Celo’s moat is not Forno, not a parameter tweak or optimisation. It’s the human layer: a diverse and mission-aligned community that actually shows up. That community is being treated like a disposable cost line under the banner of “savings.” Once you burn that coordination layer, it is not sure if it will ever come back at all. The fallback is bitter and hard to rebuild.
I’ve been in this industry for almost a decade to watch ecosystems die in slow motion. It usually isn’t one technical failure, it’s governance legitimacy collapsing while people tell themselves “we can fix it later”. You can’t rebuild long-lived operators set and trust on demand.
Celo’s ambition was the first billion users. That only works if CELO becomes more valuable through durable demand and revenue engines not austerity theatre. You can always get professional services with Alchemy and Quicknode but they won’t be participating in governance calls, proposals discussions, emergencies and tooling.
The asset you’re cutting is the one you can’t replace. There are very few places where a community member would organise a 2 hours call on the 5ft and 6 days later, you get over 40 participants from around the world for it. It’s truly sad that this is taken for granted and completely gets ignored in these discussions. A 2-hour call with 40+ participants on short notice is not “normal” in crypto. That’s the asset you don’t get to burn and then pretend you can reconstitute later.
This process is trial-and-error governance, not a defensible decision path. Across four threads, the rationale has shifted repeatedly from “selling pressure” to “value ranking” to “no one uses RPCs” etc. Governance legitimacy matters. Celo foundation and large holders have shaped validator elections. Watching major voting weight swing late in a way that eliminated many small operators creates further uncertainties. If Celo wants to be credible, it should not rush structural decommissioning on changing narratives. Currently out of 218 voters, there are 3 addresses that represent 93% of the yes votes (3.244m/3.478m) to set the rewards at 0 and thus eliminate the set.
If I’m wrong and this is “just ops”, the upside is you save some money and maybe reduce a bit of noise.
If I’m right, and I’ve already watched this pattern play out, then you’re not trimming fat, you’re amputating core stakeholders. You burn the coordination layer and governance legitimacy at the same time and then everyone tells themselves “we can fix it later”. But you can’t. This results in slow-motion ecosystem death: fewer long-lived operators, less trust, less participation in emergencies/tooling, more bitterness and a community that stops showing up.
That’s the tragedy path: Celo joins all the dead ecosystem that exists in this industry not because of technical failure but because the social layer collapses under contested premises and rushed structural decommissioning.
If you want a responsible path: pause. Let’s do tokenomics work and then come back with a single defensible proposal. And if you really want to push this through, then I’ve already offered to help create a bridge proposal that’s rule-based, provides a better balance between runway and ecosystem preservation, and prevents amputation of core stakeholders on highly controversial claims.