The Votes Are In:
Celo Camp Batch 6 Winners
Celo Camp, the eight-week virtual acceleration and mentorship program created by Upright in collaboration with the Celo Foundation, is excited to announce the award recipients for the Batch 6 cohort. Out of 356 applicants, hailing from 65 countries, 30 teams were selected to participate, representing projects focused on real-world use cases in regenerative finance (ReFi), decentralized finance (DeFi), impact, payments, decentralized science (DeSci), DAOs, and more.
“The Celo tech stack is empowering developers and founders to build novel solutions, collaborate, and bring their ideas to life,” said Alon Shavit, co-founder at Upright. “As apparent from this year’s Celo Camp cohorts, we’re seeing a great focus on ReFi solutions, the DeFi tooling around them, and cross-border payments, all with growing interest from institutions within these fields.”
During the Camp, teams used Celo’s open-source tools to build decentralized solutions and mobile-first dapps. In addition to prizes in cUSD, teams also received entrepreneurship coaching and tech guidance, access to a fast-track for grants, as well as mentorship from leaders at organizations like NFX, Coinbase Cloud, Flori Ventures, and Climate Collective, among others!
Celo Camp concluded with Demo Day on November 15th, when finalists showcased demonstrations of their dapps live to Celo’s global community.
And The Winners Are…
Celo Camp Batch 6 prizes and awards were decided by a voting process that included equal input from representatives of Upright and the Celo Foundation, Celo Camp mentors, and the broader Celo community. Congratulations to all!
CarbonPath — Gold Prize Winner of 10,000 cUSD and 2,000 CELO
CarbonPath is providing a framework for permanently shutting down low-producing, orphaned, and abandoned oil and natural gas wells to reduce the total carbon dioxide and methane emissions in the atmosphere. They are focused on validating the entire process and tokenizing every tonne of locked-up resources. The resulting token offers a high-quality carbon emission prevention credit that is transparent, permanent, and verifiable thanks to the carbon-negative Celo blockchain.
During Celo Camp, CarbonPath built its registry application, allowing users to purchase CPCO2 tokens and view all the digital measurement, reporting, and verification data associated with each oil and gas well.
CarbonPath and Celo: CarbonPath utilizes the Celo Platform for all critical data and Pinata for all unstructured documents. They were initially drawn to Celo because of its mission, supportive community, and detailed technical documentation.
About his time at Celo Camp, Kyle Westendorf, Head of Product at CarbonPath, said:
“Celo Camp really accelerated the development and refinement of our project. The sessions proved invaluable to our team as we continued to build, pivot, make mistakes, and learn along the way. We wouldn’t be where we are today without it.”
Next Steps: CarbonPath has launched with the permanent shutting down of two pilot wells in Montana, and is actively reclaiming nature at the well sites. They have a target of shutting down 100 wells in 2023 and are currently building partnerships and funding strategies to achieve these goals with a platform launch early next year.
For more information, follow CarbonPath on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Neutral Protocol — Silver Prize Winner of 5,000 cUSD and 1,000 CELO
Neutral Protocol is building trading tools for ReFi assets, allowing users to trade carbon futures, options, and execute strategies on the Neutral platform. This will enable market participants to manage their risk and improve execution of offsetting schedules, among other benefits.
During Celo Camp, Neutral Protocol focused on building on-chain assets. “We started building our first product and completed the build by the end of the program. Celo is one of the biggest supporters of the ReFi ecosystem, and we wanted to build on a network with a community that was aligned with our values and mission. We received a lot of support from Celo Foundation and from Celo Camp to push our project forward,” said Farouq Gandour, co-founder at Neutral Protocol.
About his time at Celo Camp, Farouq continued, “It was a great program for meeting strong founders building in ReFi, for having a sense of community during what can be a lonely experience, and for getting practical advice on how to execute — I would highly recommend this program to any founder building in the space.”
Neutral protocol is currently receiving feedback from their Beta users. To get involved and for more information, follow Neutral Protocol on Twitter, Discord, and LinkedIn.
The Celo Innovation Awards
The Celo Innovation Awards are given to teams that introduce novel blockchain solutions to their respective fields, have the potential for broad adoption, and embody Celo’s four community tenets. Each winner receives 2,500 cUSD and 1,000 CELO.
The ReFi Awards:
Kolor — Opening access to the tokenized conservation of Patagonia.
Silvi — Gamifying reforestation to help a billion people steward a trillion trees.
The DeFi Award:
Nomis — Helping developers build better and more customized DeFi solutions with an open-source wallet qualifier and credit score protocol.
The Building for All Awards:
Blockless — Powering serverless functions and full-scale applications with a web assembly-based execution layer (WASM).
inTheory — Platforming scientific discovery via a digital marketplace and funding platform.
The Financial Inclusion Award:
Skylink — Enabling instant, simple, and secure international money transfers.
The Future of Payments Award:
Vault3 — Enabling payments to service providers and others directly and immediately.
The Impact Awards:
Vollar — Turning volunteering into impactful micro-jobs.
SAVE by Alice — Providing homeless beneficiaries with payments for achieving goals aimed at poverty alleviation.
The Creator Economy Award:
Whatclass — Building an impact and creator DAO to scale high-quality learning content and transform the way people learn the arts.
The Celo Community Awards
The Celo Community Award is given to teams that bring diverse solutions, infrastructure, and accessibility to the community. Each award recipient receives 1,200 cUSD and 500 CELO each. Congratulations to LazyFi, Metapyxl, NRverse, and Plantiverse!
The Reimagining Money Awards
Additionally, the following teams have been awarded the Reimagining Money Award of 500 cUSD and 500 CELO each: Whal3s, Rebioca, Eco Labs, Tokpay, Paybox, Agrivirtus, Circonomy, Stunning Green.
Startup Pathway Program
Startup Pathway, a program designed by Upright for new builders entering the Celo ecosystem, provides educational resources for entrepreneurs looking to jumpstart their ventures on Celo. Over the course of six weeks, the program guides teams through entrepreneurial milestones as they work independently on building their startup, utilizing the program’s learning resources, growth pathway, and mingling sessions.
Congratulations to Clixpesa, the grand prize winner of the Startup Pathway. Clixpesa won 1,200 cUSD and 500 CELO, as well as the wild-card entry to present alongside Celo Camp participants at Celo Camp’s Demo Day, which was held on November 15th.
Ubeswap DeFi Awards
Ubeswap DeFi awards, also separate from Celo Camp awards, are given to teams that embody Celo’s tenets of creating DeFi projects that are inclusive and contribute to impact.
First Place Prize: 25,000 UBE to Neutral Protocol
Second Place Prize: 15,000 UBE to Nomis
Third Place Prize: 10,000 UBE to Paybox
Congratulations to all awardees and graduates!
What’s Next? Celo Camp Batch 7
Pre-registration for Celo Camp batch 7 is now open! Apply today to join Celo Camp and the Celo community and to contribute to the future of inclusive finance and Web3. For more updates, subscribe to Celo Camp’s newsletter or follow Celo Camp on Twitter and Linkedin.
