Riding the Celo Bus Together - An Urgent Invitation to Safe Dialogue and Real Repair

Ecosystem
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Thank you, @alexSedra2 for your clarity. I may not frame it quite as strongly, but I do appreciate the directness.

From where we stand at Grassroots Economics, the practical effects are becoming very hard to ignore. With gas prices rising this quickly (and, as the attached image shows, effectively doubling twice in a short period), the situation has become urgent for us.

We can no longer count on validator participation to cover gas (Since January), and the increased gas costs means we will need to urgently move thousands of people off Celo … this urgency has now accelerated dramatically.

That is a painful reality to face.

The promise was a gradual increase ....
The promise was a gradual increase ....651×423 26.9 KB

… this is not gradual. and note: This doesn’t affect individual users so much but affects any large infra provider like us who are sponsoring gas.

We came to Celo because we believed it could be a real home for grassroots coordination, public goods, and decentralized governance connected to real communities. Many communities trusted us on that basis, and we, in turn, trusted that we had found a place where this work could grow with some stability.

So I want to make a simple and kind request to anyone in the Celo and broader Ethereum ecosystem who cares about Grassroots Economics and the communities around us:

Please give us some time.

We are now actively trying to find the home we thought Celo was. One path we are pursuing is to secure enough stake on Ethereum so that we no longer have to live under this kind of gas fee pressure: https://grassroots.impactstake.com/

If there are practical ways to help slow the current cost pressure, ease the transition, or support the communities already here, we would deeply appreciate that.

This is not written in contempt. It is written from urgency, care, and responsibility to the thousands of people whose livelihoods and local coordination systems are affected by these shifts.

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Hi Will,

Thanks for sharing your perspective and for your continued commitment to the Celo ecosystem. We’re appreciative of the years you’ve spent with the community as a validator and founder of Grassroots Economics.

As Celo continues to evolve, we’re working to identify new ways for previous validators to continue contributing to the ecosystem where there is a clear and meaningful need. The active proposal to compensate Challengers is one example of this broader effort, and we expect that work to continue as additional opportunities for meaningful contribution take shape.

While the ecosystem has evolved over time, Celo’s core mission remains the same: creating the conditions of prosperity for all. That mission continues to guide how we think about growth, adoption, and support for builders across the network.

MiniPay is an important part of that strategy by helping onboard global users to Celo, but this is not the only factor driving forward the ecosystem. We continue to support a broad range of builders and use cases across Celo, and we agree that community conversation is an important part of shaping what comes next.

We welcome continued input from the ecosystem as we work together to define Celo’s next chapter.