Who are The Great Celo Stake Off champions? And what’s coming next!

Dim the lights, stamp your feet, clink your glasses….

Stake Off Winners

We’ve put the leaderboard on ice and applied the final multipliers, so you can take a look at the final standings.

Congratulations to everyone! In particular a shout out to our first place winner, ChainLayer. Not only did they achieve the highest number of raw BTUs of any participant, but they passed the Attestations Challenge and received full points on the Master Validator Challenge.

With so many impressive validators putting on a great show, we’ve decided to expand the prize pool, increasing some prizes and designating 70 winners! Here is the new rewards distribution:

  • 1st - 3rd: 70,000 Celo Gold Units
  • 4th - 6th: 50,000 Celo Gold Units
  • 7th - 10th: 40,000 Celo Gold Units
  • 11th - 19th: 30,000 Celo Gold Units
  • 20th - 50th: 20,000 Celo Gold Units
  • 51st - 70th: 10,000 Celo Gold Units

We’ve updated the leaderboard spreadsheet with:

  • BTU penalties for breaching the rules
  • BTU boosts for audits
  • Additional BTUs for participating as a mentor in the buddy program
  • The number of Celo Gold Units from these prizes and from community grants

Please take a look, and let us know if you see any discrepancies. If we spot any errors on our part that merit being corrected, the rankings may change.

If you’re in the top 70, great work! Look out for an email from the Stake Off team that kicks off a KYC process in the next day or two. Remember that all rewards are subject to the Terms and Conditions, and you providing important information in a timely fashion.

Winners of the Stake Off, pending completion of KYC, are also invited to be a part of the initial genesis validator set for two forthcoming networks: the new baklava test network and Release Candidate 1.

Community Challenge Awards

A sincere thank you to everyone who participated in the Incentivized Community Challenge and offered a wide variety of community, technical and educational contributions to the Celo protocol! In the end, cLabs rewarded participants with the opportunity to claim an additional 14,950 Mainnet Celo Gold, of which 10,950 were awarded at the end of phase 3. Recipients have been notified by email.

Please note that mainnet community rewards will continue after the Stake Off. Over the next week we’ll be rewarding individuals who help track down the infamous issue 808!

Community Call and Retrospective

Thanks to everyone who took the time to join the call this morning and took part in the retrospective. Slides are here. The feedback and suggestions were extremely helpful. If you didn’t yet have a say, please take a look at the retro board – it’s still open for now!

Another batch of Baklava!

Next up in the Kitchen will be to create a new baklava test network, that incorporates all the learnings and improvements made over the course of the Stake Off, as well as some additional changes that couldn’t be deployed during the Stake Off. Most importantly, this network will be created without any cLabs validators. This network will be a full reset, with a new genesis block comprising Stake Off leaderboard validators. This will make it possible for new individuals to be fauceted and stand up validators again.

Before we can launch this network, we will address the issues and feedback from the Stake Off, including Geth 1.9 stability, an improved announce protocol and the infamous Issue #808. We will have more details on timings in the coming week.

Release Candidate 1

It’s been an exciting Stake Off, but what we are all really here for is the Celo production network. After the new baklava test network has been running smoothly, the team has resolved any issues arising from ongoing security audits, and the community feels comfortable with its quality, a Release Candidate 1 network can be stood up.

The aim is for this network to feature everything that the community needs for a production release. The new genesis block will comprise Stake Off leaderboard validators and others. Elections (and rewards) will kick in once sufficient entities lock Gold and register groups and validators. Celo Gold and Dollar transfers will be initially frozen.

Stay involved!

It’s been astonishing to see the round-the-clock energy you have put into The Great Celo Stake Off! If there’s a time for a break, it’s now. You’ve earned it. But look out for that KYC email!

When you’re refreshed, there are lots of ways of staying involved:

  • Please consider writing about your experience participating in the Stake Off. It’s great for the broader crypto community to have these viewpoints out there.
  • If you love the Celo project, please follow and retweet @CeloOrg and @CeloDevs to help the project reach your followers.
  • Improve Celo and get rewarded for disclosing a security vulnerability in the Celo protocol through HackerOne.
  • Host community events worldwide! cLabs may be able to assist. Reach out to jelena.djuric@c-labs.co.
  • The Community Grants program will continue! Awards will be made post-launch of the production network. cLabs is particularly interested in funding validator and governance tooling and UIs, improving operational tools for validators, and educational material. But feel free to reach out of Discord – suggestions welcome!
  • [Registration closing this Friday, February 28!] The Decentralized Impact Incubator is a 6-week program for teams to ideate and prototype blockchain-based solutions to global social and environmental challenges. The most compelling product using Celo technology will win a $10,000 USD bonus prize. Terms and Conditions apply.
  • Celo Camp is a virtual boot camp for startups or individuals looking to form startups building apps on the Celo blockchain. Receive access to experienced mentors and up to $10,000 USD in prizes to build on the Celo blockchain. Applications open until April 10.

As always, we welcome thoughts, suggestions and feedback.

Congratulations again to all winners and participants!

Looking forward to seeing you all soon,

The Great Celo Stake Off Team