Proposal Key Aspects
Receiver Entity: Celo Governance
Status: Draft
Author(s): @Stabila
Type of Request: Funding
Funding Request: $360,000 USD equivalent of CELO (CELO-denominated at the 90-day trailing average CELO price — recalculated at time of submission.)
Summary
This proposal requests Season 3 funding (July–December 2026) for Stabila to continue coordinating DeFi incentives and liquidity strategy across Celo. The mandate continues to evolve from broad ecosystem bootstrapping toward focused, strategic capital deployment - prioritizing market depth, capital efficiency, and sustainable economic activity.
Season 3 also aligns Stabila’s work with the ecosystem’s north star metric of monthly chain revenue. DeFi represents a meaningful opportunity to contribute to chain fees: every swap, lending action, and FX conversion is a fee-paying transaction. Stabila’s role is to create the conditions that attract DeFi users and volume organically: deep liquidity, functioning venues, and well-integrated assets.
This request complements the Celo Core Co. Season 3 proposal: Celo Core Co drives partnerships, onboarding, and distribution; Stabila builds the market structure those integrations rely on.
Background
Over the past several seasons, Stabila has deployed targeted liquidity incentives and coordinated with protocol teams and risk curators to build out core components of Celo’s DeFi stack: DEX liquidity, lending markets, liquid staking infrastructure, and stablecoin market depth.
Season 2’s outcomes are detailed in Stabila’s Season 2 retrospective. Highlights include the launch of Morpho on Celo with curated lending markets, the launch of UpDown’s leveraged FX trading built on Celo’s stable assets, and Celo becoming the leading network for tokenized gold, with XAUt0 integrated as DeFi collateral. Throughout a challenging period for DeFi markets broadly, incentive programs were continually evaluated and adjusted based on performance and liquidity retention.
Season 3 reflects a broader shift in how the ecosystem measures progress. Deep liquidity remains the foundation (fee-generating activity doesn’t happen in shallow markets), but the measure of success is what that liquidity enables: organic usage and fees, rather than headline TVL alone, which is sensitive to token prices and can sit idle. The season builds on the infrastructure now in place, with flexibility to back opportunities as they emerge.
Season 3 Objectives
The focus of Season 3 is to deepen the liquidity and strengthen the market infrastructure that enable organic, fee-generating DeFi activity on Celo in direct support of the ecosystem’s Season 3 north star.
Scope of Work
1. Liquidity & Trading Markets
Deepen and sustain the trading venues where onchain activity generates fees: spot, FX, and leveraged markets with emphasis on stablecoins and local-currency pairs at the core of Celo’s payments use cases.
Focus areas include:
-
Stablecoin and local-currency FX liquidity
-
Blue-chip asset liquidity
-
Yield-bearing assets and liquid staking infrastructure
-
Perpetual and leveraged FX markets
-
Market-making and automated liquidity management
2. Lending & Credit Markets
Expand Celo’s lending and credit markets and the collateral base behind them, improving capital efficiency and access to onchain credit.
Focus areas include:
-
Lending market incentives across Aave and Morpho
-
New collateral onboarding, including yield-bearing assets
-
Curated market expansion
-
Risk management and curator coordination
3. Strategic DeFi Integrations
Ensure new assets and partners entering the ecosystem - including those onboarded through Celo Core Co.'s partnership work launch into liquid, functioning markets.
Focus areas include:
-
Stablecoin issuers
-
Yield-bearing and real-world assets
-
Financial infrastructure providers
-
Emerging DeFi protocols
4. Ecosystem Operations & Growth
Support the operational work required to execute Stabila’s mandate.
Focus areas include:
-
Governance execution and legal/administrative support
-
Protocol and counterparty coordination
-
Communications and reporting
Across all categories, incentive allocation is pooled and performance-based, with flexibility to rebalance toward what works and wind down programs that do not demonstrate durable usage.
Budget Overview
Funding Request
Stabila is requesting $360,000 in funding for Season 3, denominated in CELO.The final CELO-denominated amount will be calculated using the 90-day trailing average CELO price at the time of proposal submission.
This request represents a reduction of more than 62% from Stabila’s Season 2 funding request in USD terms - reflecting a leaner mandate focused on the most effective components of Celo’s DeFi stack. Stewarding community funds responsibly means concentrating capital where it demonstrably works, and this budget reflects that commitment.
Upon approval, funds will be withdrawn and sent to the Stabila multisig wallet.
Unused funds may be returned to the Community Fund or rolled forward, subject to community input and governance approval.
Timeline
This proposal covers Season 3 (July–December 2026).
-
July: Funding received and Season 3 execution begins
-
Q3–Q4: Ongoing liquidity, ecosystem, and partnership initiatives
-
December: Season 3 retrospective shared with the community
As with previous seasons, Stabila intends to publish a retrospective outlining capital deployment, ecosystem outcomes, key learnings, and progress against stated objectives.
Team & Multi-Sig
Funds will be withdrawn to the Stabila multisig upon governance approval.
Stabila Multi-Sig:
0x9C257bDC314dc516e673728D70F45444F6e22412
Current Signers:
-
Kevin Tharayil – 0x605C6B7a97748cbd0DE9C8643cdc502AB1DfDEd2
-
Productmatt – 0x1f5979355411dF24c5Ce21Df5bD9f2fff418c194
-
Martin Volpe – 0x0159B8f51fA6eDEF721d6D87002587130CD8246c
-
Michael Kwan – 0x78670759E39E955E55EFA52d6d4BECa86F40b498
-
Kishan Peshwa - 0x80d0A4aF5beff0Ca6127e203981afAB9B6152B60
The Stabila Team