Introduction
The Celo Community Fund (CCF) isn’t currently open for applications - the original stewardships are drawing to a close and there is now a need to decide how this initiative should continue; and how it can continue to serve the Celo Community in a valuable way.
There are some items we need for this program to continue:
- It would need to be funded with more capital, and need to transition from the original stewards to new members of the community.
- Three of us (Aaron, Maya and Wade) have been approached by the original stewards (Deepak, Dee and Patrick) about our interest in this transition and presenting it as a governance proposal.
- As a trio, we have had a few calls to get a feel for working together (having not met before), to check if we are committed, and how we would like to see the fund continue and prosper. But this is ultimately up to the community, all of you.
Overview
The Celo Community Fund was originally brought to life with Celo Governance Proposal 17, as a means of disbursing the protocol-level rewards which is topped up every epoch for use in the Celo ecosystem . To date the fund has:
- Set itself up as a legal entity allowing the disbursement of grants.
- Received 73 proposals, 50 were approved and 44 have been contracted (60% success rate).
- c.$1.6m USD has been contracted.
- 13% has been spent on management; this is because of legal costs for the set up.
This wouldn’t be possible without the brilliant work done by Patrick Baron, Deepak Nuli, and Dee on creating and administering the first iteration of the CCF. Thank you!
At present, the CCF is no longer open for applications and as such we have come together and are hoping to get approval to continue this stewardship to get the fund open again quickly.
1. CCF2 Goals
- An essential avenue for ecosystem grants that is independent and not tied to the Celo Foundation.
- Allows prospective projects the avenue to build upon Celo without having to acquire VC funding
- Gives smaller projects and entrepreneurs the ability to empower themselves and start their passion project.
- Fosters a healthy ecosystem
- Supports decentralization and provides greater transparency
- Provide a quick turnaround on applications
2. CCF2: What we propose:
- Get the fund up and running again as soon as we can.
- Request a new amount of 659k CELO (the same as the original CCF amount).
- Listening to feedback from the community. We’d like to try and make sure that the continued service of CCF is meeting the needs of the community.
- No current plans to reinvent anything from scratch (unless feedback strongly indicates otherwise).
- Keeping to the same/similar focus areas (currently they are: on/off ramps/community tools/research & education/other). We would love to see what the community thinks should be the focus areas.
- We commit to providing transparency and timely updates on the funding.
- Bringing in, on the ground, locally sensitive support from each continent to help outreach, garner, market and advise on Celo and the CCF.
- A technical focus on iteratively automating and implementing as much as possible natively on the Celo protocol. With respect to sensitive and in-flight business decisions, blockchains in general provide a solid foundation to increase transparency of design-making and payment data.
3. CCF2 Stewards
We are proposing to keep a similar, but updated structure to CCF1. As noted above, what we’d like to add is some regional perspective. Our initial thoughts are:
- Keep to 3 core stewards at the same hourly rate/hours as CCF1 (10hr/week @ $134/hr).
- Hire a number of regional experts (potentially 3hr/week paid) to provide real time, locally sensitive advice and support
The role of the stewards is to:
- Conduct community outreach to get projects built on Celo.
- Assess applicants and their projects based on their mission, technical ability, merit, and integrity.
- Build a document to help the current and future operations of the Celo Community fund. We will use the document - CCF v1 - to guide us as we transition.
- Commit to increased transparency and dialogue with the community.
The role of regional experts is:
- Conduct community outreach to get projects built on Celo.
- Steer potential grantees towards the community fund.
- Provide assistance regarding projects that fall under their geographic or special knowledge area.
The following community members are proposing to become the new CCF2 core stewards: Wade, Aaron and Maya.
Short bios:
Aaron:
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A career software engineer for nearly 20 years, worked the better part of 15 years in the financial services industry in Australia (banking, insurance, superannuation). Active in the blockchain space since 2013 and advocates for economic self-determination.
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Involved in the Celo ecosystem since the incentivized testnet and have been supported by the Celo Foundation as an elected validator since genesis. Now founder and operator of VladiatorLabs, a protocol-aligned infrastructure company currently in the process of incorporating in Switzerland and expanding to other proof-of-stake networks, especially in the Cosmos ecosystem. Additionally has worked briefly as a contractor within cLabs on some minor projects.
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Vladiator Labs is a current CCF1 grant recipient for our block map and attestation tool, a Foundation vote recipient, and a Foundation grant recipient for operating an ODIS signer as part of the phone number privacy module.
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Freelance Solidity, blockchain, database and cloud engineer.
Maya:
I am passionate about making a positive impact in the world we live in. As a project manager, I spent 5 years running a low carbon technology grant programme, disbursing over £50m GBP. For 7 years I loved working for Save the Children supporting end-to-end grant management in East Africa, identifying, securing, applying and managing funds from a huge variety of donors. Because of these roles I have the unique experience and knowledge of being both the donor and recipient. For the last year I have been Chief Operating Officer for TrustWorks Ltd, a UK based fintech building on Celo, helping them deliver cash transfer programs in Latin America to help refugees/vulnerable users use Celo to meet their basic household needs. My motivation for becoming a steward is to try and enable a slick, simple and transparent granting system and process, whilst helping to expand CCFs impact and further Celo’s reach.
Wade:
I run The Passive Trust, a validator group that has been running on Celo since Genesis. The Passive Trust has used a lot of the funds received from operating the Group and Validator to fund and support projects built on Celo. This includes Moola, Ubeswap, ImpactMarket, Poof Cash and Resource Network. I was initially part of the Mentor/mentee program in The Great Celo Bake Off, my motivation for becoming a steward is to help potential entrepreneurs and engineers to be able to get funding through grants and be given an opportunity like I was. I also run validators for other networks, help with DAO design and connect workers with projects
Socials
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Aaron: Twitter: BlueThylacine, Linkedin: aaronmboyd, Discord: Thylacine | VladiatorLabs.io#6470
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Maya: Twitter: maya_brown, Linkedin: maya-richardson-brown-b004b713, Discord: MayaRB#2593
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Wade: Twitter: ThePassiveTrust, Discord: Wade | TPT#4475
Where To From Here?
We want to open up the discussion and get feedback from the community in this thread. Your feedback is ultimately what will continue to drive the fund and provide a direction to where we take this. Please help us refine our ideas and keep this important avenue for potential entrepreneurs open. We look forward to engaging with you all and appreciate the hard work the original stewards have done to get the CCF to where it is.
Next steps:
- Please drop us a post, or if interested join a call.
- We aim to gather all feedback by 31st May 2022.
- Then share a Governance proposal to be voted on.
i’d love an additional focus by the CCF on developer tooling improvements and things that make life easier for builders and everyday users – often small but they tend to get missed in the noise. If your grant process is lightweight enough, hopefully we can get movement there!
Thank you Deepak, Patrick and Dee for laying the foundation for the community fund.
