
For Season 1 we have removed our ‘Micro Pool’ grant [$2k cUSD]. After running 4 rounds with the ‘pool’s’ structure we have decided the Micro pool doesn’t map towards Celo achieving a strong builder funnel and programmes most effectively. The Season 1 intentions are a move towards maturing the ecosystem and the Micro pool is targeted towards very early stage proof of concept style work, which is not the focus for Season 1 direct grants. This part of the funnel is aptly captured with the amazing work the Dev Rel and CeloPG team is doing with Proof of Ship and similar programs.
For Season 1 we propose:
- Pilot Pool ($10,000): Prototyping and feasibility: Intent 1: Stage 1
- Growth Pool ($25,000): Scaling and development: Intent 1: Stage 2
- Scale Pool ($50,000): larger scale initiatives: Intent 1: Stage 3
2. Global Collaboration
- Continue to strengthen partnerships within the community, including the Foundation, Regional Hubs, Celo Camp, Celo PG, and others, by including additional stakeholders in our review and due diligence process.
- Drive more targeted communication around the grants on offer, for example hosting a X space with the Regional DAOs.
- As we begin to start a possible alignment to Optimism Grants processes we will trial expanding our review team to include at least 1 personnel from the Celo Foundation.
- Collaborate with VC funds (to begin with Verda Ventures/Celo Camp to connect promising grantees with downstream investment opportunities.
- Work closely with Celo Camp via regular knowledge sharing and planning sessions and other ways to collaborate.
3. Expanded Reviewer Team
We believe it’s important to begin decentralizing elements of Prezenti to better reflect and involve the wider Celo ecosystem. To bring fresh perspectives to the application review process, we’ve been collaborating with the Regional Hub to nominate two reviewers for each funding round (details below). Additionally, in conversation with the Celo Foundation, we’re exploring the inclusion of 1–2 reviewers from relevant teams—on a voluntary basis—to further broaden the diversity of voices involved in funding decisions.
4. Strategy input for 2026 and beyond
Prezenti will be a primary stakeholder and driver of shaping ecosystem-wide grant offerings as Celo moves through the Seasons.
Metrics & KPIs
During this Season 1 period, Prezenti will focus on the following metrics. Prezenti will also align with global Season 1 KPIs where relevant and needed.
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Forum updates: can be found here
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Multisig Transaction Logs: can be found here.
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Governance Engagement - can be found here
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Two grant rounds fully delivered.
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No. of grants issued vs planned.
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Grantee (Growth pool) feedback given
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Post grant surveys issued and data analyzed.
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Aggregated daily tx’s of grantees (average over a 7 day period)*
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Aggregated monthly tx’s of grantees after all grants are completed*
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Total blockchain transactions driven by grantees since grants awarded*
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Percentage of additional funding secured by grantees
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Deliver 1-2 success stories highlighting transformational outcomes and key learning
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Host 2x showcases highlighting previous grantees
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Metrics will be reported separately for each round to enable clear comparison and attribution.
Current status
The team is currently delivering on supporting 24 ongoing grants, due to complete by 30 September 2025 at the soonest, but has no funding to open any more rounds.
If no further funding was to be secured then once these existing grants had completed, Prezenti would close its company, return any outstanding funds from our operations.