Note: This post was originally intended to be published in January 2026, but got delayed due to a domain email issue on this account.
Here I tell the fortunately experience I had with some members of the Regional Hub initiative.
TL;DR
In August 2023, I initiated the Celo Mexico Hub after engaging in several CPG community calls, I took the first oppotunity when they invited new people to form new regions. With an initial $2,000 budget trusted by Luuk’s vision, I immediately formed a team and over-delivered on KPIs by 200%. In just two months, we generated more traction than other hubs did in six months with 10x the budget. Unfortunately, the people inside the Regional Hub felt threatened by the way of working of not leaving for later or for next semester things that could be made during the same week. But that was their strategy to stretch their permanency. Instead of embracing the growth I intended to bring, they systematically blocked and attempted to took over the initiative I built.
Beyond personal misfortune on stepping into the wrong group of individuals, I am raising severe concerns about budget allocation ($500K+ per semester to moderators/marketers and “guardians” vs. $75K to builders bringing volume on-chain) and some behaviors that clearly contradict Ethereum values and principals. I am formally closing this chapter, taking my projects with me, and opening a case with Kleros (Ethereum Justice DAO).
1. The Good Faith Mistake & The $2,000 Pilot
I take responsibility for my own misjudgment. I entered this ecosystem operating in absolute good faith, assuming that people would have a collaborative spirit. I failed to realise that while I was trying to build, others were simply guarding their own “bone”, refusing to let go even when it meant stifling the region growth. It was a mistake to bring high-level execution to an informal environment “web3 trench” that lacked the principals of community collaboration.
The Blockers (Late 2023): In Q3 2023, during a call led by Luuk, I proposed the Celo Mexico Hub. From day one, I encountered deliberate resistance from @0xj4an-work. I can only describe him as a stone in the fast lane—constantly interrupting calls, acting as a “guardian” who only cheers for his other proposals while blocking others. Using regional budget to built his own web3 products that drive zero traction, while taking over the ownership of this products with the budget of the region. He delayed our proposal for two months over insignificant trivialities like font sizes, or paragraph spacing. (Context: This is the same individual known for creating multiple refidao accounts across Colombian cities to aggregate votes, to compound matching pools during the quadratic funding rounds).
The Pilot (August 2024): Thanks to Luuk’s leadership, we were approved with an initial $2,000 cUSD grant. I onboarded @GerryAlvrz who was having experience in meetup organization, to co-execute the pilot. He knew nothing about forums, KPIs, OKRs, or TVL. I rapidly trained him and set up a high-performance, KPI-driven team. However, professional boundaries were blurred; eventually he got too comfortable during the 1-on-1 calls while smoking, turning 30-minute syncs into 2-hour sessions where I had to repeat myself constantly. Despite this, he absorbed the modus operandi of ecosystem growth, and it was ready to proof his capabilities.
The Results:
We surpassed KPIs and metrics by 200%.
Generated more traction in 2 months than hubs with 20x the budget did in 6 months.
Secured an H1 proposal for $50K for the Celo Mexico Hub for H1 2025.
2. The H2 “Rug” & Operational/Ethical Concerns
After the overdelivery of H1, we moved into H2, my individual proposal was the first approved by the AI filter. @GerryAlvrz did not had the capacity to let the past stress, and brought it into H2 with friction, As the KPIs @Joan_DeRB drafted for H2, I was very clear that the proposal was alarmingly weak for such a big budget and such a low KPI (but I guess he was just being honest). As we already were having some friction I remember they all in fear told me, if I stayed quiet during the voting, I would be able to run my own initiative for Celo Mexico (below I mentioned the initiative I was unable to perform)./ I honored my end of the bargain. But as soon as the second voting was favorable, their attitude switched - removing me from chats and work groups, removing me from multi-sigs and not sending the support they promised to send for my two projects, that happened to won both 1st price in the stablecoin hackathon. It was clear I have been rugged, not only in purpose with with premeditation. They started to wipe the chats where I was having conversations and proves of our previous agreements.
