We are Ocelot
we are for the wildcats
new habitats
we are for the nocturnal dancers
with questions, plus answers
without apology
for those building brave technology
we are for the distribution of powers
for the people due their flowers
sinew between community and support
we connect the dots
shake up our spots
long live the Ocelots
It’s our pleasure to finally unveil Ocelot, which stands for the Original Celo Treasury.
Ocelot is a multisig collective with the express focus of innovating on the Celo ecosystem. We want to do it via alternative ways of growing an ecosystem to the models we see today, and achieve this mainly by focusing on 4 key target areas:
- Research and Development on Open Source Projects
- Radical Experimentation
- Emerging Markets
- Community Growth
Ocelot was originally called the Celo Ecosystem Treasury as Proposal 43 on the Celo blockchain with a request of 3 Million CELO allocation from the on-chain community fund.
Proposal 44 passed with great support from the community who engaged in calls, shared perspectives in forum discussions, and voted. The total vote turnout for the governance proposal was ~14.7%, which we were happy to see as the average voter turnout across most DeFi protocols is roughly 1% (cit: @fwb).
The multisig group making funding decisions is comprised of 82% women + queer + non-binary folks, an evolution for the space, considering that the representation of women and femme-presenting individuals is between 12.5% - 25% for other notable community treasury programs (based on publicly available data). Importantly this treasury is momentous for its multisig representation of members who are Black, LGBTQIA+, people of color, and women — and this is certainly influential in how we go about distributing funds.
So far, we’ve distributed funds to the following projects:
We’ve also green-lighted the following projects for funding:
- Caribbean Blockchain Alliance
- Gitcoin Climate CLR Round for GR #13
We have also used some of the allocations to register a C-Corp and legal fees for DAOs/Multisig consultation.
Where are we going next?
Ocelot is for the people. In any web3 ecosystem there is a need for diverse avenues for innovation funding that aren’t solely attached to the formal founding contributors of the protocol, and ideally community elected. We believe this is a net good for the health of the overall ecosystem. This format supports the idea that truly impactful concepts come from the ground up, with community support. That’s Ocelot, we are that sinew between community and support, we are stewards of growth and always listening for pylons of the ecosystem that need to exist according to the community.
What does it mean when something “needs to exist?” In reality, the needs of any base protocol are cultivated by the many but priorities are set by the few - and so with more leaders cultivating priorities and distributing capital, we can begin to see the needs of the many more easily exposed and consequently, pioneered. **
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Projects in the works:
- An Incentivized Testnet for Celo
- This is in the works and still at super early stages, but we will keep the community posted with progress.
- BrazilDAO
- Ocelot will experiment with regional presence and focus by launching a multisig for Web3 members in Brazil, including local ecosystem leads in the Brazilian Web3 community. Doing this will allow us to have a template for future Country DAO proposals.
- Second Blockchain Client support for Celo
- A second blockchain client that would help improve the availability and diversity of different clients available for the Celo network
- MaxOS
- Stabilized yield project for Celo
Projects in early discussions:
- DID Improvements
- Working with a stellar team to scope improvements to the Attestation Service on Celo’s phone-identity protocol
- Independent Community Organization
- Organizing a community effort to help steward governance, comprised of the Celo governance team
Radical Experimentation
We are setting up our own Labs division to focus on radical experimentation and native Ocelot projects. This includes leading research into a new blockchain client, experiments with new payment solutions in emerging markets, as well as an incentivized testnet by taking inspiration from what projects like Kusama achieved for Polkadot. These will be partnerships between us and leading research & development hubs in crypto to collaborate on together.
Updates to the Celo Multisig Members
We have increased our membership to 11 folks on the multisig, all with unique experiences to help drive and grow Celo, social impact, and emerging market projects.
- Manasi Vohra
Sia Skynet - Karima Williams
Social wallets, formerly cLabs/Valora - Jessica Gaubert
Impact Market
Advisor Program
We want to work with specific advisors who are experts in their space on many of the things we want to help drive in Celo, from blockchain protocol improvements to decentralized identity and emerging markets. Advisors will be compensated at 100 cUSD per hour, depending on the context and support needed.
Ocelot Community Call
The first Ocelot community call will be scheduled for Wednesday February 16th, 2022 at 12 PM EST to provide folks with an overview of everything we are doing.
Information about the first call can be found here:
- Topic: Ocelot Community Call #1
- Time: Feb 16, 2022 12:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
- Join Zoom Meeting
- Meeting ID: 957 2878 8863
- Passcode: ocelot
Make sure to add it to your calendar! You can also keep up with everything we are doing by following us on Twitter.
Resources