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

Ecosystem
,
42

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.

5 Likes
Supporting community projects on Celo
43

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, with additional opportunities for meaningful contribution, e.g. Voter Reward Commission, 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. We also continue to support a broad range of builders and use cases, and are aligned that community conversation is an important part of shaping what comes next, and you have, as always, continued access to our Core team, Founders, et al.

1 Like
44

Hi Alex,

Thank you for your post. There’s a lot of ground covered, so rather than working through it line by line, here’s where things stand:

ReFi and public goods are still shipping on Celo. EthicHub is originating real-world loans to coffee farmers. INHABIT is funding regenerative land projects on-chain. GoodDollar continues to grow. The Carbon Offset Fund remains significantly overcollateralized relative to annual network emissions, keeping Celo carbon-negative for years to come. Last month Celo Core Co. co-hosted the ReFi Breakout at EthCC with Giveth and the Ethereum Foundation.

MiniPay is one part of Celo’s growth, not the whole network. 15 million users across 66 countries getting access to stable-value digital assets and sub-cent payments is the mission Celo set out with in 2020, working at scale. This is additive not extractive.

Celo in 2026 looks different compared to Celo in 2020. Every ecosystem that survived the last cycle does, and every ecosystem still building through this one will too. The team and founders remain as active and accessible today as they’ve been since Day 1––in the contributor channels, governance forums, and community calls where Celo’s direction continues to be shaped by the people doing the work.

1 Like
45

You should really cut out the AI. It’s embarrassing.

46

Thanks for everyone that has reached out personally to me and the Grassroots Economics team.
… It means a lot. Even to show care when there is nothing you can do.

Here is an official thread (below) on how we’ve now un-staked all our Celo and our exit from Celo governance. I think this particular thread on Riding the bus together can be closed … this Celo Bus Repair Station was never to be … .

A big thanks to the founders and Celo team who helped us reach this far. Wishing you all the very best.

:fire: :oncoming_bus: :fire:

47

@CeloCoreCo
At GoodDollar we are also starting to evaluate what to do next.
The way the gas increases have been handled is lacking to say the least.
Passed as some obscure governance resolution. Never contacting any of the community projects.
Since the L2 transition we are looking at more than 40x gas cost increase.
We’ll try to create a proposal to support projects like GoodDollar and Grassroots and not only Minipay, but I think such a proposal should come from the core teams to show the commitment for Refi and community projects.

Thanks

4 Likes
48

Just to add some more numbers to the gas cost part of the discussions, here’s a chart for the base fee change in USD terms, which shows that the fees “only” doubled over the last 12 months from that point of view:

https://dune.com/queries/7424072/11363594?sidebar=none

1 Like
49

Gas costs have 8x in the last 3 weeks based on your charts whether you look at it from a CELO gas usage or USD → CELO purchase for gas use POV. This is not an issue for most non-custodial end users, however, anyone doing any sort of gas sponsorships, airdrops, abstractions for their users has had to adjust their gas budget by 8x in the last 3 weeks.

For a chain where the gas price has roughly stagnated or been less than 25 gwei for the last X years, you can imagine the kind of shock it will introduce if the base gas price doubles every week without explicitly mentioning the incremental steps (25 → 50 → 100 → 200 → 400?)

50

Probably worth starting a new thread about the gas changes honestly, to condense all the feedback together separate from the higher level ‘bus’ conversation.

1 Like
51

Agreed @Thylacine time to readjust to a new reality.

52
1 Like