On July 18, while we already in H2 and with previous agreements in place, during a live call with the Regional Hub and DevRel present, my approved proposal was hijacked. I was replaced with an inexperienced person, and my name was erased from the budget and from the files that I personally drafted. Gerardo @GerryAlvrz changed the password to the @CeloMexico Twitter account I created, locking me out. When Alexa (CF) joined a call and shared her screen highlighting aspects that indirectly supported my case, I literally sent the screenshots to all of them, they completely ignored it. They enjoyed their micro-power positions, acting in their own self-interest to ensure fewer new hubs—because that means less their well protected “bone” could be at risk.
Operational & Ethical Observations Regarding the New Coordination: Regarding the operational shift in H2 under Gerardo Alvarez @GerryAlvrz, I must highlight several severe concerns regarding fund management, conflicts of interest, and professional conduct:
- Financial Opacity: I was abruptly removed from the multisig wallet while still unpaid, leaving fund movements entirely at the discretion of others who claimed they were “instructed to deny me access” Meanwhile, a culture of “not imposing things” was preached, yet operational leads unilaterally imposed to left me out.
- Conflict of Interest: Budget was allocated to pay developers to build a “Celo Academy,” when in reality, these same developers were building the smart contracts and platform for his personal project - MotasDAO which it was built in a rust-base L1.
- Blocking Ecosystem Growth: Support was systematically denied to (DigiPaga, SwipePad, Urbanika), DevRel-approved events (ETH 5 de Mayo), and experienced community members (Humberto). Budget was redirected to outsiders alien to the ecosystem, while exhibiting concerning exclusionary behavior based on personal biases and socioeconomic preferences.
- Unprofessional Conduct: Basic professional boundaries were ignored, including constant smoking and sparking lighters during 1-on-1 strategic calls, making effective collaboration impossible.
3. Systemic Issues: Budgets, Phantoms, and Gatekeeping
A. Budget Allocation is Backwards It is the biggest error in the agentic era to spend half a million dollars on picture posing, social events and marketing instead of rewarding builders.
- Regional Hubs (LatAm + EU): ~$200,000+ cUSD per semester. This goes to weekly call bookkeeping, unvisible social media posters (like @Joan_DeRB and @szapelao) who collect $3,000+ per month just for tweeting, smiling for pictures, and making fancy presentations with AI. They create brand-new, empty Twitter accounts with <100 followers, making the chain look dead. And the disappearance of @Joan_DeRB once the budget was approved.
- Builders Ecosystem: ~$75,000 cUSD per year. Developers writing GitCommits, deploying contracts and interfaces to gain more users and TX are left fighting for $30 to $200 for a month of shipping.
B. The Phantom “Venture Accelerator” by Susanna @szapelao and Cristobal @cristpereirag promised a Venture Accelerator in almost every single call for 14 months. I politely warned her that the cycle was in its last phase and the time to act was now or miss the ship. One shot, one opportunity, vanished. I was just honest. When I dared to speak about it, they ignored me. Nowadays I saw she acts as if she is a DevRel person, building cocktails of buzzwords and giving wrong advice in the chats. I cannot be in the same chats.
C. Gatekeeping Expansion (Joan & Rica) I repeatedly offered to help Joan and Rica organize Web3 workshops in Lisbon, leveraging my partner’s successful university programs in Portugal. They never asked a single question. When I asked why they weren’t expanding to France, Germany, or Poland, their excuse was that “Europe is more expensive than Africa and Asia.” These people are in charge of regional ecosystems, yet they only want to manage social media, send calendar invites, and pose in pictures with the logo on their t-shirts. When I suggested we should build and deploy basic projects using an IDE and the great content from Office Hours, instead during the weekly calls, so we could all understand the development phase with AI, to have better communication toward each regional community, it was met with a “shut up with your ideas.” Or same with I tried to onboarded great people from Argentina and Turkiye, Joan flipped, sending me messages we need to talk, you need to stop - I though the goals was to growth the regions chain activity and builder-base, but for them it was just to keep their “piece of the pie” untouched.
4. The Network, Talent App, and my Cancelled Initiatives
The Network & Empty Sessions: I didn’t just bring projects; I brought a some of my network. I have developer peers with 14 hackathon wins, geniuses who built Layer 1s at 16, and CTOs who raised $36M. I told the Hub I could bring them in. Instead, I was only given the chance to invite 1 developer. Furthermore, I remember joining DevRel YouTube office hours that had only 3 to 15 viewers ( and 3 accounts were mine). Not one time did I see the Regional Hub members I am calling out in those sessions. They were not learning, they were not present, but they were already getting paid for not inviting their “regional communities.” Those were facts.
