[stCELO] Expanding `DefaultStrategy` from 6 -> 15 active validator groups

Governance
1

Proposal

Expand DefaultStrategy to 15 active groups by activating 9 new ones. This raises protocol-wide receivable capacity from ~0.6M CELO to ~20M CELO (about 30x current).

Selection methodology

The selection runs against on-chain state only, so anyone can re-derive the same list from forno.

  1. Universe: 41 groups returned by Election.getEligibleValidatorGroups().

  2. Hard filters:

    • GroupHealth.isGroupValid (stCELO’s L2-aware health check)
    • not in SpecificGroupStrategy.blockedGroups
    • not already in DefaultStrategy.activeGroups
    • at least 1 elected member
    • at least 100K CELO of headroom (getNumVotesReceivable - getTotalVotesForGroup)

    17 candidates pass.

  3. Score: 0.7 * headroom + 0.3 * cap (each normalized to candidate-set max). Headroom is what we’re solving for; cap (numVotesReceivable) reflects operator commitment.

  4. Diversity: walk in score order, skip any group sharing an elected validator with a prior pick. Stop at 9.

Validators.slashMultiplier reads 1e24 for every group post-L2 migration and is intentionally not used as a filter - slashing no longer flows through that field.

Selected groups

# Group Address Headroom (CELO) Members
1 Tessellated Geometry Alliance 0x0339Df3FE4f5ccC864EAE8491E5c8AEc4611A631 3,794,468 5
2 atalma.io 0x70FC0b021dFdBb9A106D1Ed8F35f59D3f23eCb7B 2,707,295 3
3 atweb3 0xb434FeB47D6154B4B4058DF5C9fCeD123dB9aBF6 2,468,124 3
4 swiftstaking 0xE141831c2c1198d79B9Ff61cD97C3bAca7F071E0 2,148,667 2
5 Cypher Core 0x580F29aB04b7ED4E5aA86584D38c9317d9CF0358 2,101,617 2
6 HappyCelo 0x481EAdE762d6D0b49580189B78709c9347b395bf 2,076,398 2
7 VibeStudio 0x21FB4411FA5828344c2788aB07D4cc12a12571b9 1,749,002 5
8 Stakecito 0x3DcF2ED8dC84a63FfD2bfDc3CDb2fA0B1aeAfE5c 1,410,854 1
9 Making.cash 0x0f66619058BB9675f3d394FCc2cE236a29901571 1,396,977 1
Total 19,853,402

All 9 are recognized Celo operators with metadata URLs registered in Accounts.getMetadataURL. The list is reproducible from forno using only the contracts above.

Considerations

  • The new groups will eventually fill too as TVL grows. We expect periodic governance review to rotate or add more.

Feedback welcome

Comments welcome on the selected validator groups and on the algorithm parameters (70/30 weighting, 100K CELO headroom threshold).

2 Likes
Celo Governance Call #90 | May 14th, 2026
2

Would be great if groups in the future received a share of voted (on them) CELO emissions to encourage them to keep elected validators. As it is stands there’s no incentive for them to accrue stake from the public or even keep more than one validator. Unfortunately I expect many validators to be deregistered in the future, especially if the cool down proposal goes to vote soon.

3 Likes