Talent App as Product: While in H1, I was was building gitcommits in diffetent accounts, and joined all possible programs including the Upright workshop. After completing all milestones for the Upright program in Q1 H1, Talent send a form to reward the builders. They never sent me the rewards. And when they updated the UIUX it was full of bugs (at least in my account). The last PoSH was in December 2025: after I shipped like crazy and closing Proof of Ship with 200+ commits (building SwipePad, Regen Eliza, ZKnomads), Talent App sent my $70 rewards to the wrong wallet of another builder in Base programs, without any resolution. Because of this, I will not engage with Talent App.
Initiatives Cancelled by the Blockers: Because of this abrupt rug, I was forced to cancel or halt several the initiatives I was having ready to ship during H2:
- 1st Tokenization RWA on Celo: Partnered with a UNESCO project, tokenizing a Regenerative Property already generating 10% APY, which could be streaming montly API in stablecoins. Which I prepared and finalized in H1, completely ignored and blocked. That could be a nice kick and bring awareness of RWA, but they blocked.
- Global AI Community: I sealed a collaboration with a community of AI builders, with 1,000 active builders per city ready to launch online sessions in Mexico, Colombia, and beyond. (cancelled).
- Lisbon University Workshops: Web3 builders community inside multiple universities with a certified instructor, ready to launch. (no chance)
- Cancelled collaboration with the largest University community in Mexico: I still work with them but with AI, they left no chance to work with the largest Web3 Univesity community.
- Major IDE collaboration: An IDE with 6 million registered users, offering credits, sponsorship funding and prizes to use this IDE in workshops or hackathons. (gone, but I still have this collab open).
- Asian Expansion: Builder communities in Indonesia (400 active builders meeting once per month to ship), Malaysia, Turkiye, Singapore, Vietnam who I met in person.
5. Moving Forward, Final Boundaries, and Relief
Here are the projects I brought with me to build on the Celo chain:
- SwipePad (swipepad.xyz)
- DigiPaga (digipaga.com / digimercados.com)
- Regen Eliza (regeneliza.com) & RegenStarter (regenstarter.com)
- ZK Nomads (zknomads.com)
- Builders Club (buildersclub.org) - Database of 3,000 web3 devs from my previous events.
- GigJar (gigjar.xyz)
I am proceeding to take the Celo logo away from all my projects, with the sole exception of SwipePad and DigiPaga (both planned to be launched inside MiniPay). We will find a new wave to navigate the push into MiniPay, but the motivation for the rest is gone. And we were not even invited to the Prezenti grants or any other program.
To the individuals mentioned (0xjuan, Gerardo Alvarez, Susanna, Joan, Rica, Cristobal): In my 10+ months of experience working with them, I can tell none of you have read the decentralized governance values, capital formation and community principals on how the ecosystem should embrace builders. You acted as obscure fiat-like centralized gatekeepers, organizing private calls behind closed doors to protect your payroll, instead of wanting to grow the chain. Just like in traditional dark-politics, you hide behind the “decentralized” shield to avoid accountability, acting more like politicians protecting their seats, instead of builders growing regions and a network.
I will not engage, interact, or read messages from these individuals. I am leaving all Celo chats where they participate. Frankly, just seeing their profiles makes me nausea. I am not against working with the chain itself (the code) or Celo Public Goods and DevRel which is the only reason I stayed after this experience. Let me be clear there is no budget in the world that would force me to work with the individuals mentioned above.
A Final Note on Relief: I am opening a case with Kleros to find a resolution. I post this not to take it personally, but to let people know and to help avoid these corrupt behaviors in any foundation or protocol around Web3.
I’m not here to blame them; it is almost embarrassing that I need to write this letter, as I have much better things to do. But writing this is a profound relief. It allows me to let go of this bitter, disgusting experience and close the chapter. I consider this chapter closed; the farther I am from this group of individuals, the healthier my environment is.
I wish good to the ecosystem. Stay alert and avoid self-sabotaging your growth efforts.
Conclusion: Fund builders, not unethical budget keepers. Don’t fund ecosystem obfuscation, fund KPIs. You are be funding your own faucet, rather than funding teams to untap the ecosystem’s true potential.
The Sun is always shining if obstructions are removed. 